Over a year ago, TeamLiquid sent out an open call to StarCraft II fans everywhere for their help in writing quality news on the professional scene. Unfortunately, this hapless editor had no idea what he was in for, and was immediately overwhelmed by the flood of attention from the international StarCraft II community. While all the applications were reviewed and writers were found, the process was all but smooth. Now that we've recovered and learned our lesson, it's time to open up the gates again.
Positions and Application Process
StarCraft II Writer: General
Description: Writers will be responsible for writing previews, recaps, features, and other written content for TeamLiquid's StarCraft II coverage. In the case of previews and recaps, it is crucial that they are written in a timely manner. Writers must be able to write both concisely and at length as required. The ability to recognize and develop narratives is also a must. Though the workload will vary depending on the tournament, writers will be expected to write at least the equivalent of three short recaps/previews each week. Tournaments with priority at present time are DreamHack, GSTL, IEM, Proleague and WCS with other tournaments being covered as manpower allows. Positions are not paid and are on a strictly voluntary basis. Passes for leagues covered will be provided.
Application Process: Send an application containing the following information to k.woo@teamliquid.net (Waxangel)
Your TeamLiquid.net ID and Google Talk or Skype information. For coordination purposes, we require writers to use some form of instant messenger.
Short introduction and relevant background information as it pertains to this position. Please do not send resumes unless they contain work experience relevant to this position.
Preferred league or tournament to cover.
Availability and desired workload.
Applications are continuously open.
Two test writing assignments must also be completed.
Write a concise recap on the events of a single day in a major tournament. This is NOT a battle report assignment. Try to tell an interesting story about the tournament and players as a whole, rather than listing the details of several matches. The above examples should be used as references, but the specific styles do not have be strictly adhered to. Any major tournament after July 1st, 2012 may be chosen as the subject.
Write a preview for an upcoming event or a specific match-up in an upcoming event. A variety of approaches are acceptable, ranging from purely narrative based "hype" to a very technical analysis based on the play styles of the players involved. The above examples should be used as references, but the specific styles do not have be strictly adhered to. Any upcoming tournament may be chosen as the subject.
StarCraft II Writer: Strategy
Description: Writers will focus on analyzing interesting or noteworthy StarCraft II games. A sound knowledge of high-level strategy and the ability to effectively convey that knowledge in writing are required. Writers must also be familiar with the professional metagame and watch a large body of matches as to be able to detect strategic patterns between games and over time. Writers must be able to produce content within a timely manner. The ability to recognize and develop narratives is also preferred. Writers will be expected to write one comprehensive analysis article every one to to two weeks. Positions are not paid and are on a strictly voluntary basis. Passes for leagues covered will be provided.
Application Process: Send an application containing the following information to 2forge1win@gmail.com (monk.)
Your TeamLiquid.net ID and Google Talk or Skype information. For coordination purposes, we require writers to use some form of instant messenger.
Short introduction and relevant background information as it pertains to this position. Include your race, gaming history, and level of skill. Though the primary criteria for selection will be writing ability, level of StarCraft II play will also be taken into consideration. Please do not send resumes unless they contain work experience relevant to this position.
Availability and desired workload.
Applications are open until January 31st.
Test writing assignments must also be completed. Please submit up to two articles analyzing games played in a major, professional league within the last three months. Take the following guidelines into consideration:
Pick an "interesting" game: Choose a game that the general StarCraft II audience would find interesting, not just to someone with a high level understanding of the game. While it is possible to choose a technically intriguing but otherwise dull game, you must be able to clearly demonstrate why the game was interesting.
Write in the perspective of your race: Write from the perspective of your race of expertise. Explain what decisions a player made to secure victory, or what mistakes were made that led to a loss.
Do not write straight up battle report: A strategic analysis is not a long list of events in a game. While all write-ups will resemble battle reports in some ways, strategic articles must provide insight that is deeper than the immediately visible events of the game.
Explain to your audience why your game is interesting: This is self explanatory. Even articles containing the most profound knowledge must be able to convince readers to read them.
