Announcement

Collapse

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.
See more
See less

COVID-19

Collapse
X
Collapse
 
  • Page of 502
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts
Previous 1 33 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 53 93 143 502 template Next
  • #631
    Originally posted by BlueNGold View Post
    All are corrupt, especially Joe Biden who got his son a lucrative job on the board of gas company in Ukraine. Getting paid 600K/yr for doing drugs and funnelling more cash to the Biden Trust.

    The fact Joe Biden isn't being attacked by the media tells me they are totally in his back pocket. That's fine. Like Hillary he will lose.



    https://www.merriam-webster.com/word...origin-meaning


    Whataboutism gives a clue to its meaning in its name. It is not merely the changing of a subject ("What about the economy?") to deflect away from an earlier subject as a political strategy; it’s essentially a reversal of accusation, arguing that an opponent is guilty of an offense just as egregious or worse than what the original party was accused of doing, however unconnected the offenses may be.

    The tactic behind whataboutism has been around for a long time. Rhetoricians generally consider it to be a form of tu quoque, which means "you too" in Latin and involves charging your accuser with whatever it is you've just been accused of rather than refuting the truth of the accusation made against you. Tu quoque is considered to be a logical fallacy, because whether or not the original accuser is likewise guilty of an offense has no bearing on the truth value of the original accusation.

    Whataboutism adds a twist to tu quoque by directing its energies into establishing an equivalence between two or more disparate actions, thereby defaming the accuser with the insinuation that their priorities are backwards. The CNN correspondent Jill Dougherty, in a 2016 article about allegations of Russian doping during the Olympics, defined whataboutism in terms of a more familiar English idiom:

    There's another attitude toward doping allegations that many Russians seem to share, what used to be called in the Soviet Union "whataboutism," in other words, "who are you to call the kettle black?"
    —Jill Dougherty, CNN.com, 24 July 2016


    The association of whataboutism with the Soviet Union began during the Cold War. As the regimes of Josef Stalin and his successors were criticized by the West for human rights atrocities, the Soviet propaganda machine would be ready with a comeback alleging atrocities of equal reprehensibility for which the West was guilty.

    The weaknesses of whataboutism—which dictates that no one must get away with an attack on the Kremlin's abuses without tossing a few bricks at South Africa, no one must indict the Cuban police State without castigating President Park, no one must mention Irak, Libya or the PLO without having a bash at Israel, &c. – have been canvassed in this column before.
    —Michael Bernard, The Age (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 17 Jun. 1978


    Before the 2016 presidential election, more instances of whataboutism applied to criticism among regimes than between individual politicians:

    Events in Ferguson have caused whataboutism to go global. As Robin Wright notes in the Wall Street Journal a whole bunch o' authoritarian states have seized on Ferguson to criticize the United States…
    —Daniel W. Drezner, Slate, 20 Aug. 2014

    Since the Cold War, Moscow has engaged in a political points-scoring exercise known as "whataboutism" used to shut down criticism of Russia's own rights record by pointing out abuses elsewhere. All criticism of Russia is invalid, the idea goes, because problems exist in other countries too.
    —Max Seddon, Buzzfeed, 25 Nov. 2014


    The term is seeing a bit of a renaissance in our current political climate. Philip Bump writes in The Washington Post that President Donald Trump has utilized whataboutism frequently as a way of deflecting criticism for his actions, such as his pardon of former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio.

    “[I]f you look at, as an example, President Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, who was charged with crimes going back decades, including illegally buying oil from Iran while it held 53 American hostages — wasn’t allowed to do that, selling to the enemies of the United States,” Trump said at a news conference on Monday. “He was pardoned after his wife donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Clintons.” He went on with his list: pardons of “dangerous criminals,” of drug dealers, President Barack Obama’s commutation of the sentences of Chelsea Manning and Oscar López Rivera. What about them, he asked? Why is he being maligned when what Clinton and Obama did was so bad?
    —Philip Bump, The Washington Post, 29 Aug. 2017

    Comment

    • #632
      Originally posted by dal9 View Post

      meh, 4:1...plus I'd want to see the amounts on DiFi...
      Expect more people from both sides in it, reality is a lot of this people are corrupt AF
      @WhatTheFFacts: Studies show that sarcasm enhances the ability of the human mind to solve complex problems!

