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Johto4933 Posts
A question that regularly gets asked at Liquipedia is why we don't just accept any page. The common argument goes as follows:
Well, I'm creating the page, you won't have any extra work. This is an encyclopedia right? The more content the better!
And usually they are correct on the first part. Creating Liquipedia pages whilst not super simple is easy enough that it can be learned in an hour or two. They might ask a couple questions in some of the channels on our discord server, but after that they're ready to go. But creating the page is basically never the issue.
The actual issue is keeping the page updated. And not just next week, but in a year, or in 5 years.
If the page is about a notable player or team, think the Maru's or the s1mple's of this world or a team like OG, then it is comparatively easy for us to find people to keep these pages updated. Many people care about these players and teams, and will make sure they are the best they can be. However if the page is about someone who has only ever played in a local tournament that maybe didn't even have a stream, it is usually harder.
And that's where the argument falls apart. Whilst that page might not be a lot of work now, it will create additional work down the line. Both in keeping the content updated, and in keeping the templates updated. And that's a lot of work. The parts of Liquipedia keeping it all running behind the scenes are changing a lot more than people are usually aware of. For example we are currently working on a dark theme. To make that work, we are touching basically any template that has a color in it. And that's basically all of them. In the process we've actually rebuilt and standardized a whole lot of them, the majority of which the average page visitor hasn't even noticed.
It is very rare to have a month where there isn't a change across all team pages on one of our wikis, or across all player pages on another of our wikis. And every time we improve our code base, every time we change things around on how we do things, we will have to update all these pages. Including the ones that nobody wants to update. Meanwhile the original author is long gone.
The reality is that most of them only want the page to begin with exactly because not everybody can have one. And once they have the page, they move on. That's why we never trust claims by people telling us that they will update their own page down the line. 99 times out of a hundred they won't. And ultimately as a result having these pages is not worth it for our contributors.
 
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I'm working with lots of content for my day-to-day job.
And what we have is a notification system in place, which will remind the author once a year to check the page and update it. If no action is taken, the content gets archived.
Ain't hard to implement. Not sure what are the possibilities here with this old outdated system that we have in place at tl.net.
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United States1851 Posts
As the dude who wrote the majority of the Maru entry, it's just a lot of work. The risk of having just anyone update pages is you're gonna end up with a ton of poorly written/organized information but you know all of that. If the Liquipedia coin system was more transparent people might be more motivated. But after writing entries for soO/cure/maru/bravo and a couple of other players in 2018ish I was hard stuck at silver and that demotivated me to spend the hours it took to create comprehensive entries. Plus you guys deleted my personal page so rip (it was a flimsy entry to begin with to be fair). Good luck in the future though! But the declining viewership of tl as a whole and the requirement of making an account to make alterations was always going to lead to less updates over time. I would also argue that jamming all the team/individual results together made liquipedia a much more burdensome place to do research as it adds minutes to every article as I have to carefully read to make sure I'm not accidently attributing a team achievement to an individual player etc.
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Johto4933 Posts
On February 18 2023 22:59 BlueStar wrote:
I'm working with lots of content for my day-to-day job.
And what we have is a notification system in place, which will remind the author once a year to check the page and update it. If no action is taken, the content gets archived.
Ain't hard to implement. Not sure what are the possibilities here with this old outdated system that we have in place at tl.net.
That sounds nice on paper, but there is pages we legit want to keep around that don't warrant regular content updates. Under this system we probably would not have a page for SK Telecom anymore for example.
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Netherlands4987 Posts
Since the future is always unsure why not just put a little note at the top of a page if it wasn't edited/updated in over a year.
This gives the reader a better idea if the data still is or when the data still was relevant. I imagine this can also encite/encourage a reader to update it with information they saw recently depending on how you implement this.
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Johto4933 Posts
Because then we still have the work of maintaining them. If we don't they will eventually break
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Netherlands4987 Posts
Why will it break? Old code being removed and replaced by new code?
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Johto4933 Posts
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Netherlands4987 Posts
Isn't that the real problem then? It will give an infinite amount of work the bigger liquipedia grows. Eventually all your time will be solely spent making sure all the old code pages are revised. That work will be mind killing even if you have automation to help you.
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Back in like 2012-2013 my editing privileges were suspended because I started to set up a database of all players participating in foreign brood war tournaments (which included non-notable players).
I understand the reasoning, but it's kind of lame when you go to something like ASL qualifiers and you're like, ok so liquipedia doesn't know who any of these players are. Like, it's almost not worth the bother to keep the bracket up to date on some of these events that have no articles on most of the players.
Also, I agree with Peeano, it seems like the problem wasn't correctly identified.
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Johto4933 Posts
I guess I disagree with what the problem is then. Not updating our templates would mean no things like a dark theme, no Liquipedia app, no new features. And the pages being outdated quickly isn't addressed yet either.
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On February 20 2023 08:49 FO-nTTaX wrote:
I guess I disagree with what the problem is then. Not updating our templates would mean no things like a dark theme, no Liquipedia app, no new features. And the pages being outdated quickly isn't addressed yet either.
The question is how many templates a page needs, or phrased differently, what the main purpose of an article is and that's where your problem lies. Sooner or later any page will be "outdated", if that is a different way of saying "not being updated anymore", due to the fact that there is no more content to add. E.g. a player's retired or a league is over. Then what, is it not notable anymore?
To me Liquipedia was first and foremost an archive. Sure, fancy tables for achievements and infoboxes (For instance) are an add-on, but not more. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate your work, a ton actually. But I think your post is a bit exaggerating here.
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On February 19 2023 03:44 FO-nTTaX wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2023 22:59 BlueStar wrote:
I'm working with lots of content for my day-to-day job.
And what we have is a notification system in place, which will remind the author once a year to check the page and update it. If no action is taken, the content gets archived.
Ain't hard to implement. Not sure what are the possibilities here with this old outdated system that we have in place at tl.net.
That sounds nice on paper, but there is pages we legit want to keep around that don't warrant regular content updates. Under this system we probably would not have a page for SK Telecom anymore for example.
Yep, just add a checkbox that will disable the notifications. Admin restricted.
If you wait more, the work will only grow.
If you provide such opportunities for your userbase to work with you it will help more than restrictiions.
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United States11390 Posts
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wow this is a lot more complicated than I had expected. I wonder how wikipedia handles it
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United States1851 Posts
Please save TRUE's achievement table!
 TRUE
edit: Thank you!
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Very insightful. I assumed it was more of an editorial mandate, to make sure there's not fluff. The reason you're offering seems way more elegant than me chalking it up to gatekeeping elitism.
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EPT