Example articles:
Morrow's analysis of MC vs Leenock is an ideal example of a strategic article. The Zerg player Leenock executes an unusual strategy while his opponent MC responds with excellent play. Morrow writes in a compelling and logical manner to explain why the game was noteworthy, and highlights excellent play that might be difficult to notice at first glance.
Ver's God of the Battlefield Part 1 is a comprehensive analysis of the tactics used by Savior over large number of games. Ver identifies trends in Savior's play, carefully picking example games while clearly explaining why Savior's plays were significant at that time.
Geiko's analysis of HerO vs. Rain is able to highlight several small details in Rain's play, demonstrating why a seemingly one-sided game was a masterclass in contemporary Protoss vs. Protoss.
Just curious why are these positions unpaid? The job actually requires hard-work and effort, and arguably it brings traffic to the site, which you thereby profit from. Not ragging on TL, but it seems odd that other team sites actually pay their writers, but I'm just curious why you've chosen to stick to the "work for free" model thus far? I mean, don't you think this would also influence the quality of work being produced?
Too bad I'm only good at writing bullshit narrative and in an untimely manner at that, I probably won't be make it through the reviews when it has to do with analysis.
On January 09 2013 15:11 bLueSkY) wrote: Just curious why are these positions unpaid? The job actually requires hard-work and effort, and arguably it brings traffic to the site, which you thereby profit from. Not ragging on TL, but it seems odd that other team sites actually pay their writers, but I'm just curious why you've chosen to stick to the "work for free" model thus far? I mean, don't you think this would also influence the quality of work being produced?
You could say its a passion for esports or the game in general. You do have a legitimate claim but I would argue that its fine as it is. Maybe when things become super big (esports), writers will get paid in due respect.
The ultimate goal of the TL writer is to have a curse named after you, one day you too might be Fionn and have the power to make teams disband and lose their star players.
If this were to be offered about a year ago when I was more into StarCraft 2, I would not have hesitated to apply. I still like StarCraft 2, but right now I've really only been watching Proleague. Oh well, good luck to whoever applies!
On January 09 2013 15:11 Meteora.GB wrote: Too bad I'm only good at writing bullshit narrative and in an untimely manner at that, I probably won't be make it through the reviews when it has to do with analysis.
On January 09 2013 15:11 bLueSkY) wrote: Just curious why are these positions unpaid? The job actually requires hard-work and effort, and arguably it brings traffic to the site, which you thereby profit from. Not ragging on TL, but it seems odd that other team sites actually pay their writers, but I'm just curious why you've chosen to stick to the "work for free" model thus far? I mean, don't you think this would also influence the quality of work being produced?
You could say its a passion for esports or the game in general. You do have a legitimate claim but I would argue that its fine as it is. Maybe when things become super big (esports), writers will get paid in due respect.
I dunno. I'd do it for free.
No I agree on the passion part, but seriously - writing takes a LARGE amount of effort. Especially writing for a site that is doing really well. There's a huge demand on the quality of work too, of-course writing for teamliquid would be a great honor. Seriously though even real bad pay would be better than NOTHING come on. One article is bound to take 6-8hrs without proofing/editing.. how can a real writer realistically consider this position.
I really wish I could do this. I honestly think I would be good at it if I had a couple hours a day to dedicate to it, doing proper research and drafting. But I just started a new job and I really need to make this happen :/
Maybe next time you are looking I won't be trying to fool people into thinking I'm super diligent and motivated. Takes quite a bit to maintain the facade- and do research outside of work to make it look like I'm smarter.
Best of luck finding someone. Given the time I would be honored to do something like this.
meh, i would really like to contribute by doing something like this. Unfortunately English isent my native language, i suck at writing and i dont think i would have time to do this. Good luck to everyone who makes an application!
On January 09 2013 15:35 jiberish wrote: Wow they do it for free. Now I appreciate their write ups even more.
So sad that most of the fantastic articles get 5 pages of comments even though they have gorgeous artwork and amazing writing... and a 20 word post with a pasted Tweet from Destiny gets 100 pages in 24 hours.
I wish I could say the passion would be enough for me to be able to do this, but I really don't know about that. Maybe I could convince myself?
