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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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GM reactions to Mock Draft 1.0 ESPNINSIDER

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  • #1

    GM reactions to Mock Draft 1.0 ESPNINSIDER

    Just thought this would be interesting, especially with a lot of the talk about where some players should and should not go.

    Chad Ford

    http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/blog/...rst-mock-draft

    The Sweet 16 starts on Thursday and NBA scouts and GMs are positioning themselves around the country for another round of evaluation. But we're casting our gaze a little further into the horizon.

    We debuted our first full Mock Draft on Tuesday and within a few minutes were getting a lot of feedback from NBA general managers. A couple of themes have arisen throughout the day:

    1. This draft looks incredibly deep if everyone's in. But not everyone is going to be in. Kentucky's Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Florida's Patric Young have already said they are returning to school. Several other lottery picks including Indiana's Cody Zeller, UNC's James Michael McAdoo and Baylor's Quincy Miller are all strongly leaning toward staying in school, too. Taking those five out of the first round changes things.


    A few others including Florida's Bradley Beal, UConn's Andre Drummond, Baylor's Perry Jones III and Duke's Austin Rivers aren't locks to enter the draft either. Subtract those five from the first round and things suddenly get much weaker.

    2. GMs seem to think we have Austin Rivers too low. While scouts have generally been down on him all year, a number of NBA GMs told me they had him ranked considerably higher on their boards. One high-level scout told me that they had Rivers ranked as a top five or six player in the draft.

    3. Fans seem to think we have Tyler Zeller too high. I got more feedback from readers about Zeller than anyone else. I think it's a visceral reaction more than anything. Every GM and scout I spoke with have him in their Top 12. I think he's more skilled and athletic than people realize.

    4. The point guards could all end up going higher. Next year, ESPNU doesn't have one point guard ranked in their Top 20 of the incoming recruiting class. The top point guard is Kris Dunn from Providence and he's ranked at No. 23. That means waiting until next year for an elite point guard to emerge might prove fruitless. I had a number of GMs tell me that Damian Lillard, Kendall Marshall, Tony Wroten Jr., B.J. Young, Marquis Teague and Myck Kabongo could all go higher than they are currently projected. Then again, the dearth of point guards in the 2013 draft could be an incentive for players like Teague and Kabongo to return to school and possibly go much higher next year.

    5. Teams are scared -- to death -- of taking Perry Jones III and Andre Drummond and they're frightened to pass on either player. Jones and Drummond have so many tools to be great NBA players but early in their career, they still don't know how to put them together. "They get you fired either way," one GM said. "Don't take them and they blow up, everyone asks you what you were thinking. Do take them and they underachieve and everyone says you shouldn't have taken the risk. It's a no-win situation so ... you just take them. It's better to swing for the fences and miss than to bunt and miss the chance to hit a home run."

    • Last Friday we debuted our annual Who's In and Who's Out of the NBA Draft list for the year. Three players -- St. John's Moe Harkless, Villanova's Maalik Wayns and South Florida's Victor Rudd Jr. -- have already declared. Iowa State's Royce White is expected to announce he's declaring today. Harkless and White are a likely first-round picks. The other two should really go back to school.

    I'm beginning to hear a number of other players who sound like they'll be joining the list of early entrants soon. Sources say Harrison Barnes is all but in. Ditto of Illinois' Meyers Leonard and UNLV's Mike Moser. Texas' Kabongo and Memphis shooting guard Will Barton are seriously looking at declaring for the draft as well.

    • There are two big matchups that scouts will be focusing on in the Sweet 16. On Thursday, it's Marquette vs. Florida. Scouts are interested in how two bigs: Patric Young and Jae Crowder match up. They also want to see how Vander Blue and Darius Johnson-Odom match up with Beal and Kenny Boynton Jr.

    On Friday, it's the Kentucky-Indiana rematch. In the first game, neither Anthony Davis nor Cody Zeller played a particularly great game. They've both improved a lot and the head-to-head matchup could be stellar.

