Announcement

Collapse

The Rules of Pacers Digest

Hello everyone,

Whether your are a long standing forum member or whether you have just registered today, it's a good idea to read and review the rules below so that you have a very good idea of what to expect when you come to Pacers Digest.

A quick note to new members: Your posts will not immediately show up when you make them. An administrator has to approve at least your first post before the forum software will later upgrade your account to the status of a fully-registered member. This usually happens within a couple of hours or so after your post(s) is/are approved, so you may need to be a little patient at first.

Why do we do this? So that it's more difficult for spammers (be they human or robot) to post, and so users who are banned cannot immediately re-register and start dousing people with verbal flames.

Below are the rules of Pacers Digest. After you have read them, you will have a very good sense of where we are coming from, what we expect, what we don't want to see, and how we react to things.

Rule #1

Pacers Digest is intended to be a place to discuss basketball without having to deal with the kinds of behaviors or attitudes that distract people from sticking with the discussion of the topics at hand. These unwanted distractions can come in many forms, and admittedly it can sometimes be tricky to pin down each and every kind that can rear its ugly head, but we feel that the following examples and explanations cover at least a good portion of that ground and should at least give people a pretty good idea of the kinds of things we actively discourage:

"Anyone who __________ is a liar / a fool / an idiot / a blind homer / has their head buried in the sand / a blind hater / doesn't know basketball / doesn't watch the games"

"People with intelligence will agree with me when I say that __________"

"Only stupid people think / believe / do ___________"

"I can't wait to hear something from PosterX when he/she sees that **insert a given incident or current event that will have probably upset or disappointed PosterX here**"

"He/she is just delusional"

"This thread is stupid / worthless / embarrassing"

"I'm going to take a moment to point and / laugh at PosterX / GroupOfPeopleY who thought / believed *insert though/belief here*"

"Remember when PosterX said OldCommentY that no longer looks good? "

In general, if a comment goes from purely on topic to something 'ad hominem' (personal jabs, personal shots, attacks, flames, however you want to call it, towards a person, or a group of people, or a given city/state/country of people), those are most likely going to be found intolerable.

We also dissuade passive aggressive behavior. This can be various things, but common examples include statements that are basically meant to imply someone is either stupid or otherwise incapable of holding a rational conversation. This can include (but is not limited to) laughing at someone's conclusions rather than offering an honest rebuttal, asking people what game they were watching, or another common problem is Poster X will say "that player isn't that bad" and then Poster Y will say something akin to "LOL you think that player is good". We're not going to tolerate those kinds of comments out of respect for the community at large and for the sake of trying to just have an honest conversation.

Now, does the above cover absolutely every single kind of distraction that is unwanted? Probably not, but you should by now have a good idea of the general types of things we will be discouraging. The above examples are meant to give you a good feel for / idea of what we're looking for. If something new or different than the above happens to come along and results in the same problem (that being, any other attitude or behavior that ultimately distracts from actually just discussing the topic at hand, or that is otherwise disrespectful to other posters), we can and we will take action to curb this as well, so please don't take this to mean that if you managed to technically avoid saying something exactly like one of the above examples that you are then somehow off the hook.

That all having been said, our goal is to do so in a generally kind and respectful way, and that doesn't mean the moment we see something we don't like that somebody is going to be suspended or banned, either. It just means that at the very least we will probably say something about it, quite possibly snipping out the distracting parts of the post in question while leaving alone the parts that are actually just discussing the topics, and in the event of a repeating or excessive problem, then we will start issuing infractions to try to further discourage further repeat problems, and if it just never seems to improve, then finally suspensions or bans will come into play. We would prefer it never went that far, and most of the time for most of our posters, it won't ever have to.

A slip up every once and a while is pretty normal, but, again, when it becomes repetitive or excessive, something will be done. Something occasional is probably going to be let go (within reason), but when it starts to become habitual or otherwise a pattern, odds are very good that we will step in.

There's always a small minority that like to push people's buttons and/or test their own boundaries with regards to the administrators, and in the case of someone acting like that, please be aware that this is not a court of law, but a private website run by people who are simply trying to do the right thing as they see it. If we feel that you are a special case that needs to be dealt with in an exceptional way because your behavior isn't explicitly mirroring one of our above examples of what we generally discourage, we can and we will take atypical action to prevent this from continuing if you are not cooperative with us.

