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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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The Kansas City Royals Model

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  • #16
    Re: The Kansas City Royals Model

    Originally posted by ballism View Post
    I think it is a valid question. I think most teams' front offices discussed it at one point or another.
    And the Clippers pretty much lived by that principle for decades.

    But it's not 2002 anymore. Now there are strict minimum payroll rules. So that strategy seems obsolete.
    Ahhh, ok. I didn't realize there was a salary floor in the NBA like there is in the NFL. Thanks.

    Comment


    • #17
      Re: The Kansas City Royals Model

      do people realize how bad the KC Royals owner is? By far one of the worst owner in sports David Glass is a joke(he is Donald Sterling bad those 2 are terrible owners). That team wont win a thing until he sells the team really a shame for a good baseball town.


      But comparing baseball and basketball is hard to do. One has no real salary cap the other does. Plus the minor league spending and what not really hard to compare the 2 sports.

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      • #18
        Re: The Kansas City Royals Model

        The Royals take on almost every Brave castoff. Not sure the Pacers can do that.
        First time in a long time, I've been happy with the team that was constructed, and now they struggle. I blame the coach.

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        • #19
          Re: The Kansas City Royals Model

          FWIW, the big difference between the Royals and the Pacers is the league they play in. The Royals play baseball. The Pacers play basketball. Baseball has no real salary cap. The Yankees can spend more money than God without much penalty. The Knicks would soon be paying more money in tax than salary if they spend the money the Yankees do. That sets a pretty high bar for the Royals. The bar is much less high for the Pacers.

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          • #20
            Re: The Kansas City Royals Model

            There is a critical difference between the Royals situation and the Pacers. MLB has revenue sharing. If an MLB team is under a salary threshold, they get money from teams over a different threshold. This is a significant amount. The Royals are basically a real life version of The Producers. They don't keep payroll low because attendance is low. They keep payroll low because they make a bigger profit by gaming the system. There is an important difference there.

            The Pacers couldn't do that in the past. This last season, for example, the max revenue sharing amount was something like $5.5 mil. Not enough to tank your payroll. However, starting in the 2013-2014 season, it will balloon up to around $14 mil. Now that is something to think about: bare minimum payroll, recoup with a half filled area/TV/Merch, and collect a $14 mil profit. Someone will do this. Maybe Sacramento or Charlotte.

            However, the Hibbert/Hill contracts (and their respective lengths) indicate that the Pacers aren't interested in this. If the low attendance numbers don't improve over the next few years? Might be tempting. This isn't inconceivable.
            The Miller Time Podcast on 8 Points, 9 Seconds:
            http://www.eightpointsnineseconds.com/tag/miller-time-podcast/
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            Subscribe via iTunes

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            • #21
              Re: The Kansas City Royals Model

              I finished Moneyball recently and have been considering trying to understand if the model would fit in the NBA at all. Moneyball is based on the idea that no single player in baseball affects the game so completely as to make it worth spending a large percentage of a team's resources on that single player. It is better to spend on a number of players who can each give you the most important parts of that original player's contribution - particularly players who are undervalued. Once player values rise you replace them with other undervalued players.

              I believe this would NOT fit in the NBA for a couple of reasons:

              1) A single player has a HUGE impact on the outcome of a basketball game. The current adjustment being made is to determine exactly HOW MUCH that single player impacts winning and losing, because you still need the role-players to fill in the inevitable gaps, but unlike baseball a high-impact player is almost essential (yes, exceptions exist, but they are really exceptions in the LEVEL of the impact player rather than the complete lack of one) to reach the championship tiers in the NBA.

              2) The pool of players to select replacements from is far smaller in basketball. I have no real numbers to support it, but I would venture to say that a single MLB team's farm system has more players available than are available to the entire NBA in any given season, never mind the entire set of farm systems across all teams. Given this, finding that undervalued player who has played in a consistent fashion against consistent competition and compiled actual statistics for evaluation is extremely difficult in the NBA.
              BillS

              A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
              Or throw in a first-round pick and flip it for a max-level point guard...

              Comment


              • #22
                Re: The Kansas City Royals Model

                Pro Basketball teams are a shiny toy for a rich businessman to play with and have a public face. Sure PS&E is a large entity, but no NBA owner would rely on it to pay the bills. NBA ownership is generally not a year-to-year favorable investment. The value of the franchise at least appreciates, though, historically so it is better for your heirs than buying a yacht as a status symbol or plaything.

                The Simons have malls that keep their family dynasty churning. Lets just hope the Pacers are rewarding enough / fun enough for them to keep as a side diversion, and that like a yacht they keep it up, and slap on new coats of paint as often as possible.
                The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!).

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                • #23
                  Re: The Kansas City Royals Model

                  Originally posted by BillS View Post
                  It is better to spend on a number of players who can each give you the most important parts of that original player's contribution - particularly players who are undervalued.
                  well, Houston has a dominant moneyball PF on their roster right now, only he's built of 10 or so people. But he has every possible PF skill and talent on both ends of the floor.
                  So hopefully we will see!

                  Comment


                  • #24
                    Re: The Kansas City Royals Model

                    Houston is a team that believes it has a market efficiency. They won't say publically what stats they are using. They have overachieved several years in a row, so maybe it is working.

                    David Morway has been said to be a big believer in advanced metrics. The Pacers tend to gravitate towards players who are good defenders and good jump shooters (traits that don't tend to earn big paychecks, a la Robert Horry or Bruce Bowen), while shying away from people who can play iso offense or get to the rim (traits that tend to be overated and overpaid, a la Ricky Davis and Starbury).

                    I disagree with the notion that a Moneyball-esque strategy makes teams shy away from a huge contract with one player. It is about re-thinking talent evaluation and finding efficiencies. If you discover that defense and rebounding are far more important that iso scoring, you are still willing to break the bank on Dwight Howard, but you know would not be willing to break the bank for Carmello Anthony. If one player is head and shoulders above the others in the areas you find are most valuable, and you can swing it, you get him. This is an area where the term "Moneyball" does a disservice to the concept of objective analysis.

                    Here is an article from Grantland written by the Houston Rockets FO about the concept:

                    http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/...ouston-rockets
                    The Miller Time Podcast on 8 Points, 9 Seconds:
                    http://www.eightpointsnineseconds.com/tag/miller-time-podcast/
                    RSS Feed
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                    • #25
                      Re: The Kansas City Royals Model

                      Originally posted by FlavaDave View Post
                      I disagree with the notion that a Moneyball-esque strategy makes teams shy away from a huge contract with one player. It is about re-thinking talent evaluation and finding efficiencies. If you discover that defense and rebounding are far more important that iso scoring, you are still willing to break the bank on Dwight Howard, but you know would not be willing to break the bank for Carmello Anthony. If one player is head and shoulders above the others in the areas you find are most valuable, and you can swing it, you get him. This is an area where the term "Moneyball" does a disservice to the concept of objective analysis.
                      To be fair, that is because of a fundamental difference between MLB and the NBA, which is the cap. The $$$ aspect of Moneyball is because a small-revenue team simply can't come close to competing with the big boys for those head and shoulders players. Rather than trying, it is more efficient to find a replacement.

                      In the NBA you may be right, but I think it is more because of the impact that head and shoulders player makes being harder to replace - both due to the skills involved AND due to the way a single player with skills works on the floor vs. multiple players who combine to have a similar level of impact. The latter requires additional capabilities in teamwork and coaching in the NBA that aren't in play in baseball.
                      BillS

                      A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
                      Or throw in a first-round pick and flip it for a max-level point guard...

                      Comment

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