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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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Charlotte?s Here! Hide the Children!

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  • Charlotte?s Here! Hide the Children!

    Charlotte?s Here! Hide the Children!
    Written by IndyHoya

    Link

    AREA 55 NEWS YOU CAN TAKE TO THE BANK!!!!!



    Salutations Area 55ers.* Yeah, I know I’m getting you this late but hey, unlike a lot of you, I actually have a life and work for a living.

    Anyway, our Pacers take the court again tonight at 7:30 P.M. for a quick home stand against the Charlotte Bobcats. *This will be the second game in back-to-backs for both teams.

    Last night, Charlotte (now 2-5) fell in overtime against the Hawks.* Our Pacers (5-2) are coming home after a mammoth 87-74 away win over Boston.* The danger, of course, is that now our crew will now experience an emotional let-down, with the Bobcats then sneaking into our arena and stealing an upset win.

    Our job is to do our best to ensure that that doesn’t happen.* We need to be extra-loud, extra-raucous, and extra-nasty tonight.

    YELLOW-OUT: Remember that it’s Saturday — the day when everything in BLF is supposed to turn yellow.* Wear your yellow Area 55 Roy shirts and make sure that Section 101 looks like a massive field of saffron-colored humanity.

    PTO FUN! As usual, I’ve heard nothing from PTO President Brickyard about the time for the pre-game boozing and shmoozing.* My guess is that there will be the usual cast of reprobates on hand as early 3:00 P.M. in the Parking Lot on South Street across from Arby’s.* My check on the weather indicates more balminess so I envision another stellar turnout.* Hell, maybe we’ll even have some food.* Who knows?



    JANUARY TIX PICKUP:* Esteemed Pacers Marketing Suit Alan Mowry reports that January’s Area 55 tickets will be ready for pick up starting Saturday at 4:45 P.M. at the Entry Pavilion at the Fieldhouse.* If you don’t get them by 6:00 P.M. at a table set up by the practice court windows, Alan says he will leave them for you at Will Call.

    PREGAME WORKOUT VIEWING OF ROY: Also, at 5:00 PM Area 55ers will get the to meet with Roy and watch him tune up for the Bobcats.* To do this, we will meet at the Entry Pavilion (after grabbing our January tickets) and then be escorted courtside to watch Roy and the other Pacers warm-up.* Roy supposedly will come by after the workout to say hello to us.* At 6:00 PM we can then take out seats and kill an hour or so in 101 or adjourn to beer vendors strategically located in various spots in the arena and complete the inebriation process.



    FUN FACTS ABOUT CHARLOTTE



    How Did Charlotte Get Its Name?* Take a guess!

    Was it named after Charlotte Bronte the famous author of Jane Eyre?* http://tinyurl.com/8xgo69p

    Nope.* Guess again!

    Was it named after the intelligent spider that saved the pig, Wilber, in Charlotte’s Web?* http://tinyurl.com/3dq3sg2

    Nope.* Wrong again!* Give up?

    Charlotte was named after Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the queen consort of British King George III.* She was a hot babe in her time.* Today, tastes have changed

    http://preview.tinyurl.com/75ubk96

    A nickname for Charlotte (“The Hornet’s Nest”) derives from the*Revolutionary War, when British commander, *Lord Cornwallis occupied the city but was driven out by hostile residents.* This prompted him to describe Charlotte as “a*hornet’s nest of rebellion.” This lead in turn to the Charlotte Hornets, who then moved to New Orleans to become the New Orleans Hornets, etc. etc.

    Meet Bismack Biyombo! http://tinyurl.com/6r9mlpa



    Who, you ask, is Bismack “B-Smack” Biyombo?* Well, depending on which NBA pundit it is that you talk to, he may be:

    (1) The second coming of Hakeem Olajuwon (i.e., the greatest thing since sliced bread!);

    (2) The second coming of Ben Wallace (i.e., that day-old bread your mom uses to make French toast); or

    (3) The second coming of Mouhammed Saer Sene (i.e., that bluish-green loaf in your breadbox that you might just want to throw away).

