PhilliesPhans.com

Welcome to Dave Snyder's Renegade Phans Phorum. We believe this is the home of many of the most passionate and knowledgeable Phillies fans in the universe, and the location where you'll find The Best Baseball Talk Online.™



We welcome new members who want to be part of a civil, rational discussion. New members revitalize online communities, bringing new ideas to the conversation and helping us all to think outside of our usual boundaries.

However, this is NOT an open forum -- membership is granted by administrative approval only. If you are visiting this site for the first time we suggest that you lurk for a while and try to determine if this is an appropriate community for you -- it's really not for everyone, for reasons that are detailed in the terms of service and, especially, in the posting guidelines (links are in item #1 below).

If you decide that you'd like to register and join our discussions, the procedure is as follows:

1. Read the Terms of Service and the Posting Guidelines (later in this thread).
   
   
2. Use the button at the top of the page to register, by selecting the Register link, filling in the requested information, and submitting the form. Be sure to provide a real, functioning email address; the system will reject your registration without it.
   
   
3. We will send you two email messages. The first is an automated message sent by the system, to verify the email address you provided. The second is a welcoming message from one of our administrators, detailing how to complete your registration. You will be asked to confirm that you have read and understood the board's terms of service and posting guidelines, and whether you have posted to philliesphans in the past. You must respond to this second email message before your account can be activated. If you use a bogus email address, or never check your email - or if you ignore our questions in our welcome message - you will not be activated on our board. Unless you respond to this email in a reasonable period of time, we will be unable to activate your account, and your registration will be deleted.

Newly registered users will be automatically placed into a "Newly Registered Users" group. As long as you are in this group, your access to advanced board features will be restricted, and your posts will be subject to moderator approval before they appear on the board. Active users will not stay in this group; it's simply a way of preventing people from registering to use our board for purposes other than to join our discussions.



If you've come back to PhilliesPhans after a long while away, and find that your account is inactive (and won't let you log in!), as an alternative to re-registering, you can contact the Administrators, letting us know your username, and we'll take it from there.

Note: Accounts of registered users with no posting history (e.g., post count = 0) who do not log on to the board for an extended period (at least six months) are subject to periodic pruning. If your account has been deleted due to inactivity, and you wish to rejoin our community after an extended absence, please contact an Administrator.

What makes this board different from many other internet message boards is our insistence on civility, respect, and discussions backed up by sound reasoning. Here are some guidelines:



Arguments in posts should be supported. Give your reasons for believing what you do, and, whenever possible, support your reasons with evidence. Simply asserting your belief, or stating that you believe what you do and are entitled to your opinion leads to an endless exchange of "did not!"-"did too!" posts that do not carry the conversation forward. Evidence need not be statistical, but statistical evidence is usually highly regarded on this board, and is frequently used by many of our veteran posters.

Also, philliesphans.com is not Usenet. Arguments should be built from reliable bases, and should avoid "leaping" to conclusions that do not follow from the evidence presented. Remember that correlation does not imply causation. In particular, presenting speculative theories as if they were fact is discouraged; making this kind of "argument" repeatedly will be considered a form of trolling (see below).



When you make a post, and particularly when you disagree with a previous poster, you must engage the poster's ideas and not attack the poster himself. You must also endeavor to address the poster's ideas respectfully, and in a way that shows you respect him and his position. This always requires that you carefully read what you're disagreeing with, and that you restrain an occasional impulse to be belligerent, mocking, or confrontational. We all find some ideas to be irritating, but the conversation moves forward more profitably when we are respectful, even of ideas we find bizarre or annoying. Please make every possible effort to be gracious and not to offend other posters; we all root for the same team here -- be passionate but courteous. In this regard, we'd appreciate posters not making the titles of threads, especially obviously controversial threads, provocative or incendiary.



Posts that are intentionally antagonistic, that harangue or harass other posters, that are intended simply to provoke reaction, that are intended to be disruptive, that are inflammatory, or that are mischievously erroneous or obtuse are considered trolling and should be reported to moderators. Publicly accusing another poster of trolling is bad form -- PM a moderator. Posters who troll will be banned.



As a general rule, posts that claim to be based on "inside information" are discouraged. Our experience has been that most such claims are fictitious. If you do actually have access to inside information, and wish to post things that depend on that information, you must be willing to provide evidence to support your claim (in confidence) to the administrators or moderators upon request. If you are unwilling to provide this evidence, please do not post claims to have inside information.



Decisions of the moderators and administrators are final and not subject to public questioning. If you have a question, PM one of us. Moderating and administrating this board is not fun, and we don't get paid. If you don't like the way the place is run, it's probably not the place for you. Public abuse of a moderator or administrator, or public criticism of the board's policies, membership, or rules will result in having your account deactivated without warning.



This forum tolerates no profanity of any kind, including the so-called "prime time" swear words. Replacing one or more of the letters of a swear word with symbols is also not permitted. There is a swear filter on the board, but it's there to prevent accidents, not to constantly clean up your language.



Please refrain from reposting copyrighted works in their entirety, including articles you read elsewhere online. You may post short quotes and a link, but do NOT post the entire article. Doing so is a violation of copyright law and is illegal. Material posted on the internet may not be reposted anywhere else unless the copyright holder has granted written permission to do so. US law permits violators to be fined up to $100,000 per violation.



