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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"

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

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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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2012 Notre Dame Football Thread

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  • Re: 2012 Notre Dame Football Thread

    Manti is FAAAAAAAAAAR from it.....

    http://www.nba.com/gamenotes/pacers.pdf

    Comment


    • Re: 2012 Notre Dame Football Thread

      Originally posted by Trader Joe View Post
      Bill if I offended you by my comments about Manti, I apologize. Certainly people can be duped, but there are an awful lot of things here that you have to be extraordinarily gullible to be duped for this long. I mean he spent 2,000+ hours on the phone with a guy pretending to be a girl.
      Where I get frustrated is that people really don't understand the psychology of a con and how easy it is to be drawn in to the point where you simply believe what you have come to believe no matter what gets presented. That's what makes a con artist successful, the ability to lead someone into this stage of belief.

      So many of the things being brought up as "major holes" are only holes when you look at them from the outside in hindsight. Think of all the women you know - you can't tell me there aren't at least one or two with speaking voices in the lower alto range. Think of all the men you know - I'll bet there are more than one or two tenor range speakers. Add to that the idea that we pick up gender from speaking methods - the "question" raise at the end of a sentence is an extreme example of a vocal mannerism almost entirely associated with women - and the fact that telephone signals are truncated to 0-3K hertz and there's not a lot of immediate red flags there.

      I feel like a lot of the jumping on Te'o is because of the stereotype that football players are all "big man on campus" types, outgoing, gregarious, promiscuous, and able to meet, date, and score with any woman with just a snap of their fingers. Since this indicates someone exactly the opposite - perhaps only able to talk to girls on line, not running around with girls on campus for reasons of personality, religion, or ethnicity - then he must be either stupid or gay or so egotistical that he set the whole thing up. None of those conclusions follow simply from the situation, certainly when you count the number of otherwise very smart people in the world who fall for long-term scams every day.
      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


      • Re: 2012 Notre Dame Football Thread

        Yeah, but then you have the whole right after Lennay "died" he's out with an actual girl on ND campus thing...


        Comment


        • Re: 2012 Notre Dame Football Thread

          http://www.theonion.com/articles/i-w...line%3Adefault


          Comment


          • Re: 2012 Notre Dame Football Thread

            lmfao

            Comment


            • Re: 2012 Notre Dame Football Thread

              Originally posted by BillS View Post
              Where I get frustrated is that people really don't understand the psychology of a con and how easy it is to be drawn in to the point where you simply believe what you have come to believe no matter what gets presented. That's what makes a con artist successful, the ability to lead someone into this stage of belief.

              So many of the things being brought up as "major holes" are only holes when you look at them from the outside in hindsight. Think of all the women you know - you can't tell me there aren't at least one or two with speaking voices in the lower alto range. Think of all the men you know - I'll bet there are more than one or two tenor range speakers. Add to that the idea that we pick up gender from speaking methods - the "question" raise at the end of a sentence is an extreme example of a vocal mannerism almost entirely associated with women - and the fact that telephone signals are truncated to 0-3K hertz and there's not a lot of immediate red flags there.

              I feel like a lot of the jumping on Te'o is because of the stereotype that football players are all "big man on campus" types, outgoing, gregarious, promiscuous, and able to meet, date, and score with any woman with just a snap of their fingers. Since this indicates someone exactly the opposite - perhaps only able to talk to girls on line, not running around with girls on campus for reasons of personality, religion, or ethnicity - then he must be either stupid or gay or so egotistical that he set the whole thing up. None of those conclusions follow simply from the situation, certainly when you count the number of otherwise very smart people in the world who fall for long-term scams every day.
              Thanks for this. I remember reading a long time ago about these kinds of scams, and really it's just sickening. People look past all kinds of warning signs when they think they're in love. You can call them stupid for doing that--but then I've done all kinds of stupid crap when I'm crazy for a woman. I cringe a little to think about them. More than the victim being stupid, what turns my stomach about this stuff is how sick you have to be to do this to someone. How can you inflict that pain?

              The difference in this case, though, is that his "saving face" lies also happened to benefit him immensely in terms of national attention and awards buzz. That's too bad, because when this happens to most people, I doubt anyone ever even remembers their "saving face" lies. He happened to be a star athlete on the verge on national media saturation. All his lies were magnified, and I think you have to admit that he did milk it some. He loved all the attention. So, you know, that's not very good, and I don't see anything wrong with people being angry with him over that. I saw a clip from the Couric interview where he said people whose loved ones had cancer were coming to him for help and inspiration. Yeah, I think those people are in the right to feel betrayed.