Also please be aware that you will not be given a pass simply by claiming that you were 'only joking,' because quite honestly, when someone really is just joking, for one thing most people tend to pick up on the joke, including the person or group that is the target of the joke, and for another thing, in the event where an honest joke gets taken seriously and it upsets or angers someone, the person who is truly 'only joking' will quite commonly go out of his / her way to apologize and will try to mend fences. People who are dishonest about their statements being 'jokes' do not do so, and in turn that becomes a clear sign of what is really going on. It's nothing new.

In any case, quite frankly, the overall quality and health of the entire forum's community is more important than any one troublesome user will ever be, regardless of exactly how a problem is exhibiting itself, and if it comes down to us having to make a choice between you versus the greater health and happiness of the entire community, the community of this forum will win every time.

Lastly, there are also some posters, who are generally great contributors and do not otherwise cause any problems, who sometimes feel it's their place to provoke or to otherwise 'mess with' that small minority of people described in the last paragraph, and while we possibly might understand why you might feel you WANT to do something like that, the truth is we can't actually tolerate that kind of behavior from you any more than we can tolerate the behavior from them. So if we feel that you are trying to provoke those other posters into doing or saying something that will get themselves into trouble, then we will start to view you as a problem as well, because of the same reason as before: The overall health of the forum comes first, and trying to stir the pot with someone like that doesn't help, it just makes it worse. Some will simply disagree with this philosophy, but if so, then so be it because ultimately we have to do what we think is best so long as it's up to us.

If you see a problem that we haven't addressed, the best and most appropriate course for a forum member to take here is to look over to the left of the post in question. See underneath that poster's name, avatar, and other info, down where there's a little triangle with an exclamation point (!) in it? Click that. That allows you to report the post to the admins so we can definitely notice it and give it a look to see what we feel we should do about it. Beyond that, obviously it's human nature sometimes to want to speak up to the poster in question who has bothered you, but we would ask that you try to refrain from doing so because quite often what happens is two or more posters all start going back and forth about the original offending post, and suddenly the entire thread is off topic or otherwise derailed. So while the urge to police it yourself is understandable, it's best to just report it to us and let us handle it. Thank you!

All of the above is going to be subject to a case by case basis, but generally and broadly speaking, this should give everyone a pretty good idea of how things will typically / most often be handled.

Rule #2

If the actions of an administrator inspire you to make a comment, criticism, or express a concern about it, there is a wrong place and a couple of right places to do so.

The wrong place is to do so in the original thread in which the administrator took action. For example, if a post gets an infraction, or a post gets deleted, or a comment within a larger post gets clipped out, in a thread discussing Paul George, the wrong thing to do is to distract from the discussion of Paul George by adding your off topic thoughts on what the administrator did.

The right places to do so are:

A) Start a thread about the specific incident you want to talk about on the Feedback board. This way you are able to express yourself in an area that doesn't throw another thread off topic, and this way others can add their two cents as well if they wish, and additionally if there's something that needs to be said by the administrators, that is where they will respond to it.

B) Send a private message to the administrators, and they can respond to you that way.

If this is done the wrong way, those comments will be deleted, and if it's a repeating problem then it may also receive an infraction as well.

Rule #3

If a poster is bothering you, and an administrator has not or will not deal with that poster to the extent that you would prefer, you have a powerful tool at your disposal, one that has recently been upgraded and is now better than ever: The ability to ignore a user.

When you ignore a user, you will unfortunately still see some hints of their existence (nothing we can do about that), however, it does the following key things:

A) Any post they make will be completely invisible as you scroll through a thread.

B) The new addition to this feature: If someone QUOTES a user you are ignoring, you do not have to read who it was, or what that poster said, unless you go out of your way to click on a link to find out who it is and what they said.

To utilize this feature, from any page on Pacers Digest, scroll to the top of the page, look to the top right where it says 'Settings' and click that. From the settings page, look to the left side of the page where it says 'My Settings', and look down from there until you see 'Edit Ignore List' and click that. From here, it will say 'Add a Member to Your List...' Beneath that, click in the text box to the right of 'User Name', type in or copy & paste the username of the poster you are ignoring, and once their name is in the box, look over to the far right and click the 'Okay' button. All done!

Rule #4

Regarding infractions, currently they carry a value of one point each, and that point will expire in 31 days. If at any point a poster is carrying three points at the same time, that poster will be suspended until the oldest of the three points expires.

Rule #5

When you share or paste content or articles from another website, you must include the URL/link back to where you found it, who wrote it, and what website it's from. Said content will be removed if this doesn't happen.