    You don’t remember Mouhammed Sene?* Well, FYI, he was a Senegalese ball-player with a 7’8 1/2” “wingspan” drafted 10th by Seattle in the 2006 draft pick (just ahead of J. J. Reddick).* He is widely considered to be one of the worst selections ever made.

    So let’s look at Bismack “B-Smack” Biyombo!

    Bismack was the 7th overall pick in the 2011 NBA Draft by the Sacramento Kings.* He ultimately wound up in Charlotte after the Bobcats’ owner, His Airness, Michael Jordan, inked him to a contract after a 3-team deal that, among other things, sent former Bobcat standouts Stephen Jackson and Shaun Livingston to the Bucks and the Bucks’ Cory Maggette to the Bobcats.

    Since arriving this season in Charlotte, Bismack has been getting around 10-15 minutes of playing time a night.* He’s 6’9” in height and weighs in at 243.* He’s long, athletic, and reportedly has the wingspan of someone who’s 7’ 7”.* He comes to the Bobcats with a fuzzy resume and after a series globe-trekking pro basketball adventures.

    Nobody’s really sure exactly how old Bismack is.* Bismack himself claims that he was born on August 28, 1992.* That would make him 19 and the youngest player in the NBA.* However a lot of people – mostly wizened old NBA scouts – say he’s older than that.* In researching Bismack, I found age estimates for him ranging everywhere from 20 to 24. *Not a geezer, but not a young pup either.

    Apparently, African birth certificates are often of shaky authenticity.* Usually they’re in the form of affidavits executed years after the fact by relatives and midwives trying to recall the date of the blessed birth event. Birth records emanating from the Congo, where Bismack was born, are no exception.

    Also, in the hyped world of international basketball, it’s always better to be a younger person than an older one.* Having a birth document that says you are 16 instead of 28 lets you play in a lot of youth tournaments that you might otherwise not legally qualify for.

    Bismarck’s official autobiography is intriguing in other ways. He is reportedly the oldest of seven brothers and sisters and hails from the city of Lubumbashi. He supposedly began playing basketball at age 9 and then turned pro (at age 14), while still living in the Congo.

    At 16, Bismack reportedly decided to leave his home country (supposedly over his parents’ vehement objections) in order to play for another professional team based in Qatar. On his way there, he stopped in Yemen for a week, purportedly to get a visa.* Once Yemeni basketball officials there heard Bismack was in town, they offered to let him practice with a local team. (See, although only 16, Bismack “possessed the body of a full grown man and already had the athleticism of an NBA player”). *Anyway, within a week, a local Yemeni team offered him a contract and Bismack began playing Yemeni professional basketball.

    “It’s very different from the rest of the world,” Biyombo said. “I knew nobody. I was still very young. Moving away from my family was a little difficult for me. On the other hand, it was something I really wanted to do. It was something I loved.”

    Bismack’s life took another big turn when he traveled with his Yemeni team to a tournament in Jordan. There he happened to meet former Jordanian and Angolan national team coach, Mario Palma. Palma was impressed with Bismack’s ability and maturity.** Bismack asked Palma to help him get into a better league.

    “He came to talk to me and asked for help,” Palma told FIBA.com. “He said he wanted to play at a high level. Initially, I thought of sending him to Angola, where I have some contacts, so he could progress there. I thought of Angola because of the cultural proximity to his country of origin. Then I contacted someone in Spain [agent Igor Crespo] and everything started from there. It was the right choice.”

    In June 2009, Bismack left Yemen for Spain without any kind of a contract. But he did have workouts, arranged by Crespo, with a number of the top teams in Spain.

    A lot of teams came to watch me practice,” Biyombo says. “No one was interested, I tell you.* After many weeks, finally a team [Fuenlabrada] came and offered me a shot at their junior team. They told me if I played well I could then play fourth division. Then, in a couple of years, third division. Maybe someday I can play in the ACB (the preeminent pro basketball league in Spain).. I said, no problem, I’ll take it.”