Either way, I hope you guys find a good dedicated Proleague guy and some more consistent coverage of the European scene. They'd both be great for the site.
Good luck to TL in their search, and good luck to budding talented writers. I hope to one day look forward to many more articles worthy of the final edits section!
Man I so want to do this, However realistically there is no way i could find the time to write that much, taking 17 credits a quarter with work, FML. However i definitely hope shady sands does some writing.
Is there a way to apply and do it just during the summer, I might be able to manage that?
It seems unfair to expect people to fill these positions, which require considerable time and skill, when certain players on the Liquid roster barely even play SC2 anymore, if at all.
On January 09 2013 15:08 Shady Sands wrote: How many positions are you looking for?
undetermined
You're kind of asking for a lot as a voluntary position. I mean obviously team liquid should have the best writers, as it is THE esports website, but I would hope people would get some sort of compensation for your demands.
its incredibly scummy for a website like TL which is a starcraft team + #1 starcraft site that makes a lot of money based on the great content that is available to not pay for its writers.
On January 09 2013 16:11 i99 wrote: its incredibly scummy for a website like TL which is a starcraft team + #1 starcraft site that makes a lot of money based on the great content that is available to not pay for its writers.
You don't have to apply, you know. Anybody who doesn't feel passionately about it probably shouldn't. But there are fantastic people who don't care whether it's paid or not and do it because they love e-Sports, StarCraft, and TeamLiquid, and I have immense respect for those people. The people you're trying to "defend" do what they do because they love what you are attacking, so please go away.
On January 09 2013 16:11 i99 wrote: its incredibly scummy for a website like TL which is a starcraft team + #1 starcraft site that makes a lot of money based on the great content that is available to not pay for its writers.
On January 09 2013 16:11 i99 wrote: its incredibly scummy for a website like TL which is a starcraft team + #1 starcraft site that makes a lot of money based on the great content that is available to not pay for its writers.
Thats quite the assumption, no one but TL knows its financial state. Though I would like to hear the reasons why such a demanding position comes without pay.
On January 09 2013 16:11 i99 wrote: its incredibly scummy for a website like TL which is a starcraft team + #1 starcraft site that makes a lot of money based on the great content that is available to not pay for its writers.
Thats quite the assumption, no one but TL knows its financial state. Though I would like to hear the reasons why such a demanding position comes without pay.
On January 09 2013 16:11 i99 wrote: its incredibly scummy for a website like TL which is a starcraft team + #1 starcraft site that makes a lot of money based on the great content that is available to not pay for its writers.
On January 09 2013 16:11 i99 wrote: its incredibly scummy for a website like TL which is a starcraft team + #1 starcraft site that makes a lot of money based on the great content that is available to not pay for its writers.
Why? Should banlings and liquipedia editors and translators also get paid? We are on TL because we love something about TL whether SCBW, SC2, DOTA2, LoL, General, etc. And many of us like it so much we want to contribute to make TL an even greater community.
TL has from the very beginning been built with voluntary hours of passionate people. The fact that TL has become awesome enough that some get paid is amazing, but that doesn't change TL's foundation. No-one is getting coehersed into this. This is an opportunity for people to try their hand at writing and help make TL even more awesome.
On January 09 2013 16:11 i99 wrote: its incredibly scummy for a website like TL which is a starcraft team + #1 starcraft site that makes a lot of money based on the great content that is available to not pay for its writers.
Though I would like to hear the reasons why such a demanding position comes without pay.
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.
Most writers on the TL staff don't seem to be regular writers other than Wax and Fionn (though I imagine there might be more incentive to write regularly if there were payment involved, but that's beside the point + I'm pretty sure Wax is paid). If you're morally opposed to TL's position on this, then just don't apply.
Mostly, why pay when you have so many people willing to do it for free? It's like a school newspaper gig. You sure as hell aren't getting paid for it, but you're getting experience, you (presumably) enjoy it, and I guess if it's applicable, you can even put it on your resume if you'd like.
Good luck to all that decide to apply! I will hold off since not only am I doing fulltime engineering work which doesn't allow much time to watch tournaments and write on top of that, but the fact I chose engineering over liberal arts goes to show how much I love writing.
