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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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Rose: Pacers great, but Heat only true rival

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  • #16
    Re: Rose: Pacers great, but Heat only true rival

    Originally posted by FlavaDave View Post
    Yeah, it is worth emphasizing that Rose's rationale is a lack of continuity here, not competitiveness.
    His rationale is the lack of Darren Collison for some bizarre reason.

    Comment


    • #17
      Re: Rose: Pacers great, but Heat only true rival

      I'm glad I read his quotes because earlier when I had only seen the headline, I was more dismissive of this.

      But to Rose's credit, he had a thoughtful response that he elaborated on, and he doesn't seem to really think about any team as specifically a rival. I see where he's coming from.

      Really since the 2011 playoffs, regular season notwithstanding, we've been passing ships in the night due to the circumstances.

      Comment


      • #18
        Re: Rose: Pacers great, but Heat only true rival

        Originally posted by hoosierguy View Post
        The Pacers, even with what they have done the last two years, are still not given respect. The Heat don't even consider the Pacers a rival even though they beat them five times in the playoffs the last two years, which is a hell of a lot more success than the Bulls have had against Miami. The Celtics only have four postseason wins against the LeBron era Heat yet they are considered a chief rival of Miami.

        Small market= no respect.
        Just because a team isn't considered a rival, it doesn't mean that team isn't respected. Right now it means a little more to the pacers to beat Miami than it does for Miami to beat the pacers. Till we knock them out of the playoffs they'll probably continue to feel that way. It doesn't mean they don't respect us though

        Comment


        • #19
          Re: Rose: Pacers great, but Heat only true rival

          Hey, great! If it isn't a rivalry then he can tell all those Bulls fans to stay home when they travel to Indiana - just another game, really, and they should save their money for something important.

          Right?
          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


          • #20
            Re: Rose: Pacers great, but Heat only true rival

            Hard to disagree. When we knock them out of the playoffs this year, then they'll start considering us a rival. Until then, they see themselves as our betters.
            This space for rent.

            Comment


            • #21
              Re: Rose: Pacers great, but Heat only true rival

              Approaching a weekend schedule full of heated rivals facing off on the gridiron, Onion Sports breaks down the most storied rivalries in the athletic world:

              • Amherst College vs. Williams College: These two small liberal arts schools have the saddest little football rivalry. Just look at it. So sad.
              • Real Madrid vs. Barcelona: Hundreds of millions of fans across the world watch this annual matchup of two teams kicking a little soccer ball all around the field
              • Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Baltimore Ravens: Intense AFC rivalry that the Steelers officially won in 2008
              • Federer vs. Nadal: This fierce and storied tennis rivalry between the Federer and Nadal families first originated in 1836 when Fabian Federer and Gerard Nadal played their first match
              • Kansas City Royals vs. San Diego Chargers: Despite playing in different regions of the country and in different sports, these teams have despised each other for decades
              • Auburn vs. Alabama: Them two teams don’t much like one another at all, anyone who done seen that there Iron Bowl in person’ll tell ya that. Ain’t no bigger game in the great state of Alabama, and any red-blooded Alabamian who tells ya different is just plain lyin’ to hisself.
              • Affirmed vs. Alydar: This heated rivalry between two of the greatest thoroughbreds the horse-racing circuit has ever seen was only slightly undercut by the fact that neither horse had any idea what was going on at any time
              • Tampa Bay Buccaneers: The players in this one truly hate each other
              • Shirts vs. Skins: One of the most treasured rivalries in all of sports, the Shirts currently lead the Skins in all-time wins, 6,917,223 to 6,714,021
              • Boston Red Sox vs. New York Yankees: As much as these two fan bases may despise one another, the rest of America finds it difficult to decide whom they love more
              • Montreal Canadiens vs. Boston Bruins: No information on this rivalry was available


              http://www.theonion.com/articles/gre...valries,34255/
              Last edited by FlavaDave; 10-18-2013, 04:34 PM.
              The Miller Time Podcast on 8 Points, 9 Seconds:
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              • #22
                Re: Rose: Pacers great, but Heat only true rival

                Honestly, Rose just comes off as a reasonably whiny, semi-entitled crybaby whenever he comments on...really, anything.