      Comment

      • #633
        The coronavirus fatality rate between North America and many European countries is staggering. Something is going on here . . .


        NORTH AMERICA
        US: 14,250 Infections, 205 Deaths, 1.4% Fatality Rate
        Canada: 800 Infections, 9 Deaths, 1.1% Fatality Rate
        Mexico: 118 Infections, 1 Death, 0.85% Fatality Rate


        EUROPE
        Italy: 41,305 Infections, 3,405 Deaths, 8.1% Fatality Rate
        UK: 2,689 Infections, 137 Deaths, 5.0% Fatality Rate
        Spain: 18,077 Infections, 833 Deaths, 4.6% Fatality Rate
        France: 11,010 Infections, 372 Deaths, 3.4% Fatality Rate
        Netherlands: 2,468 Infections, 77 Deaths, 3.1% Fatality Rate


        It's not all of Europe, though. Germany (0.29%) and the Nordic countries have some of the lowest fatality rates I'm seeing, and Switzerland and Austria are roughly the same as North America (a little over 1%).

        I know there were articles out a few weeks back saying there are two strains of the virus, one stronger than the other. The discrepancies in these fatality rates seem to support that idea.

        Comment

        • #634
          It is way too early to read too much into the fatality rates. The mortality rate in China was originally much higher than it ended up being, if you believe their numbers.
          • 2 likes

          Comment

          • #635
            https://twitter.com/BCAppelbaum/stat...18896531324931

            The part where Senator Loeffler invested in a work-from-home company is the part that just f cking kills me.

            https://twitter.com/NPR/status/12408...c%3D41959.1800


            Sen. Richard Burr sold personal stocks worth between $628,000 and $1.72 million in 33 separate transactions on Feb. 13, before the recent market volatility, public disclosures show. Asked by NPR for comment on the sales, his spokesperson replied: "lol."
            • 1 like

            Comment

            • #636
              I continue to be amazed watching leftists defend China while blaming Trump for the virus.

              Leftists are defending the country which gave the world the virus, and lied about it for months, yet are blaming the man who imposed travel restrictions to slow it down considerably.

              The more times I type it, the more surreal it gets.

              China = innocent
              Trump = guilty

              What in the holy hell is wrong with these people?
              • 1 like

              Comment

              • #637
                https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/o...ronavirus.html
                So Donald Trump is now calling Covid-19 the “Chinese virus.” Of course he is: Racism and blaming other people for his own failures are the defining features of his presidency. But if we’re going to give it a nickname, much better to refer to it as the “Trump pandemic.”

                True, the virus didn’t originate here. But the U.S. response to the threat has been catastrophically slow and inadequate, and the buck stops with Trump, who minimized the threat and discouraged action until just a few days ago.

                Compare, for example, America’s handling of the coronavirus with that of South Korea. Both countries reported their first case on Jan. 20. But Korea moved quickly to implement widespread testing; it has used the data from that testing to guide social distancing and other containment measures; and the disease appears to be on the wane there.
                In the U.S., by contrast, testing has barely begun — we’ve tested only 60,000 people compared with South Korea’s 290,000, even though we have six times its population, and the number of cases here appears to be skyrocketing.
                The details of our failure are complex, but they all flow ultimately from Trump’s minimization of the threat: He was asserting that Covid-19 was no worse than the flu just last week (although true to form, he’s now claiming to have known all along that a pandemic was coming).

                Why did Trump and his team deny and delay? All the evidence suggests that he didn’t want to do or say anything that might drive down stock prices, which he seems to regard as the key measure of his success. That’s presumably why as late as Feb. 25 Larry Kudlow, the administration’s chief economist, declared that the U.S. had “contained” the coronavirus, and that the economy was “holding up nicely.”
                Well, that was a bad bet. Since then, the stock market has more or less given up all its gains under the Trump presidency. More important, the economy is clearly in free-fall. So what should we do now?
                I’ll leave health policy to the experts. On economic policy, I’d suggest three principles. First, focus on hardship, not G.D.P. Second, stop worrying about incentives to work. Third, don’t trust Trump.
                Last edited by pimpis zajoba; 03-20-2020, 04:58 AM.