On January 09 2013 16:11 i99 wrote: its incredibly scummy for a website like TL which is a starcraft team + #1 starcraft site that makes a lot of money based on the great content that is available to not pay for its writers.
My guess is that they use GoogleAds or Google Doubleclick to supplement the site and the community, which isn't much. So unless you want to see expandable banners all over this site or pay for subscriptions, you should not be complaining. This site isn't self-sustaining, and it's pretty plain to see that they're not monetizing their users (you) because they want to keep this as community-based as possible.
The quality of Write-ups that come out of TL truly shows the passion the writers have for the sport. And that they do it for free too.
Though, If I had the time and wasn't in university, I would die to have a volunteer position to write for TL. I wish you good luck and good submissions.
Guys... It's obvious that Teamliquid.net, the website itself is being ran at a net loss ON PURPOSE since it provides free advertising and positive community image, it's been said time and time again that TL's poker site and the actual professional team's earnings help pay for the actual network maintenance costs. The majority of mods and admins (and basically every contributor) themselves either did not get paid at one point or are still working on the site with out getting a fixed salary even today, they aren't doing it for the money, they are doing it because they care about the subject matter. Please don't turn this thread into a brain dead "HOW MUCH MONEY DO I GET" thread.
Edit: question: Do you have to do graphic design as well? Since with out that your write up would look alot worse even though I would like to apply on the basis of just writing. Thanks.
On January 09 2013 16:25 babylon wrote: Most writers on the TL staff don't seem to be regular writers other than Wax and Fionn (though I imagine there might be more incentive to write regularly if there were payment involved, but that's beside the point + I'm pretty sure Wax is paid). If you're morally opposed to TL's position on this, then just don't apply.
Mostly, why pay when you have so many people willing to do it for free? It's like a school newspaper gig. You sure as hell aren't getting paid for it, but you're getting experience, you (presumably) enjoy it, and I guess if it's applicable, you can even put it on your resume if you'd like.
For sc2 it is mostly wax,fionn,stuchio, and monk. Porcelina is taking a break or something iirc. Pokebunny writes from time to time. In dota 2, me and about 6-7 guys are full time. We put out a ton of content as well.
On January 09 2013 16:11 i99 wrote: its incredibly scummy for a website like TL which is a starcraft team + #1 starcraft site that makes a lot of money based on the great content that is available to not pay for its writers.
Thats quite the assumption, no one but TL knows its financial state. Though I would like to hear the reasons why such a demanding position comes without pay.
On January 09 2013 16:11 i99 wrote: its incredibly scummy for a website like TL which is a starcraft team + #1 starcraft site that makes a lot of money based on the great content that is available to not pay for its writers.
yah, about that...
Somehow, I don't think TL makes a lot of money.
I heard they used to pay Ret's cigarets with TL's revenue and then he had to quit because SC2 is dieing
Seems like a fair number of people are confusing TL the site and TL the team in their minds. They're associated obviously, but completely separate financial entities as far as i'm aware. Teamliquid.net generates a little money from ad revenue, but the ads have always been pretty low key, while the overheads for the site must be pretty sizable (full time staff, server costs and all the costs associated with maintaining TLHQ).
As somebody who has taken the time to write for TL in the past, I can heartily endorse teamliquid's management and the writing team in particular. Writing my TLFE took months, from writing my first draft through the development and editing before final publication. In my dealings with the writing team, I found them to be the most talented and professional group of people I've ever worked with. I didn't get paid for it and ultimately it's just some article that's buried in the depths of some online forum, but all the same completing 'On Waxen Wings' remains one of the most rewarding things i've accomplished.
Working all hours, I don't have the time to apply myself. That said, I can highly recommend this for anybody with a bit of spare time, a passion for SC2 and a love of writing.
Pretty ridiculous how all that top of the line writers get is a neat icon and a pat on the back for hundreds of hours of work. Sure, call me crazy but I believe any person that is truly skilled, works hard, and especially has a passion for their work, he/she should get paid for their work. This isn't a small site that's low on funds and just starting out.