                He's never shown himself to be incredibly resilient in the face of adversity. Sitting out the entire year, whining whenever something doesn't go his way, and generally seeming to be a poor sport. (NOTE: Anyone else remember him choking against Miami in the reg season, prior to the injury? Went up and bricked several FT's, allowing Miami to win...)

                I think, in terms of rivalries, it's basically Miami vs All Other Contenders. Whether it's Miami/Indiana, Miami/Chicago, or Miami/Nets/Knicks etc, the common denominator is Miami. Win a title, and you'll start developing a lot of "rivalries". In fact, while Pacers/Bulls makes for an interesting regular season rivalry (Central Div), Pacers/Heat is shaping up to be the ECF rivalry going forward.

                I don't hate the Bulls as much as I hate their idiotic fans.

                Comment


                • #23
                  Re: Rose: Pacers great, but Heat only true rival

                  Originally posted by Derek2k3 View Post
                  I don't hate the Bulls as much as I hate their idiotic fans.
                  You're just jealous that you're not a fan of the '85 Bears, the greatest team in the history of teams. God, Jesus, and Gabriel couldn't hold a votive candle to those badasses.
                  Just because you're offended, doesn't mean you're right.” ― Ricky Gervais.

                  Comment


                  • #24
                    Re: Rose: Pacers great, but Heat only true rival

                    Some great exhibition of immense intellectual capacity by Rose there. Kudos.
                    Never forget

                    Comment


                    • #25
                      Re: Rose: Pacers great, but Heat only true rival

                      Originally posted by Since86 View Post
                      You're just jealous that you're not a fan of the '85 Bears, the greatest team in the history of teams. God, Jesus, and Gabriel couldn't hold a votive candle to those badasses.
                      Never forget

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        Re: Rose: Pacers great, but Heat only true rival

                        Originally posted by Hicks View Post
                        I'm glad I read his quotes because earlier when I had only seen the headline, I was more dismissive of this.

                        But to Rose's credit, he had a thoughtful response that he elaborated on, and he doesn't seem to really think about any team as specifically a rival. I see where he's coming from.

                        Really since the 2011 playoffs, regular season notwithstanding, we've been passing ships in the night due to the circumstances.
                        To be fair....isn't most of what DRose said the same type of comments that we were posting in one of the recent Pacers/Heat Rivals thread?

                        To me, when one discusses Rivals....it suggests that your opponent is on the same level as you are....both are comprable to each other. I think that the Pacers/Bulls are on the same level and therefore makes sense to consider them Rivals.....only cuz both Teams have something to prove. But they can't prove that they are on the same level as the Heat ( the Best Team in the League until they lose in the NBA Playoffs ) and therefore are considered "rivals" until they actually beat them all.
                        Last edited by CableKC; 10-18-2013, 05:35 PM.
                        Ash from Army of Darkness: Good...Bad...I'm the guy with the gun.

                        Comment


                        • #27
                          Re: Rose: Pacers great, but Heat only true rival

                          I had forgotten that one of the positive things about season ending injuries is that fans (temporarily) stop *****ing about nonsense sort of involving that player.
                          You Got The Tony!!!!!!

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            Re: Rose: Pacers great, but Heat only true rival

                            Bulls great, but Heat only true rival

                            Comment


                            • #29
                              Re: Rose: Pacers great, but Heat only true rival

                              Kornheiser on PTI thinks only the Nets and Bulls pose a threat to the Heat in the east. Apparently the team that took Miami to 7 games in the Eastern Conference Finals last season ceased to exist.

                              Comment


                              • #30
                                Re: Rose: Pacers great, but Heat only true rival

                                The Darren Collison comment is precisely where I knew Rose head his head up his...um...you know. What a joke.

                                Comment

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