    Over the weekend there is plenty of potential for prime prospects going head to head. Kentucky-Baylor, North Carolina-Kansas, Michigan State-Florida and Syracuse-Ohio State all could be epic.

    • The NIT doesn't have the same cache as the NCAA tournament, but it's worth noting that Washington's Terrence Ross has been tearing up the NIT. Through the first three games of the tournament, Ross has had 23 points and 5 rebounds versus Texas-Arlington, 32 points, 8 rebounds and 6 3s versus Northwestern and 24 points versus Oregon. Only a handful of scouts have actually caught the games, but it's a strong finish to the season for him nonetheless.
    Why so SERIOUS
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  • #2
    Re: GM reactions to Mock Draft 1.0 ESPNINSIDER

    Nothing annoys me more than asking what GMs or scouts think of a prospect, in the months leading up to a draft.

    You really think they are going to give honest, insider opinions? Seriously? No, they're going to try to give as much misleading info as they can, to get other teams to look at a player they don't want.

    All I took from this article is that Austin Rivers will fall like a rock on draft day. Everybody has been dogging him all year, but now all of a sudden GMs and scouts both love him to death?

    I also like the anonymous GM advice to draft Drummond and Perry Jones.

    ... you just take them. It's better to swing for the fences and miss than to bunt and miss the chance to hit a home run.
    Yes...draft him. Someone please draft him before he falls to our slot, so I'm not stuck making that decision!
    Last edited by Kstat; 03-21-2012, 11:00 AM.

    It wasn't about being the team everyone loved, it was about beating the teams everyone else loved.

    Division Champions 1955, 1956, 1988, 1989, 1990, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008
    Conference Champions 1955, 1956, 1988, 2005
    NBA Champions 1989, 1990, 2004

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    • #3
      Re: GM reactions to Mock Draft 1.0 ESPNINSIDER

      As long as I live, I'll remember the hilarity of Pavel Podkolzine...a thousand scouts gushing over him practicing against air in an empty gym, like he's the next wilt chamberlain.

      What can Yao Ming do that he can't?

      um...play basketball?

      Even if just one GM bites on misdirection hype ( and mark cuban did in that case), it could be the difference between a home run prospect you love dropping to you and just an OK one that gets you fired someday. Teams will always, always hype up players they don't want prior to a draft.

      It wasn't about being the team everyone loved, it was about beating the teams everyone else loved.

      Division Champions 1955, 1956, 1988, 1989, 1990, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008
      Conference Champions 1955, 1956, 1988, 2005
      NBA Champions 1989, 1990, 2004

      Comment

      • #4
        Re: GM reactions to Mock Draft 1.0 ESPNINSIDER

        Originally posted by Kstat View Post
        Nothing annoys me more than asking what GMs or scouts think of a prospect, in the months leading up to a draft.

        You really think they are going to give honest, insider opinions? Seriously? No, they're going to try to give as much misleading info as they can, to get other teams to look at a player they don't want.

        All I took from this article is that Austin Rivers will fall like a rock on draft day. Everybody has been dogging him all year, but now all of a sudden GMs and scouts both love him to death?

        I also like the anonymous GM advice to draft Drummond and Perry Jones.



        Yes...draft him. Someone please draft him before he falls to our slot, so I'm not stuck making that decision!
        I think there is a bit of truth to what they say, they may not tell everything but many scout communicate with each other often, they may not give all the X's and O's about their scouting, but everyone is trying to get a general consensus to verify or what they believe they see.

        I think Rivers is getting consideration because he often either leads his team or is tied on his team in assist(he sees the floor better, and makes smarter passes), is quick, knows how to drive, and has more of a NBA game than college.

        I still think he should go back to get more experience, with handling the ball and seeing the floor at the 2 guard position.
        Why so SERIOUS

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