                Comment

                • #638
                  Originally posted by Mr. Mass View Post
                  I continue to be amazed watching leftists defend China while blaming Trump for the virus.

                  Leftists are defending the country which gave the world the virus, and lied about it for months, yet are blaming the man who imposed travel restrictions to slow it down considerably.

                  The more times I type it, the more surreal it gets.

                  China = innocent
                  Trump = guilty

                  What in the holy hell is wrong with these people?
                  Neither are Americans. Pimpis obviously.

                  V is a communist Bernie supporter. There’s a reason even the Democrats are rejecting Bernie and it’s because even they know Bernie’s failed ideas are not American.

                  Comment

                  • #639
                    Trump's America vs. Globalists' Europe

                    Trump's America
                    • 14,000+ Infections (577 New)
                    • 217 Deaths
                    • 1.5% Fatality Rate

                    Globalists' Europe
                    • 112,000+ Infections (1,211 New)
                    • 5,000+ Deaths
                    • 4.5% Fatality Rate


                    Comment

                    • #640
                      This "Trump pandemic" will destroy republican party...from the ashes of Trump Pandemic ....M4A will emerge....green new deal...i hope AOC will run soon for the White House...or our planet will die.
                      USA is going to be number 1.....in
                      1. Most cases
                      2. Most death
                      Trump's Pandemic will kill the ugly racist republican party....I just hope Democrats will not go establishment....but remake America in the AOC&Friends image ....THE USA ...Every non racist redneck could be proud of....Trump is the virus....and every corrupt politician that voted " not guilty" on the impeachment will die slow and ugly political death...Mitt you are ok.
                      Last edited by pimpis zajoba; 03-20-2020, 05:48 AM.

                      Comment

                      • #641
                        https://www.independent.co.uk/news/b...-a9412221.html
                        US stocks and shares stabilised on Thursday but analysis by The Independent shows that one of the main American equity market indexes over the past month has been falling even more rapidly than during the Wall Street Crash of 1929.

                        The Wall Street Crash, which occurred in the autumn of 1929, marked the end a huge speculative bubble in American shares.

                        The Dow Jones Industrial Average – which is made up of 30 large US listed firms – fell almost 90 per cent from its peak in September 1929 to when the market finally bottomed out in July 1932.

                        Comment

                        • #642
                          Anti-Asian sentiment grows in US as Trump calls corona the 'Chinese virus'

                          Asian-Americans report rise in hate crimes, fuelled, rights groups say, by President Donald Trump’s own rhetoric

                          Comment

                          • #643
                            Originally posted by dal9 View Post

                            come on man, a jr high student wouldn't get away with using this as a source.

                            the author describes himself as an anonymous russian speaker whose family left russia four generations ago, a swiss citizen who is married to a us citizen, but who has worked for a secretive us government agency....

                            right.

                            use some critical thinking, man.
                            I know of him personally. He's legit.

                            But he's not the author, just the author of the blog. The author of the article is Pepe Escobar, and it's a repost from larger publications. If you read the comments under the article, you'll see there are a lot of critical thinkers involved. And quite a range of opinions.
                            "Look, it's up to me to put a team around ... Lance right now." —Kevin Pritchard press conference

                            Comment

                            • #644
                              Trump's complete failure of imagination is costing America lives and treasure

                              https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/19/o...ill/index.html

                              Comment

                              • #645
                                Someone made the suggestion that the U.S. should look to cancel its debt to China as reimbursement for the economic collapse and lost lives the latter's disregard for world safety brought on. Perhaps a lawsuit? I don't know how much weight something like that would hold, but I love the idea.
                                • 1 like

                                Comment

                                Previous 1 33 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 53 93 143 502 template Next
                                Working...
                                X