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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.
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ESPN NBA Playoff Predictor

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  • #16
    Re: ESPN NBA Playoff Predictor

    Well of course there's no love for us. If we make the playoffs (which isn't even guaranteed yet) we will get there with the worst record. Also, our roster is inferior to every team in the playoffs. We have no young-shiny superstars who might break out during the playoffs, the closest to that is Granger and I believe both Boston and Chicago should be able to shut him down.
    And we lost the season series to both Boston and Chicago (1-3). If we win 2 games I will be pretty satisfied, because we're just not good enough to do more than that at this point. This is from a realistic standpoint. From a Pacer standpoint I'd still look forward to win every game of course.
    Originally posted by Piston Prince
    Bobcat fans telling us to cheer up = epic fail season
    "Josh Smith Re-building the city of Detroit one brick at a time"

    Comment


    • #17
      Re: ESPN NBA Playoff Predictor

      Originally posted by Kid Minneapolis View Post
      Always the optimist, aren't ya. Oh wait, "realist".

      I don't think it's unrealistic for the Pacers to get 1 win in a series, I'd hardly call that a miracle. We just beat them, it's not impossible. I don't expect them to win the series, but I do reasonably see Indy pulling out a win.
      It isn't unrealistic for the Pacers to get 1 win. But it would be an upset. I never said that would be a miracle.

      I said it would be a miracle for more than 1 win.
      "I had to take her down like Chris Brown."

      -Lance Stephenson

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      • #18
        Re: ESPN NBA Playoff Predictor

        Yeah my only hope is for the games to be close, I just don't see them winning a game.
        @WhatTheFFacts: Studies show that sarcasm enhances the ability of the human mind to solve complex problems!

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        • #19
          Re: ESPN NBA Playoff Predictor

          If we make it in, we wont get swept. I think this team is good enough to win two games. I expect us to win games 3 and 5 at minimum. And Im being honest with myself.

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          • #20
            Re: ESPN NBA Playoff Predictor

            Listen I am all for being optimistic going into the playoffs, and everyone should as a fan of the team. Hell, we haven't been there since I was a junior in high school (about to graduate from IU now), but you are ignoring the hard facts.

            Is it great that we beat the Bulls and Celtics? Absolutely, those two teams are in the cream of the crop of the league right now, however both teams were coming off back to backs.

            Have you seen how we perform in back to back games? Luckily most of us did not get to witness the horror that was experienced in Memphis after we did beat the Bulls.

            The fact of the matter is that winning back-to-back games in the NBA is very difficult, regardless of what team you are. Add into that with the Bulls game that there was no way they could have measured up to our energy level that night after a tough game for them the night before in New Jersey and the Celtics got into early foul trouble with the little bit of front-line they had left and we were in strong position to win those games.

            Now, the Bulls and Celtics do come out hungry every night. They don't lose back-to-back games at the frequency of the Pacers. To ignore these factors though is like trusting your friends who are already drunk to monitor how many beers you've downed; its ignorant.

            I do not doubt that the Pacers can compete with the Celtics or Bulls and make a series at least an interesting 4-6 games, but to think the inexperienced Indiana team has a legitimate chance to knock off a viable title contender is just setting yourself up for disappointment.

            With the way the playoffs are structured (an off-day or more between every game) these much stronger teams will be far more prepared than they were coming off those games from the previous night. I'll be excited if we can steal a game or two (which I doubt would happen on the road), but start there with your optimism. Like someone said the Pacers are 2-6 versus those teams this year, and we only looked mediocre at best in like 3 of those losses.
            follow me on twitter: @Shear1989

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            • #21
              Re: ESPN NBA Playoff Predictor

              I remember when I was a sunshiner by all means necessary. Then I turned 6.

              Comment


              • #22
                Re: ESPN NBA Playoff Predictor

                Originally posted by HC View Post
                You should probably take into consideration that 9 out of 10 people over there probaby haven't seen the Pacers play a single game this season.
                Yeah...if any of them had actually seen the Pacers play much this season, they'd predict a 3-game series instead.

