EPT
TL recruiting SC2 writers - Page 8
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BisuDagger
Bisutopia19257 Posts
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Hot_Bid
Braavos36375 Posts
We pay full-time employees that do a large amount of managerial and non-focused work. We are not hoarding profits somewhere and distributing to investors. In an ideal world, we pay all the writers. It's not an ideal world, and the most cost-effective thing we can do is hire a writer/editor (Wax) and pay part-time editors to make the volunteers jobs more easy and organized. People volunteer for work for many reasons. Some do it for pure joy, some do it as a hobby, some have aspirations of working their way up and getting a paid job in ESPORTS eventually. Some simply like writing stuff about things they enjoy and having thousands of people read it, and these volunteer writers exist in any field. Unfortunately this industry (and just about every other one) is loaded with decent writers and very few paid writing positions, many of which are extremely competitive. We are not at a place yet where we can hire many people to write for a website and be paid to do only that. | ||
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Kiyo.
United States2284 Posts
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The_Templar
your Country52797 Posts
I would totally give this a shot but I'm really busy nowadays :/ | ||
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EnumaAvalon
Philippines3613 Posts
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Subversive
Australia2229 Posts
On January 09 2013 16:24 Canucklehead wrote: Because there are enough people who are willing to do it for free for esports and e-fame. I've long said TL is brilliant for having a site run mostly by volunteers, while a few of them make all the money is genius. Until people stop lining up to work for them for free, they will continue to just call for volunteers. It's as simple as that. Yeah clearly Naz and the rest are sitting in vaults full of gold bullion ala Scrooge McDuck. You need to spread the word amongst the oppressed agricultural classes and organise a revolt. | ||
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ChaosArcher
Germany956 Posts
On January 09 2013 23:45 EnumaAvalon wrote:volunteer for ESPORTS! As Day9 said. There is nothing more cool than being proud of the things you love. (non verbatim) And still day9 is the richest person in e-sports haha He volunteers shit nowadays | ||
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Grettin
42381 Posts
On January 10 2013 00:45 ChaosArcher wrote: And still day9 is the richest person in e-sports haha He volunteers shit nowadays As HotBid said above: People volunteer for work for many reasons. Some do it for pure joy, some do it as a hobby, some have aspirations of working their way up and getting a paid job in ESPORTS eventually. Pretty much sums Day9 if you ask me. Look at where he started, look how much he did before he got where he is now. | ||
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TheRealNanMan
United States1471 Posts
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Butterednuts
United States859 Posts
I hope the people that take this on are passionate enough to continue through this beyond this first event they have to cover. | ||
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The_Darkness
United States910 Posts
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MCDayC
United Kingdom14464 Posts
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Targe
United Kingdom14103 Posts
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kollin
United Kingdom8380 Posts
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divito
Canada1213 Posts
On January 10 2013 00:59 The_Darkness wrote: Instead of hiring a bunch of writers, you guys should consider following the SBNation model where there are editors and then there are "fan posts" that can be written by anyone. I used to follow MMA and you would have fan posts covering just about every event. Since the posts are labeled "fan posts" you knew not to expect great quality but they didn't have to pay people for these posts, they always posted them anyway and the posts often were informative enough to be useful. Also because fans just want to do this sort of thing, they weren't paid anything. Users could determine how good a fan post was by the number of "likes" it received, which allowed users of the site to effectively screen the fan posts. I think you should consider changing the model of this site to something like that. You have good writers but very, very little editorial content and coverage given how many events there are. You guys often don't even have a write up following most major foreign tournaments. If you have to hire people, you have to pay them, coordinate with them, etc. The SBNation model basically allows you to avoid all of that organizational hassle and to get decent content (and a whole lot more content than you have at present). I agree a lot with this post. I was surprised when I first visited TL to find that the "news" of this site is essentially forum posts by random members and not by staff, along with the low amount of editorials/write-ups (outside of LP). While effective to use forum posts in some ways, quality between "news" and other aspects becomes extremely hit or miss; not to mention fact-checking, history, and a host of other relevant information that would be present with a normal writer. I'm sure someone will make the argument that TL was/is primarily only a forum/community site, and not a media site. However, I think the evolution of TL, and eSports in general, makes this argument kind of moot. Especially when TL does far more in its scope than any site attempting to cater to aspects of news, editorials, video, rankings etc... | ||
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kollin
United Kingdom8380 Posts
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nooboon
2602 Posts
EDIT: Thanks kollin. | ||
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kollin
United Kingdom8380 Posts
On January 10 2013 01:38 nooboon wrote: Is there a deadline for the submissions or is this just a public announcement and people can apply year long? Applications are open until January 31st. | ||
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Luftmensch
277 Posts