An example:

If I copy and paste an article from the Indianapolis Star website, I would post something like this:

http://www.linktothearticlegoeshere.com/article
Title of the Article
Author's Name
Indianapolis Star

Rule #6

We cannot tolerate illegal videos on Pacers Digest. This means do not share any links to them, do not mention any websites that host them or link to them, do not describe how to find them in any way, and do not ask about them. Posts doing anything of the sort will be removed, the offenders will be contacted privately, and if the problem becomes habitual, you will be suspended, and if it still persists, you will probably be banned.

The legal means of watching or listening to NBA games are NBA League Pass Broadband (for US, or for International; both cost money) and NBA Audio League Pass (which is free). Look for them on NBA.com.

Rule #7

Provocative statements in a signature, or as an avatar, or as the 'tagline' beneath a poster's username (where it says 'Member' or 'Administrator' by default, if it is not altered) are an unwanted distraction that will more than likely be removed on sight. There can be shades of gray to this, but in general this could be something political or religious that is likely going to provoke or upset people, or otherwise something that is mean-spirited at the expense of a poster, a group of people, or a population.

It may or may not go without saying, but this goes for threads and posts as well, particularly when it's not made on the off-topic board (Market Square).

We do make exceptions if we feel the content is both innocuous and unlikely to cause social problems on the forum (such as wishing someone a Merry Christmas or a Happy Easter), and we also also make exceptions if such topics come up with regards to a sports figure (such as the Lance Stephenson situation bringing up discussions of domestic abuse and the law, or when Jason Collins came out as gay and how that lead to some discussion about gay rights).

However, once the discussion seems to be more/mostly about the political issues instead of the sports figure or his specific situation, the thread is usually closed.

Rule #8

We prefer self-restraint and/or modesty when making jokes or off topic comments in a sports discussion thread. They can be fun, but sometimes they derail or distract from a topic, and we don't want to see that happen. If we feel it is a problem, we will either delete or move those posts from the thread.

Rule #9

Generally speaking, we try to be a "PG-13" rated board, and we don't want to see sexual content or similarly suggestive content. Vulgarity is a more muddled issue, though again we prefer things to lean more towards "PG-13" than "R". If we feel things have gone too far, we will step in.

Rule #10

We like small signatures, not big signatures. The bigger the signature, the more likely it is an annoying or distracting signature.

Rule #11

Do not advertise anything without talking about it with the administrators first. This includes advertising with your signature, with your avatar, through private messaging, and/or by making a thread or post.
See more
See less

My trip to Chicago 1/29

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • My trip to Chicago 1/29

    What a great time. It all started off purchasing tickets on eBay in section 106row 15, which is located behind the Bulls basket. We got to the stadium about an hour and a half early so we could check everything out from the inside/out. We found the Jordan statue which is literally a monument with people taking turns standing next to it getting pictures...my picture can be seen down this page.

    When we got in we went to our section and found out that the Pacers were warming up on the opposite end of our seats. We decided to walk around the other side and get down as close as possible to watch warmups, we managed to get pretty close, an usher (which all ushers there dress as if they are airline stewardess, hints the name "United Center") asked both of us, "Are these your guys' seats?, I said, "Yes."...with confidence. *It's all about acting like you know what you are doing. We were standing in the 5th row which was the 2nd row of actual seats not counting the 3 rows of fold up chairs on the floor. DC, Lance and TJ were on the floor an hour before tip off warming up. I yelled such things to Lance like, "We want you out there!!" He smiled and kinda shrugged his shoulders like, me too!! I yelled at Posey saying, "I want four 3's tonight!" He kinda laughed and shook his head. I didn't really like that confidence. Stacey came over and talked to me for a little bit, I went to school with her brother so that's how she knows me. She asked if we were sitting where we were talking, I said something like, "Haha I wish but no, we are on the opposite side 15 rows up, she said she would tell her camera guys to get us on TV."

    About twenty minutes before tip-off the fans started piling in...I was all but ready to go back to our original seats...

    When the players all came out I raised up my Area55 t-shirt...Roy finally noticed it and gave me a point. I still wish I would have brought a fathead or two.

    The game finally started and we were sitting around a sold out United Center feeling like we might get lucky and go the whole game without getting kicked out. Halfway through the 1st people were still coming in but never to our seats...we scored big time because nobody came the whole game, talk about luck. I stood up during all big plays that were made like raising up three fingers for when a three was made....the first quarter went by and I didn't hear one thing from Bulls' fans. Once the 2nd hit people started yelling at me, "Sit down!" "Pacers suck!" I would just turn around and be like, I know! This one fan was talking about bad contracts and how Dunleavy is getting paid 10 million a year, I would turn around and say something back to him but he would say EVERYTIME, "Games that way buddy!" What do you want me to do, talk to you looking forward? Guy was an idiot. This one voice kept yelling at me and when I turned around it was an old man...this guy had to be at least 70. He literally wanted to fight, I don't know what his problem was but he wanted to go. I turned around, got my camera ready, turned back to him and snapped a picture while laughing...that had to make him feel good.

