you lout.

So YOU are the one that stole my high school inches. You bastard! ;)

That people who don’t know how to capitalize properly don’t appreciate 19th-Century English poetry?

Your response was well thought out, eloquently written, and held valid points. That is what this site has always been about.

I look at my early posts on the site and they were, um, shitty. I worked at it, learned from the writers on the site that I admired, and improved.

New writers and new opinions are very welcome here, more so than at many similar sites I’ve seen. The point though is that this site looks for a higher standard of discourse. It’s been mentioned before, but Aykis read the site for a while before ever commenting or posting, and then suddenly he burst on the scene and added a lot of quality. If new members are having good discussions and presenting ideas in a clear, thoughful manner, nobody is going to attack them.

Just playin’.

But seriously, once you’ve been through the cycle of madness enough times (noob makes fanpost, noob doesn’t use paragraphs or punctuation, noob’s fanpost is the third of the day on the same subject and would have been better as a comment in previous fanpost) you start to get a bit…touchy.

Fact is, the lifecycle of a noob can go one of two ways – said noob can either clean up his writing and add some content to his fanpost (you should have seen pookey’s initial fanposts on the site), or noob can strike back at the “oldtimers” and receive a verbal asskicking.

This is the way it’s been done since time immemorial, and honestly, I quite enjoy it. Until recently, most of the noobs at the site have ranged from so-so to kickass. But that has not really been the case the last month or two – I think TZ has had to delete more inane fanposts in the last few months than he has the last few years.

Many of us are trying to weed out the pretenders from the contenders – and keep the site from turning into the SacBee comments section. Feel free to thank us anytime you like.

By the way, have you ever said a word a lot in a short period of time, and the word starts to sound funny? I think I just got there with “noob”.

I say “perhaps” because I don’t want to infer or instigate, I simply had a different take on the article, and don’t think it was nearly as hostile as you make it sound. I’ve only been a member of this “community” for about seven months, and have not gotten the impression that newbies are stifled or that someone is “above me.”

Then again, I have been warned (once) and have had a few suggestions thrown my way, usually in a thoughtful, courteous manner. Those suggestions have helped me refine my ability to post on this site and do so in a way that is more comfortable for everyone to comprehend. It’s a system, which works better when there is a blueprint.

But, then again I come to this site because I appreciate the more thought out, easier to read, substance-based posts. Otherwise, I would stick to the trenches of the Sac Bee’s ignorant message boards. I really don;t want to read why the “Magoofs” suck or how the Kings should pack up and leave. I don’t want to read a stupid question that asks “Hey, what do you guys think about trading Quincy Douby and Kenny Thomas for Kobe?” (Preemptive strike: Anyone who thinks I don’t realize that Douby is no longer with us, can suck my balls).

Lastly, I am actually disgusted by less educated people’s opinions, but that’s because I am a white-trash-turned-snobby-well-educated-shallow-bastard. I literally can no longer help it. I’m just trying to live with it.

Do you golf? If you do, you probably know that there are a lot of written and unwritten rules that make the golfing experience better for everyone- the scratch golfer and 40 handy cap alike. Its called etiquette. If you take 10 shots to get through every hole then you let the guy behind you play through. If you shank a shot into another tee box where unsuspecting golfers are standing, you yell FOUR! Again, basic etiquette. It’s the drunk asshole who hits into the group in front of him, drives his cart across the green and slides sideways- thrashing the fairway that take away from everyone experience. Some times its better to know why you got run off the course instead of just having some 90 year old marshal escort you to your car.

I don’t think RB is telling people to go away or to have a stat based argument. How I interpret this post is that we are currently having some growing pains and sometimes it is better to bring them to the front so maybe someone can understand why they keep getting the bulls horns. I would rather see this than 10 different people get blown away on their first posts and leave the site feeling like we are a bunch of assholes. We are a bunch of assholes but that doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate a new fresh angle.

And here they are….

Noobie Rules (or, "How Not to Get Your Ass Kicked by the StR Police")

Rule #1: Do not post on your first day on StR unless you have something really intelligent and timely to offer. Instead, take some time to get to know the blog, its readers, and the dynamics of posting and commenting.

Rule #2: Put some time and thought into whether your idea/question actually warrants a post, or whether it would be better handled in the comment stream of someone else’s post.