On January 09 2013 23:35 Hot_Bid wrote: + Show Spoiler + TL is a community site powered by over 200 volunteers. We will always have a business model that financially supports fewer people that the content output by our community. We simply cannot pay everyone for all the contribution they give. Graphics, Liquipedia, TLPD, writers, moderators, tournament referees, translators, there are hundreds of people. If we had to pay for every little bit of content or contribution TL would simply not exist. We are lucky to have people who are willing to work part time because they enjoy contributing. In fact, all of us that get paid for full-time work don't get paid much relative to the market in a related field. We do it because we like ESPORTS and the job is fun. That is the sacrifice that is made for not working a typical desk job. So when people become offended about why amateur writers don't get paid for a niche ESPORTS website, I would point at the history and circumstances/financials of TL and say it's quite obvious why not. We pay full-time employees that do a large amount of managerial and non-focused work. We are not hoarding profits somewhere and distributing to investors. In an ideal world, we pay all the writers. It's not an ideal world, and the most cost-effective thing we can do is hire a writer/editor (Wax) and pay part-time editors to make the volunteers jobs more easy and organized. People volunteer for work for many reasons. Some do it for pure joy, some do it as a hobby, some have aspirations of working their way up and getting a paid job in ESPORTS eventually. Some simply like writing stuff about things they enjoy and having thousands of people read it, and these volunteer writers exist in any field. Unfortunately this industry (and just about every other one) is loaded with decent writers and very few paid writing positions, many of which are extremely competitive. We are not at a place yet where we can hire many people to write for a website and be paid to do only that. I understand what you are saying and what I am going to say may bother some, but I don't care: Capitalism. It is basically survival of the fittest, only for companies. Every business wants to do one thing: Make as much profit as possible while having as few expenses as possible, and that's what TL wants as well, lets not lie ourselves about it. That being said, I hope that it's not hard to understand that volunteerism is unnatural in a capitalistic society. To explain it in another way, there is no difference between volunteering your time and giving your money to a company. It would be a whole different thing if TL was a non-profit organization. If you give your time (a.k.a. money) to a non-profit organization, you are "aiding a cause", on the other hand if you do the same for a for-profit organization like TL, you're "working for free". What I said so far are just facts; facts do not judge, they do not have moral standards, they are what they are. Instead of leaving it there, instead of just saying "We need writers but we can't pay them, if someone can help it would be appreciated" and nothing else, you (the TL staff members) willfully decided to introduce hypocricy into the whole situation by sugarcoating it and defending your position in questionable ways. There is no need to put so much emphasis on how "others are doing it as well" as I as an individual do not care if others are working for free or not. I explained earlier why they shouldn't in the first place. There is also no need to explain how you do it out of love and personal sense of fulfillment because that is basically playing on the emotional card. Organized religion has been doing it for millennia so we know that it works but I seriously condone such unethical behavior on TL's part (that doesn't mean I don't understand it, simply that I do not approve of it and think less of you because of it). I do appreciate that TL exists, don't get me wrong. However, given the fact that you yourselves have chosen the for-profit route (and questionable demagogy to boot), in my mind you are a business like any other. If your business model isn't able to create a sustainable financial environment, that is entirely your problem and I won't cry when you are gone. | ||
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Cele
Germany4016 Posts
On January 10 2013 01:46 Luftmensch wrote: I understand what you are saying and what I am going to say may bother some, but I don't care: Capitalism. It is basically survival of the fittest, only for companies. Every business wants to do one thing: Make as much profit as possible while having as few expenses as possible, and that's what TL wants as well, lets not lie ourselves about it. That being said, I hope that it's not hard to understand that volunteerism is unnatural in a capitalistic society. To explain it in another way, there is no difference between volunteering your time and giving your money to a company. It would be a whole different thing if TL was a non-profit organization. If you give your time (a.k.a. money) to a non-profit organization, you are "aiding a cause", on the other hand if you do the same for a for-profit organization like TL, you're "working for free". What I said so far are just facts; facts do not judge, they do not have moral standards, they are what they are. Instead of leaving it there, instead of just saying "We need writers but we can't pay them, if someone can help it would be appreciated" and nothing else, you (the TL staff members) willfully decided to introduce hypocricy into the whole situation by sugarcoating it and defending your position in questionable ways. There is no need to put so much emphasis on how "others are doing it as well" as I as an individual do not care if others are working for free or not. I explained earlier why they shouldn't in the first place. There is also no need to explain how you do it out of love and personal sense of fulfillment because that is basically playing on the emotional card. Organized religion has been doing it for millennia so we know that it works but I seriously condone such unethical behavior on TL's part (that doesn't mean I don't understand it, simply that I do not approve of it and think less of you because of it). I do appreciate that TL exists, don't get me wrong. However, given the fact that you yourselves have chosen the for-profit route (and questionable demagogy to boot), in my mind you are a business like any other. If your business model isn't able to create a sustainable financial environment, that is entirely your problem and I won't cry when you are gone. this is a very harsh approach, but i agree to the following: If you pursue a for-profit organisation in TL, you can't expect people to do the work for free. i felt different when community sites like TL or gg.net were mostly non profit in the bw days and i myself did contribute in staff. From experience i can tell, that writing articles of 800 words, with nice formatting, proofreading, visual elements, takes a lot of work. Thusly i would consider doing three of those per week a part-time job. I wouldnt do that nowadays, even if i had the time to do so. | ||
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