    A few things I remember yelling during play...

    Foster was getting outplayed by #3 the big white guy on the Bulls. I know 95% of the NBA but still don't know who he is...I yelled out to Foster as time was stopped, "Hey Foster, who is this guy? He's killin you!" He nodded in agreement. Granger was nowhere to be seen in the first few minutes of the game, I yelled at him, "C'mon Danny! Let's get it going!!!" He came down next posession and nailed a three. I could see the bench watching me time after time when I would stand to yell things. I knew they could hear me so I felt like I had them motivated. I got onto the refs a few times (you all remember how bad they were) and got a stare down by one of them which felt like an eternity. Someone told me, I was like the Pacers' Spike Lee.

    I did get on TV at the end of the half which I owe a thanks to Stacey for that.

    I know there is a lot more I should be sharing with you but in all honesty I don't remember all that much since I partied all night.

    Here are some pics, I don't know how to post on here so there is a link via flikr. I used my camera phone btw.

    MJ Statue and Me representing our boys.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/54260568@N07/5404705949/

    Pacers lined up during the National Anthem...solid pic.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/54260568@N07/5405317276/

    Timeout

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/54260568@N07/5405327206/

    Me and the ol' lady (who also is a diehard P fan) during the final horn...

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/54260568@N07/5405333790/


    All in all it was successful trip...we got beat but in the end we both won because we sat so close for so little price. I'm definitely going to go to another away game.

    Hope you enjoyed!


    ***O yea! I went to JOB's last every Pacers' game!!!!! The refs kicked him out and then the morning after Larry kicked him out. Go P!

  • #2
    Re: My trip to Chicago 1/29

    LOL

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: My trip to Chicago 1/29

      you guys made it on TV, you were on the PACERS broadcast. Showed a couple of close ups of you guys.
      You can't get champagne from a garden hose.

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: My trip to Chicago 1/29

        Yeah the Nets game I shared an elevator with Clark and Danny's wife. It was pretty cool. Clark is classy even in person.

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: My trip to Chicago 1/29

          Glad to see you had a good time. I've been a Pacers fan on the road for the past 7 years in Orlando and now this year in Charlotte. I expect to get heckled at games but its all in good fun - generally it starts conversation and sometimes you get to leave the building coming off a win (happened in Charlotte this year after a Stephen Jackson 3...felt good to be wearing a Hibbert jersey as I left the building). Also pretty cool that you were at O'Brien's last game as a Pacers coach.
          Check out my autographed 1972-73 Topps basketball project

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: My trip to Chicago 1/29

            Haha, those at least those Chicago fans care! I went to the Hawks game earlier this month...I was sitting about 6 rows up. I was yelling C'mon Pacers, etc the whole game in my Reggie jersey and I never once got anything said back to me...not once. The loudest ovation of the entire game was because Hollinger was on his computer up in the front watching some football game and one of the team's on there scored....the crowd was watching his computer screen more intently than the game.

            The Hawks were winning but it seemed like I was the only one cheering anywhere around me. Poor Hawks... fans still don't care even though they are finally winning.

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: My trip to Chicago 1/29

              Originally posted by BillS
              What, because they didn't harass you they don't care? Maybe they were just respectful of your right to cheer for your team or something silly like that.
              No that's not what I meant.... I was just saying that they weren't cheering their team on at all. They cared more about the game on the computer screen than the team in front of them. I was just comparing my experience to his experience in Chicago.

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: My trip to Chicago 1/29

                I snuck into the VIP Lounge at Belterra Casino to see you two. Sitting by myself, drinking Crown and Cokes, then all of a sudden... BOOM! I go nuts, tell the 15 or so people in there (none of them are watching the game nor do they seem interested), then all of a sudden... I got 4 guys and a chick watching the game rooting for the Pacers. Unfortunately we lost and I came home broke, but at least we now have Frank Vogel. I can honestly say I regret declining your invitation to Chicago. Not only would I have spent way less money, but I would have seen the end of an era in person followed by the beginning of an era against Toronto.

                Like I told IndyHoya and Pacer4ever... I'm not renewing my season tickets until Frank Vogel has a lifetime contract. Make it happen Larry, I believe in you. You're like Jesus, Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy all rolled into one... except your legit.

                GO P

                Comment

                Working...
                X