    Bismack began playing for Fuenlabrada’s junior team, but wasn’t satisfied with the competition. He called the coach of the third-division team and asked whether he could practice with that team as well.

    “The coach came up to me right after practice and told me, ‘You are not going to play anymore with the junior team. You are going to skip the fourth division. You are going to play with me,’”

    The next year, Bismack ended up playing for both the third- and fourth-division teams. On Saturdays, he played third-division games and on Sundays, fourth-division. To keep up with both teams, he sometimes had to practice four times a day.

    At the start of the 2010-11 season, Bismack was still on the third-division team in Spain. However, one month into the season, he moved up to the second division. He then began practicing with the first division as well.* His defense in practice against Esteban Batista, supposedly one of the best centers in Europe, wowed the coaching staff. Accordingly, when Fuenlabrada got a huge offer for Batista from Caja Laboral, the team decided to pull the trigger, let Batista go, and replace him with Bismack.

    “After Batista left, the coach says to me, ‘You know what, we don’t care if Batista leaves. We have you, and you can help us,’” Biyombo said.

    Biyombo then became a starter in the ACB. In his first game he played 13 minutes, finishing with five points, seven rebounds and a block. After two more games, his coach told him that he could stay with the team for the rest of the season (all of 14 games). Within two months, a number of NBA scouts were monitoring his play.

    Thus, Bismack wound up playing 14 games for Fuenlabrada in 2010-11.* During this time he averaged 6.4 points on 56 percent shooting, 5.1 rebounds and 2.3 blocks while playing 17 minutes a game.

    Rich Sheubrooks, who worked for Nike, spotted Bismack while playing for Fuenlabrada in Spain and offered him a shot on the Hoop Summit World team. On the World Team Bismack reportedly “wowed everyone with his toughness, athleticism, and shot-blocking.”

    In the his team played with Team USA, Biyombo dominated on the defensive end, finishing with 12 points, 11 rebounds and 10 blocks in 28 minutes work. It was the first triple-double in the history of the Hoop Summit (a tournament supposedly for 19 year olds and under).

    “When I walked away, I felt proud of myself,” Biyombo said. “I put everything on the floor. I played very hard. I did good things on the floor.

    The triple double sparked NBA interest. In a draft without a lot of players with big upside, Bismack was seen as “intriguing.” A week after Bismack’s feat, Scouts Inc.’s David Thorpe argued that “he could be the No.1 pick in the draft!”

    Thus, in approximately six months, Bismack Biyombo came from being an obscure, third-division big man in Spain to a first-round lottery pick in the NBA draft, touted as a new Serge Ibaka, and as a *potential solution to the front-line woes that have plagued the Bobcats. *The term “meteoric rise,” when ascribed to him, is thus something of an understatement.

    Whether Bismack comes to fulfill the expectations accompanying this rise remains to be seen.* There has traditionally been a lot of NBA over-enthusiasm for untried, but highly touted players from Africa.* Although there have been exceptions (and Serge Ibaka’s No. 24 pick by Seattle in the 2008 is one), most NBA flyers taken on raw African players have not panned out very well. Consider Yinka Dare (No. 14, 1994), Michael Olowokandi (No. 1, 1998) and DeSagana Diop (No. 8, 2001).

    Furthermore, are Bismack’s credentials, taken in context, really all that great?* His triple double at the Hoop Summit* — which sparked* so much NBA interest — came against incoming U.S. college freshmen and not against the likes of NBA starters.* Also his numbers during the 14 games with his Spanish team, while respectable, were hardly awe-inspiring.* Some of his pre-draft workouts were underwhelming.* One was described by an NBA scout as “Clang. Clang. Clang.” **A GM described another of his workouts this way: “Bismack Biyombo just played a game of one-on-none … and he lost.”

    Anyway, tonight we’ll get to see Bismack and find out if all there’s something substantial to all the acclaim surrounding him. *I am looking for Roy to swat him.

    GO PACERS!* GO AREA 55!

    *beeps*

  • #2
    Re: Charlotte?s Here! Hide the Children!

    Now im confused are they here or not here?

    Should be a great game! They've got some great shooters.

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