A disparity between BW and SC2 content? - Page 2

On September 10 2019 06:43 FlaShFTW wrote:
I'll make a comment just to have transparency with how writing works a bit. We all contribute out time accordingly based upon what we have to do in real life. Some people are too busy, some people end up leaving or taking a hiatus, it just happens. Not everyone can always been putting in their max time writing articles, it doesn't put food on the table sadly and there are just other things that are important to do with our lives.

A few years ago, I want to say like 2016-2017, we had a lot of articles flying out and content that was pretty solid. Led by Bigfan, I would say the main core of writers was Bisudagger, myself, Blind-Rawr, cerberus, and amazingxkcd. Graphics of course was/is still v1. I'd say for the most part we did a decent job of letting the writers write, and Bigfan would edit where he saw fit. Good system.

As time takes it's toll on all of us, things change. BD started a family and had lildagger, cerb I believe focused on school/employment (haven't heard from him in a while tbh), xkcd... thing's didn't work out between TL and him anymore, I went to law school, and BR is taking a step back from writing for the most part. Bigfan also stepped down from EiC because he's a dodger.

Our current writing staff is EsportsJohn as EiC, and writer team being Ziggy, Taardad, and Ty2. Ryan aka Frudgey doing an excellent job with video recaps, and then BR/BD very infrequently stepping in sometimes if the team needs help. As you can see, we went from 5 main writers who actually would usually fight over what articles to write, especially during group stages, to now 3 writers with 2 part timers. We also went from mainly only covering ASL up to ASL5, to covering the ASL, KSL, and BSL. When we only did the ASL, we had time to really sit down and cover a tournament in depth with map analysis, exclusive tournament power ranking, etc. Now our resources are spread thin, it's harder to get everyone to constantly put in work to the staff especially once writing starts becoming more of a job/duty rather than a hobby/fun. I know that writer burnout is really hit me hard.

This is why, as much shit as I get, I stress people should contribute more to the community via article writing. It's why when people start shitting on our writers that I get overly defensive because we don't have many to start, and losing any writer is always difficult. This is a community site, we're always looking for more helpers and writers, and we'll take anyone who has a passion or interest in creating content to keep this section of TLnet moving.

TL:DR, people are busier now, the team is smaller, and there's more content out there so we can't do as much for one specific tournament you're interested in. So if you want, consider joining the team to help with content!

On September 11 2019 20:40 BlueStar wrote:
I think any of us can contribute - it's a community site so everyone can chime in and help by posting news and stuff.
Of course, we have to do it properly - and there is ton of templates and prerequisites available to use which is quite nice.

However, many times I've thought of adding some content to the liquipedia for example... but the editor is so hard to work with - all the time when I started doing such stuff I was discouraged in the middle of the process and never committed any real content.

On September 11 2019 22:21 EsportsJohn wrote:


Liquipedia can always use more help! There's actually a Liquipedia Discord server that has all manner of people who can help you out with problems and teach you the UI if you'd like.

On September 10 2019 00:54 Chef wrote:
Smaller community as far as I know. TL turned into a 90% SC2 site for a few years and we lost a lot of cool posters (either moved on to sc2, some other game, or just gave up on the forum). I think there's not as much interest among BW players for reports like that anyway, although when the site was larger there were lots of articles and people replied to them. I don't know the stats of how many people post in BW now vs 15 years ago, but it's probably pretty depressing.

On September 11 2019 18:40 Wombat_NI wrote:
As a main SC2 guy who’s quite into BW I think largely the content is fine, but that’s for my tastes.

As long as tournament previews are as good as they are I’m happy enough. Tournament recaps are a bonus, but I largely skip them.

With VoDs so easily available, Frudgey doing his highlight videos, and LR threads existing, the thing I really need written about the least is the actual tournament in recap form.

More content would be nice, but if I was to prioritise resources it would definitely be over preview and other scene flavour over recapping games that I imagine most of us will want to watch first unspoiled anyway.

On September 10 2019 00:54 Chef wrote:
Smaller community as far as I know. TL turned into a 90% SC2 site for a few years and we lost a lot of cool posters (either moved on to sc2, some other game, or just gave up on the forum). I think there's not as much interest among BW players for reports like that anyway, although when the site was larger there were lots of articles and people replied to them. I don't know the stats of how many people post in BW now vs 15 years ago, but it's probably pretty depressing.

On September 13 2019 14:02 GeckoXp wrote:


Since you are the author, I'd like to disagree with this post, not to mess with you, but to encourage people to still create some form of content - especially since you yourself wrote more than just one interesting piece on several issues.

If you compare the site to 15 years ago, your analysis should not stop by comparing the total amount of posts and posters, but the entire environment and infrastructure. Back then social media existed, but played a relatively minor role. Nowadays the so-called "digital natives" (I dislike the term, but it fits) grew up with mobile devices and social media as information hubs. Obviously the style of communication is very different there, likes, re-tweets and such are more common than just leaving a #1 or "I like that post". It also means that an original source might be spread and gets re-pasted all over different channels. This does not necessarily mean the content itself isn't wanted, it's just consumed differently. Forum culture (and blog posting) itself is anachronistic, yet something that still works surprisingly well on TL.
This doesn't mean the content isn't wanted or doesn't get readers. On the contrary, for my last bigger pieces I got still tons of upvotes and whatnot on reddit, just few answers around here. I get how that is demotivating, but hopefully writers won't stop publishing articles or write about whatever topic they like. It'd be sad to fall for the trap.
However, I'd like to encourage any "new" member of this community (anyone who joined within the last 4-6 years is new to me) to just leave a comment behind, so the author has a signal that his work pays off.

On September 13 2019 00:16 JieXian wrote:


I actually value recaps the most, since the input from high level players (eg Ty2 and Nyoken) would allow me to understand what happened and the details of each decision or observation that I would miss.

For that reason I really miss Nyoken's casts, so sad that he had to take them down