                Comment


                • #23
                  Re: ESPN NBA Playoff Predictor

                  Originally posted by Isaac View Post
                  I remember when I was a sunshiner by all means necessary. Then I turned 6.
                  You silly late-bloomers.

                  Comment


                  • #24
                    Re: ESPN NBA Playoff Predictor

                    Originally posted by Kid Minneapolis View Post
                    Always the optimist, aren't ya. Oh wait, "realist".

                    I don't think it's unrealistic for the Pacers to get 1 win in a series, I'd hardly call that a miracle. We just beat them, it's not impossible. I don't expect them to win the series, but I do reasonably see Indy pulling out a win.
                    We beat them (barely) when they were without their second-best player (Boozer). That makes a huge difference.

                    We would be lucky to win one game. The Bulls are a match-up nightmare for us.

                    Comment


                    • #25
                      Re: ESPN NBA Playoff Predictor

                      Originally posted by Shade View Post
                      We beat them (barely) when they were without their second-best player (Boozer). That makes a huge difference.

                      We would be lucky to win one game. The Bulls are a match-up nightmare for us.
                      The bulls were on an 8 game win streak. They were playing better then than they have since boozer returned. It's not the end all of awesomeness, but it was a good, solid win against a team that was on top of their game leading up to it.

                      It isn't as if we haven't competed well this year against top competition. Los angeles at home was really nice, and we've played the heat close multiple times despite the fact that they were looking for revenge for our drubbing of them in their house.

                      We aren't winning a series, but a game or two is both doable and would be a nice platform for a more consistant season next year.
                      Goodbye Captain, My Captain. I wish you had the chance to sink or swim with your ship on its quest for the "ship".

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                      • #26
                        Re: ESPN NBA Playoff Predictor

                        I did that Playoff Predictor about a week ago, and on the 1st try it had the Pacers upsetting the Bulls in the 1st round AND the Magic in the semis.

                        We lost in the Eastern Conference Finals to the Celtics who beat the Spurs. I didn't even attempt it after that 1st try... it was not going to get any better!

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                        • #27
                          Re: ESPN NBA Playoff Predictor

                          Without me preaching my mantra that we have to make the playoffs first . . .

                          . . . if Chicago stays focused and there are no important injuries then we should be broom fodder.

                          However. . .

                          1] Chicago is a young team itself and when teams get up a couple games they tend to relax a bit. A win or two is possible.

                          2] If Rose would have an injury, then an upset is possible.

                          3] It's not out of the realm of possibilities that we could have a player or two blow up. For instant Rush can play, what if he really gets aggressive and brings it? Or what if George arrives at his potential way early? Or what if Collison averages 20 points a game against Rose? Stranger things have happened.

                          The thing about the playoffs is young guys can suddenly start taking everything seriously.

                          As Bird says, (Paraphased) Once you get to the playoffs anything can happen.

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                          • #28
                            Re: ESPN NBA Playoff Predictor

                            Winning against a top team is not impossible for this team. Although inconsistent, they have shown that they have the tools to win against the likes of Bulls, Celtics, Miami, etc. I mean, even a sub-par Atlanta Hawks team gave the Champion Celtics team a handful by driving the series to 7 games.

                            If I am to choose which among the current top teams the Pacers would want to match-up with, I will choose Bulls or Heat for the simple reason that they are a newly-formed lineup and yet to see how their regular season gameplay will translate into the playoffs. These kinds of teams tend to collape on the playoffs because of less familiarity, and as underdogs that are "less-pressured" as compared to these "expected title-contenders", the Pacers can take advantage of it. Aside from that, those 2 teams tend to focus their offense on 1 or 2 players only, so they are more predictable than the likes of Celtics.

                            Tightly-bonded teams like the Celtics, Spurs and Lakers are the dangerous teams because the level of their play always turns up several notches come playoff time. The only thing that can slow them down is by injuries to key players (which has been happening to the Spurs on the previous years). If we somehow face the Bulls or Miami in the playoffs, I don't expect a sweep and winning 1 or 2 games in the seires is not that far-fetched as many people think.

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                            • #29
                              Re: ESPN NBA Playoff Predictor

                              I could easily see us winning two games, I don't however see us winning a series unless a catastrophic injury would happen to the other team.

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