Rule #3: Check your post for spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and syntax errors BEFORE you post it. A sloppy post often reflects a sloppy thought process.

Rule #4: Do not be argumentative. The purpose of the posts is to be informative and/or to start an edifying dialogue, not to irritate the readership.

Rule #5: If you want to propose a trade, at least check that the salaries work out. If you don’t know what that means, don’t propose a trade. Similarly, if you want to propose a free agent acquisition, give some thought to salary cap implications. If you don’t understand why that’s important, don’t propose a free agent acquisition.

Rule #6: There is NO Rule #6.

Rule #7: DO NOT insult the intelligence of the StR members. It is an absolute death sentence to start out by assuming that you know more about basketball than the StR regulars.

Rule #8: Maintain humility. Arrogance is earned.

If you follow these simple rules, you probably won’t get your ass kicked by the StR police.

(Credits: Chris Rock; Monty Python; me)

I think your response adds to what I was saying. Two people making a similar point does not mean that only one person needs to say it.

we all know you are actually sub-urbane.

Drunk!

Just kidding.

go to Sin City and not get laid.

I wouldn’t know, because I’m not a huge douche nugget.

I give you bench_blob, the new posterchild for supremely idiotic comments!

I wish Ziller had saved a couple of those, because some of the comment threads were FREAKIN hilarious (in a painfully embarrassing sort of way). But it’s understandable why he wouldn’t want that kind of wreckage lying around.

In summary: Educate. Don’t alienate.

By alienating, we feel we are educating. Don’t fix a process that isn’t broken k?

A good point well made, Discocricket

Regarding a comment that doesn’t result in discussion, you can’t let that get you down at all. I’m a prime example that sometimes my views generate discussion, other times they get crickets chirping. Sometimes it might mean that you made a point that people don’t agree with, but aren’t sure how to counter it. Or maybe it just didn’t draw a response from people. It happens. Keep ’em coming.

I think the reason you don’t see much explanation behind the “In Petrie We Trust” posts is because some of us have given the justification many times before. It’s kind of a staple of the offseason around here. Now, obviously, those posts don’t add to the conversation if you haven’t been around to read those previous posts. But for the folks who’ve read those posts, the simple line “In Geoff We Trust” serves as a quick reminder not to go jump out a window.

As for the “Do not insult the intelligence of StR members”, I think that’s a rule that goes both ways. A newcomer to the site should not assume to know more than a “regular”, and an established member of the site shouldn’t assume that a new screenname that they don’t recognize automatically means an invalid opinion. After all, we were all new to the site at some point. The key is that the folks who have been here longer tend to have a better understanding of site decorum, or at least one would hope.

And the whole point of this site is to voice your opinion and to have this debate. And it helps so much when people like yourselves do it this way, logically and in a well-written manner.

As for regulars, we usually are a bit more aggressive in shooting down really bad fanposts because we see them all the time. Draft week especially was horrendous, with quite a few “we sh0ld d.-47 RuBIO!” posts. Its these posts that get to us. The ones that really offer nothing that hasn’t been discussed on the site before and also offers no real reason why we should draft him other than that he is awesome or amazing. I recall a fanpost saying that Tyreke Evans was going to be the next Oscar Robertson the day after the draft. How can you not disdain that opinion. A Fanpost is meant to show your opinion, explain the reason why you believe in it, or what I like to do, gather information on a subject a lot of people don’t know to much about and share it.

Those other types of fanposts would be best suited as comments, or better yet not posted. It shows that these people have not even bothered to look at the site and see if their view has been represented. This must be for a few reasons:
1. They assumed that a Website of dedicated Sacramento Kings fans would not have talked about the subject.
2. They are a troll.
3. They are very young and don’t fully understand how to use the power of the internet fully yet.

I try to look at every fanpost no matter if its a new name. Most of the time a new name just posts garbage thats already been posted. But ever so rarely you get a decent to good fanpost. These are the people you want to help because it shows they value their opinion enough to write a good fanpost about it.

We don’t sauté with pee-onions.

We have found my successor…not that I’m turning my title over yet, but when the times comes…

It made no sense to me, and I read it twice.

Maybe I just have a difficult time with grown up men using the word “poo”.