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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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  • #31
    Re: This Board

    Originally posted by Anthem View Post
    Really, the tone is set by the admins and trickles down from there. Pretty much everybody here has stepped out of line a time or to, but Hicks and crew do a pretty good job of keeping everything civil.

    Heck, I've even gotten the occasional reprimand, and I'm practically perfect in every way.
    If that's true, how did Sassan last so long????
    Last edited by Drewtone; 02-12-2013, 11:28 AM.
    "I mean, you'd walk into our dressing room and run into Mel Daniels holding a .45 -- it makes you wonder."

    Bob Netolicky

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    • #32
      Re: This Board

      Thanks for the responses, all.

      I've enjoyed this board so far. I tend to get burned out and/or bored with most message boards I try (with the exception of one particular baseball MB that I have been frequenting for 11 years).

      My only criticism (which could be taken as a compliment) is that this board almost seems too busy and hard to keep up with at times.

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      • #33
        Re: This Board

        Originally posted by Anthem View Post
        I'm fairly certain I was the third person on this board, behind Hicks and Jose Slaughter.
        Any thoughts on who is an active member on this board who was the or one of the earliest contributors on RATS?
        "Look, it's up to me to put a team around ... Lance right now." —Kevin Pritchard press conference

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        • #34
          Re: This Board

          Originally posted by McKeyFan View Post
          Any thoughts on who is an active member on this board who was the or one of the earliest contributors on RATS?
          Not the CORE! NOT THE CORE!
          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...

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          • #35
            Re: This Board

            Originally posted by Johanvil View Post
            Was looking his thanked posts history and pumped into this gem from AesopRockOn

            http://www.pacersdigest.com/showthre...=1#post1427596

            Actually, the quoted portion from StankoLover is the funniest part.
            "Look, it's up to me to put a team around ... Lance right now." —Kevin Pritchard press conference

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            • #36
              Re: This Board

              Hicks might not remember this and maybe it's a figment of my imaginiation but I remember introducing Hicks to proboards as I had just created a board on there. Anyways, I still check this board every single day even though I don't post hardly at all anymore. It's awesome to see where we were 10 years ago and where we are today.

              It should be a testament to how great this board is when people like me, who haven't met anyone on here and hardly ever posts, feel like they are apart of the PD family.

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              • #37
                Re: This Board

                I started reading the STAR board during the crazy 2003 offseason which saw the re-signing of JO and Reggie, the hiring of Bird, and the trading of Brad Miller for Scot Pollard. The offseason got even more crazy when we fired Zeke and hired Carlisle, which was right around the time this board was created, IIRC. I'm proud to say that I joined at the very beginning and have been here ever since. It's without question one of the best sports message boards I've ever run across.

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                • #38
                  Re: This Board

                  Originally posted by McKeyFan View Post
                  Any thoughts on who is an active member on this board who was the or one of the earliest contributors on RATS?
                  I'm fairly certain that we know that Skaut_H was THE original poster at RATS. Right? Correct me if I'm wrong. I didn't start following any basketball message boards until after I'd been exiled up here for a while and I just couldn't stand the mess at RATS, but wanted to find somebody - anybody - to "talk" about the Pacers/NBA with, so Hicks started PD at just the right time for me to find it.
                  Why do the things that we treasure most, slip away in time
                  Till to the music we grow deaf, to God's beauty blind
                  Why do the things that connect us slowly pull us apart?
                  Till we fall away in our own darkness, a stranger to our own hearts
                  And life itself, rushing over me
                  Life itself, the wind in black elms,
                  Life itself in your heart and in your eyes, I can't make it without you

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                  • #39
                    Re: This Board

                    Originally posted by Sollozzo View Post
                    I started reading the STAR board during the crazy 2003 offseason which saw the re-signing of JO and Reggie, the hiring of Bird, and the trading of Brad Miller for Scot Pollard. The offseason got even more crazy when we fired Zeke and hired Carlisle, which was right around the time this board was created, IIRC. I'm proud to say that I joined at the very beginning and have been here ever since. It's without question one of the best sports message boards I've ever run across.
                    I started on the STAR board about the time Harrington was drafted, I believe--a long time ago. But I imagine there are several PD members who were on STARS long before me.
                    "Look, it's up to me to put a team around ... Lance right now." —Kevin Pritchard press conference

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                    • #40
                      Re: This Board

                      I joined the Indiana's Game board, which I think is what it was called at the time in very early 1994. I'm pretty sure it was March it had been around about a month before I started on it, I had been on compuserv and found out there that the Star/News were going to start a web board. Scott H or Skaut ech as I think he is called now was certainly there before me.

                      However I would guess that I am probably the oldest active member still left from the early star board. Owl might be in at around the same time as me or he might have been there before I'm not sure when you get to my age your memory starts to go to hell.

                      What's sad is that in reality up until that last year or so the star board was pretty good. We had trolls of course but generally we were able to keep them in their place. But fortunately when the board did tank big time, which it did, Hicks and Shade gave us all a newer better home.

                      This place is an oasis from most of the online sites in the world. I am member of a board for my chosen profession and it is filled with years and years of experience and expertise and it is also one of the worst boards I've ever been on. Childish name calling and bickering to no end.