              Also, I mentioned the gay thing to start not as an insult; it just seemed to make the most sense. And really I couldn't care less whether he likes guys or girls. It just seemed to fit.
              You, Never? Did the Kenosha Kid?

              Comment


              • Re: 2012 Notre Dame Football Thread

                I didn't think anyone was insinuating him possibly being gay is a bad thing. I still think it makes all the pieces fit together, and even when you listen to those voicemails....man I don't know. Weird.


                Comment


                • Re: 2012 Notre Dame Football Thread

                  Also I love that this thread earned a DFW quote, and especially from the Joyce profile, which IMO is underrated.

                  Really this whole story is almost like something out of Infinite Jest, especially the BREAKING NEWS: MANTI TE'O'S DEAD GIRLFRIEND DOES NOT EXIST headline.

                  Anyone who hasn't should read his profile of Federer, which is one of the greatest pieces of sports writing you'll see. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sp...anted=all&_r=0
                  You, Never? Did the Kenosha Kid?

                  Comment


                  • Re: 2012 Notre Dame Football Thread

                    http://www.usatoday.com/story/gameon...osopo/1863869/

                    Apparently, its was dudes female cousin on the voice mail recordings.



                    Manti Te'o was speaking to a women on the phone after all.
                    The architect of the hoax, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo , used his cousin Tino to play the part of Lennay Kekua during conversations with Te'o.
                    "Tino is the girl that Manti has been talking to all these months," a cousin of Tuiasosopo told the New York Post.


                    Comment


                    • Re: 2012 Notre Dame Football Thread

                      ESPN: Manti Te'o girlfriend voice at issue
                      http://espn.go.com/college-football/...nti-teo-report
                      Hollywood couldn't make this up. One day after a report that the voice of Manti Te'o's fake girlfriend belonged to the man who masterminded the hoax, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, another voice has emerged -- that of his female cousin.

                      Relatives of Tino Tuiasosopo, a woman in her mid-20s who lives in Pago Pago, American Samoa, told the New York Post that Te'o has been speaking to her.
                      "Tino is the girl that Manti has been talking to all these months," said a Tuiasosopo cousin, according to the Post.

                      [a few paragraphs down]

                      A person identified as Tino Tuiasosopo's cousin said: "There is no doubt whatsoever that it's Tino."
                      After listening to the tape of "Kekua" hysterically accusing Te'o of having another girl in his room, one of the Post's sources said: "That's the way [Tino] cries when she's feeling sorry for herself. Its her, that's the voice."

                      Comment


                      • Re: 2012 Notre Dame Football Thread

                        I wonder what Brent Musberger thinks? ....Plus the one chick already has that QB for a boyfriend. Meanwhile, it seems like Lennay would be the perfect fantasy chick for Brent...
                        Nuntius was right for a while. I was wrong for a while. But ultimately I was right and Frank Vogel has been let go.

                        ------

                        "A player who makes a team great is more valuable than a great player. Losing yourself in the group, for the good of the group, that’s teamwork."

                        -John Wooden

                        Comment


                        • Re: 2012 Notre Dame Football Thread

                          CBS will be airing a two part taped interview with Ronaiah Tuiasosopo on Dr. Phil this Thursday and Friday.

                          http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1...-info-and-more

                          Comment


                          • Re: 2012 Notre Dame Football Thread

                            http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com...o-as-romantic/

                            For Tuiasosopo, he was in love with Te'o.

                            He says T’eo was “absolutely, unequivocally” not involved in the hoax.
                            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!).

                            Comment


                            • Re: 2012 Notre Dame Football Thread

                              Ronaiah Tuiasosopo also says the voice of Manti Te'o's "girlfriend," Lennay Kekua, was his.

                              http://espn.go.com/college-football/...nti-teo-not-it

                              ----
                              I hope Dr. Phil took the logical step and asked him to speak in the voice we hear on those tapes.
                              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!).

                              Comment


                              • Re: 2012 Notre Dame Football Thread

                                Gunner Kiel's transferring, make up your freaking mind kid

                                http://www.irishsportsdaily.com/foot...ds-to-transfer

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