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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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COVID-19

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  • Indiana was projected for 600 total deaths. We are at 477 currently.

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    • Comment


      • Originally posted by Mr. Mass View Post
        Close to zero (if not zero) of those deaths would be children, since children are essentially immune to the virus.

        Is a number that's equal to about two weeks of drunk driving deaths worth sacrificing in order to bring some normalcy back to children's lives?
        Given a choice - would you take a chance on including your kids in that 2-3 % ?? Or even a portion of it ??

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        • Remember when cult followers wanted her out like two weeks ago? lol


          @WhatTheFFacts: Studies show that sarcasm enhances the ability of the human mind to solve complex problems!

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          • He can lay out whatever guidelines he wants, but the decision to reopen is up to the states. That said, this might give political cover to red state governors fearing that things could go wrong.

            Edit: not to mention, even the states "reopening" cannot force people to go back out in public etc.

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            • The country should be opened up. We can get back in large part. Continue social distancing wherever you are. Wear masks. Wash your hands.

              For retail, limit the number of people who can enter. Every other table at restaurants. Anyone with symptoms should not be entering any establishment. There will be law breakers but most will adhere to that.

              I get the risk totally. People will die because of opening the country regardless. But we are risking something many people don't understand because they've never endured a serious financial calamity.

              Just be very careful before you draw conclusions.

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              • Originally posted by Mr. Mass View Post

                My first thought after reading the tweet was, "I bet this kid's lying."

                Sure enough, he was.

                At no point does Dr. Oz say re-opening the schools would kill 2 or 3% of children. That doesn't even make sense considering children are practically immune from the virus. What he was referring to was society as a whole. Even then, he was dramatically exaggerating considering that (a) the virus almost certainly has a sub-1% fatality rate overall, and (b) only a fraction of society will become infected, even with children returning to schools.

                You can do better than this, vnzla. I believe in you.
                So this isn't trying to pick on you but I figured I should clarify the study Dr. Oz is referencing here. First off it is a editorial from Lancet and not an actual study. Secondly what the editorial is referencing is the study from the imperial college of the UK. That model is based on a number of assumptions and it assumes that 25% of the colleges remain open and increases the amount of infection risk based in the home by 50% and increases the amount of infection risk in the community by 25%. These are very big assumptions to say the least.

                The point of the study is to figure out what strategies in combination work best (case isolation, social distancing, house hold quarantine and school closer). The study looks at the first phase called mitigation (what we are in now) and the second phase is called suppression which is just another way of saying avoiding a using all 4 measures in the mitigation phase so you do not reach surge capacity of the hospitals. Suppression is what we would use if we see another spike in a month or two.

                Point is you can cherry pick the mess out of the data based on what you assume. In one of the tables under suppression school closure works better than household quarantine. In the suppression table adding school closer reduces the deaths by 50%.


                https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk:8443/b...9-Report-9.pdf

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                • As long as people who can work from home do work from home, those who are in public wear masks, and people avoid large gatherings the spread of the virus will be minimal. Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea are good examples of this.

                  I personally would support temporary laws to fine people who do not wear masks in public. (public does not include your car)

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                  • So according to the buffoon only 2 millions of tests have been done
                    in the US, this is so incompetent is not even funny.


                    edit: Over 3 mil, too much incompetence
                    Last edited by vnzla81; 04-16-2020, 06:47 PM.
                    @WhatTheFFacts: Studies show that sarcasm enhances the ability of the human mind to solve complex problems!

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                    • Joe Biden's gotta be getting nervous with the virus starting on its downward path. It was great cover. Now the men in white coats are coming for him.

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                      • I thought it was a higher percentage but I heard that about 13% of the entire workforce are on unemployment. Those people want to get back to work.

                        I fully expect the left wing media to play politics with Trump wanting to open up the economy. The people not getting paychecks are not going to be happy with how the handles this.

                        Nothing's going to stop this from happening. I see the media helping Trump by attacking him on this issue.

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                        • related: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com...and-the-switch


                          The Bait and the Switch

                          It’s not just Comrade Trump who can OUTFLANK the Dems:

                          The decades-long quest of Florida elder-care facilities to secure greater protections against negligence lawsuits may get a boost from the unlikeliest of events: a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic that is ravaging their residents.

                          A trade group for Florida’s nearly 700 nursing homes is asking Gov. Ron DeSantis to extend the state’s sovereign immunity provisions to the industry and other healthcare sectors during the course of the coronavirus pandemic. If the request is granted, hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities and other providers would be protected against negligence suits.

                          DeSantis is already doing the industry a favor by refusing to name nursing homes and ALFs where positive tests have occurred. The Miami Herald, joined by a slew of other news organizations, has filed notice of intent to file a public records lawsuit over that refusal. DeSantis tried to block the suit by having his general counsel induce the Herald’s longtime law firm, which does considerable legal work for the state, to bow out. A new law firm had to be hired.


                          Obligatory reminder that “sovereign immunity” itself is a fundamentally undemocratic concept, invented by neoconfederate judges in direct contradiction to the explicit text of the Constitution.

                          Anyway, this is the classic Republican bait-and-switch:

                          1. “We don’t need state regulation — civil suits can punish bad actors and disincentivize harmful acts.”

                          2. “Bad actors should get full immunity from civil suits.”

                          3. Repeat on an endless loop.

                          Anyway, hard to see something wrong with giving nursing homes no incentive to protect the health of their patients and staff during a pandemic — the market should work its lovely magic.

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                          • The only way you should even think about restarting the economy is if you have a massive (I'm talking home tests) testing plan in place. Waiting to test until people show symptoms doesn't do **** when it can spread asymptotically. Not to mention there's no consensus treatment yet and no vaccine. Now there's antibiotic shortages of the ZPack. I've talked to about 10 people and they've all said they're not going anywhere other than work, social distancing still in place or not. Shopping, restaurant, bars, and live sports aren't on any of our agendas until a vaccine or massive testing.

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                            • So I want to point out a couple of things here.

                              The administration aimed to increase the testing capacity but this is not ubiquitous across the nation. Simply put we are still failing here in Indy.

                              Secondly contact tracing and containment is really not up to snuff to handle another outbreak that wont require another mitigation phase.

                              Lastly we do not have reliable antibody test and this is in part because the administration loosened the regulation too much that the market has been flooded with test that are anywhere to 40 to 90 percent accurate.

                              So basically we haven't learned much from our initial mistakes and we will be lucky if we don't have another serious outbreak before the fall.

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