                      Hicks early on set the tone that we were all going to try and be civil to one another and over the years I think the board has been just that. Early on as a member I appreciated the fact that I could criticize certain players (Jermaine O'Neal) and others weren't going to just verbally flame me without using logic and reason. Then later as a moderator myself I've tried to really uphold that ideal.

                      Are we perfect? No but I do think that 90+% of the time that we get it right. And by saying we I mean we as the collective not the admins.

                      Honestly over the years of helping out with the board, first for Hicks and now for Shade, I can say that the board really almost runs itself. On occasion we have to step in but I'm telling you the amount of both posts and traffic on here that the times we step in are very minuscule.

                      We honestly have some of the best posters on the internet and in my mind some of the most knowledgeable posters about both the NBA and basketball.

                      Proof in my mind that we are generally a civil society is that we have a couple of long tenured posters who are not even Pacers fans who call this site home. Sure they have had their run ins with some posters but if it was so miserable on them here they would have left but they are some of our biggest and best contributors on the site.

                      I'm not trying to just blow smoke up people's butts here, this site would not exist without all of us working together to make it happen.

                      Also I would be remiss without saying that we all owe Able a great deal of thanks, in fact we will never be able to repay him for what he has done (for free I might add). Thanks to Roaming Gnome one time posting photo's of Lucas Oil Stadium before it was open he drew so much traffic here that it actually crashed Able's servers. Also ask me about the time Gnome boo'd the national anthem.


                      Basketball isn't played with computers, spreadsheets, and simulations. ChicagoJ 4/21/13

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                      • #41
                        Re: This Board

                        By the time I started posting at Star due to getting temp booted from a non-sports forum thanks to Brawl related off-topic fight threads all of the core PD people had already left, so I didn't know about it. Some guys that were still doing both sites started pestering me to switch over, but with so many friends at Star I was reluctant and didn't feel like i could double post like that (feels redundant).

                        In the meantime some Star troll went over to PD using my user name and acted the fool. So someone comes to Star and asks me via PM if that's me and what's up. Of course it wasn't. By the time I made the leap the old NaptownSeth was booted, but it caused a lot of confusion because people thought I was that same poster.



                        And then since then, not due to that, I have gotten some wrist slaps like Anthem has. It sucks but ultimately I prefer that to non-moderation. I don't really get why people get bent out of shape over a general sense of decorum and control. There are good reasons to avoid 9 million duplicate topic threads and I'm glad PD enforces those kinds of rules.

                        Plus - Pictures, sigs and thread histories that aren't erased every month or so. Pet peeve at Star was someone mouthing off a ridiculous prediction and by the time it could be judged the entire thread was long gone. I like that your words can haunt you here because hopefully it makes people a bit more cautious with what they say.

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                        • #42
                          Re: This Board

                          Originally posted by Naptown_Seth View Post
                          By the time I started posting at Star due to getting temp booted from a non-sports forum thanks to Brawl related off-topic fight threads all of the core PD people had already left, so I didn't know about it. Some guys that were still doing both sites started pestering me to switch over, but with so many friends at Star I was reluctant and didn't feel like i could double post like that (feels redundant).

                          In the meantime some Star troll went over to PD using my user name and acted the fool. So someone comes to Star and asks me via PM if that's me and what's up. Of course it wasn't. By the time I made the leap the old NaptownSeth was booted, but it caused a lot of confusion because people thought I was that same poster.



                          And then since then, not due to that, I have gotten some wrist slaps like Anthem has. It sucks but ultimately I prefer that to non-moderation. I don't really get why people get bent out of shape over a general sense of decorum and control. There are good reasons to avoid 9 million duplicate topic threads and I'm glad PD enforces those kinds of rules.

                          Plus - Pictures, sigs and thread histories that aren't erased every month or so. Pet peeve at Star was someone mouthing off a ridiculous prediction and by the time it could be judged the entire thread was long gone. I like that your words can haunt you here because hopefully it makes people a bit more cautious with what they say.
                          For the longest time I thought that the old poster was you.

                          Guess it shows I am kind of slow, but I only recently realized the other poster was banned and you made a refrence in another post to the other one

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                          • #43
                            Re: This Board

                            These past history threads always bring me back to some great posters no longer here. How dare they let life intrude on their fandom.

                            I do wonder what happened to posters like TWES, Putnam, Spicoli, Gyron, and McClintic Sphere.
                            You know how hippos are made out to be sweet and silly, like big cows, but are actually extremely dangerous and can kill you with stunning brutality? The Pacers are the NBA's hippos....Matt Moore CBS Sports....

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                            • #44
                              Re: This Board

                              Originally posted by RWB View Post
                              These past history threads always bring me back to some great posters no longer here. How dare they let life intrude on their fandom.

                              I do wonder what happened to posters like TWES, Putnam, Spicoli, Gyron, and McClintic Sphere.
                              And PFFL...

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                              • #45
                                Re: This Board

                                Not that anyone cares, but I think I joined this board in around 2004 or 2005. I was at BSU at the time I know that. I used to be FeistyFoster but I think I got banned for something, but was able to rejoin later on. Never been to a forum party, but the stalker side of me have seen some of the members at games. Just too afraid to talk to someone, not 100% sure if it is them or not lol.


                                @Pacers24Colts12

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