As a rule, we do not permit posts which involve or promote commercial activities, or advertising of any kind. We may, on rare occasions, make an exception to this rule if an established member of our community has a special opportunity to make available to other members. Such exceptions, if any, will occur only after thorough discussion of the proposed posting with one of our administrators. Any commercial message which is posted without prior approval will be deleted, and the poster will be sanctioned.



One aspect of being respectful on a message board is not to create lots of threads so that other important topics scroll off the bottom of the screen. Please check if a thread has been posted recently on the subject before starting your own topic. If you encounter duplicate or unnecessary threads, please politely post a link in the offending thread and report the post to the moderators. We'll merge or delete the thread.



Bickering with another poster is disrespectful -- learn when to let an argument go; two people sometimes need to realize they're going to continue to disagree and simply move along. Do not "stalk" another poster on the board by following him around from thread to thread and quibbling with everything he posts. Repeated instances of this behavior will also result in your account being deactivated. Do not stalk or harass other posters outside of this forum. Posters here must be free to state their views without threat of harassment or ridicule here or elsewhere.



Do not disclose personal information about members of this community on the board or elsewhere on the internet. If it is determined that you have violated another member's right to privacy you will no longer be welcome in the community. Some violations of privacy are subject to civil or criminal penalties, so, for your own good, please err on the side of caution.



In some cases reports of misbehavior will need to be examined to determine whether a serious violation has occurred, and who committed the alleged violation. We expect members of the community to cooperate willingly in such an investigation so that a decision can be reached intelligently and with all pertinent facts.



As a general rule, it is not desirable or necessary to title a new thread "The <whatever> Thread." Our readers recognize that a thread is a thread, and it's generally presumptious to assume that a given thread is, or should be, "the" thread about a given subject.



Know these guidelines; follow these guidelines and the other rules explained in the TOS. If you disagree with the structure of this community it's probably not for you. If you agree to abide by these guidelines (and especially if you understand the spirit behind them and the kind of community we're trying to build) you're welcome to join in.

[Note: The following are comments from one of our posters - bkeich - offered to the community after several months of active participation here.]

This is not a typical internet message board; it is a very conservative (not politically) board. No off-color language, no attacks on other people, and nothing even close to these is permitted. In order to effectively join in on the conversations on this board, you need to respect this. Part of the responsibility rests not on Julio, PC and allentown (our moderators), but on all our posters.

The expectations of a poster on this board are higher than on most boards.

1. You need to know who Dave Snyder was. I spoke with him once, never posted while he was on the board, but his spirit is still here. People here feel they lost a friend they never met. Every poster on the board should at least understand the history of the board, at least in this area; he is an important person on the board, as are his opinions and "rules."
   
   
2. Obviously you don't have time to read every post, but IMHO before you post it is the poster's responsibility to spend an hour and page through some of the past topics. You will quickly figure out what the posting rules are (you can read them but it is better to see what posts are acceptable) and how to "handle" yourself.

Some unwritten rules:

1. Be very careful about starting too many threads. No reason not to start one when you have a thought, but see if you can include it in another topic first. The only person that I know of that was banned, this was a major problem (along with other things). The moderators don't want to have to clean up the threads too much for one person. A few mistakes is fine, but daily issues are not going to be acceptable.
   
   
2. Attack other peoples' opinions freely, but respectfully. If you attack other PEOPLE you will not be listened to for very long. The moderators will delete your post quickly and anyone who reads it will remember it negatively. (e.g., "YOU ARE STUPID"... bad; "I disagree strongly with your opinion because".. .good.)
   
   
3. Freely express your opinion, even if you make a mistake. No one is counting errors. If you make an error, admit it.
   
   
4. You don't have to agree with the consensus. Really boring board if we all agree.
   
   
5. Don't take others disagreeing with you personally, even if they seem a little sarcastic about that. Attack their sarcasm or dismissive nature as part of a response.
   
   
6. Spelling. Everyone should enable a spell checker; trust me it makes your arguments more persuasive if we don't have to guess what word you mean.
   
   
7. Grammar and punctuation. Do your best; I am not good at it, but try. It does matter when someone is reading and not hearing what you are saying.
   
   
8. This is not a cell phone. Do not abbreviate words like you might on a cell phone. Most people over age 35 (?) find this annoying. There are lots of people on this board over that age.

There are real rules for posting, and they are well written, please read them (see above). This is my list of unwritten rules after being on the board for 9 months (still somewhat of a newbie).

There are now bbcodes for "table," "atable" (table with specified attributes), "tablerow," "tablehead," and "tabledata." (For the last three of these, you can use "tr," "th," and "td" as shorthand - they'll work the same way.) To set up a table, you need to use the following structure:

table (or atable)
..tablerow (first row)
....tabledata (or tablehead, if you are creating a header row with column labels)
....tabledata (or tablehead, if you are creating a header row with column labels)
....tabledata (or tablehead, if you are creating a header row with column labels)
..tablerow (second row)
....tabledata
....tabledata
....tabledata
etc.

Example:

Player	OBP	SLG	OPS
Rolen	.380	.455	.835

Note that every tag - table, tablerow, tablehead, tabledata - MUST be properly closed (e.g., you start with [tag], and you end with [/tag]), and in the proper order, or the bbcodes will not be parsed correctly. Tables can get pretty complex - if you can't get it to work (use the preview function!), please don't post it. If you need help, send a PM. If you post bad bbcoding, which appears as garbage, we're likely to just delete it out of hand.