Also didn't everyone who makes any money from TL start off as a volunteer, If they were going to offer anyone a paid position I'm sure its someone who has already proved how skilled/dedicated they are ^_^
On January 09 2013 16:35 Caihead wrote: Guys... It's obvious that Teamliquid.net, the website itself is being ran at a net loss ON PURPOSE since it provides free advertising and positive community image, it's been said time and time again that TL's poker site and the actual professional team's earnings help pay for the actual network maintenance costs. The majority of mods and admins (and basically every contributor) themselves either did not get paid at one point or are still working on the site with out getting a fixed salary even today, they aren't doing it for the money, they are doing it because they care about the subject matter. Please don't turn this thread into a brain dead "HOW MUCH MONEY DO I GET" thread.
Edit: question: Do you have to do graphic design as well? Since with out that your write up would look alot worse even though I would like to apply on the basis of just writing. Thanks.
Being able to do graphics is a plus since you can put the whole thing together to your liking (with the editors' approval in the end). It isn't required though since the graphics guys are on a separate team and they help out with all sorts of articles.
On January 09 2013 16:35 Caihead wrote: Guys... It's obvious that Teamliquid.net, the website itself is being ran at a net loss ON PURPOSE since it provides free advertising and positive community image, it's been said time and time again that TL's poker site and the actual professional team's earnings help pay for the actual network maintenance costs. The majority of mods and admins (and basically every contributor) themselves either did not get paid at one point or are still working on the site with out getting a fixed salary even today, they aren't doing it for the money, they are doing it because they care about the subject matter. Please don't turn this thread into a brain dead "HOW MUCH MONEY DO I GET" thread.
Edit: question: Do you have to do graphic design as well? Since with out that your write up would look alot worse even though I would like to apply on the basis of just writing. Thanks.
Being able to do graphics is a plus since you can put the whole thing together to your liking (with the editors' approval in the end). It isn't required though since the graphics guys are on a separate team and they help out with all sorts of articles.
Yeah, no graphic experience is necessary. Some writers with more experience like myself get to work with the html/css in posts though, and we can format our articles how we want. Then just insert the graphics into the css,etc.
On January 09 2013 17:09 Jinsho wrote: Why are you not recruiting more DOTA2 writers?
Well, we kind of are. We don't quite want a big open recruitment like this because we aren't in dire need of writers like the sc2 guys are. Recently we recruited Tangeng, and countchocula. We are currently discussing with another guy as well, and giving him a trial assignment. We want to expand in 2013 as well. People who want to be recruited by us just need to be proactive in the dota 2 forum, and need to voice their aspirations in pm's to one of our dota 2 admins(riptide,heyoka, etc). In general though, we are currently contacting people we already know for recruitment. In a smaller community that is quite a bit easier to do.
Hmm, unfortunately I don't think I have the time to write 'full time' and on a strict schedule. I might still apply but it will depend on the workload if I can find a way to make it work.
I'll probably end up applying and I'd recommend anyone that likes to write to do so as well. I've done basically the same job for a hockey website a few years back and it's probably the best experience I had. And no it doesn't take 6-8 hours + proof reading to write 750-1000 words.
That said it would be nice to see a bit more journalism work on TL. It's a bit more exciting than news writing! Hopefully we get some more awesome writers soon
Will look into it, am interested. Been working for a local newspaper over the recent months and did pretty much the exact same thing except for TV shows and movies. Would love to do some writing for TL!
if I had an editor since my grammar isnt the greatest; I'd do it. especially if I can cover purely Kespa teams and Proleague; and write articles on why KT Rolster is the greatest thing to sc2 since sliced bread....
On January 09 2013 17:30 LighT. wrote: if I had an editor since my grammar isnt the greatest; I'd do it. especially if I can cover purely Kespa teams and Proleague; and write articles on why KT Rolster is the greatest thing to sc2 since sliced bread....
On January 09 2013 17:30 LighT. wrote: if I had an editor since my grammar isnt the greatest; I'd do it. especially if I can cover purely Kespa teams and Proleague; and write articles on why KT Rolster is the greatest thing to sc2 since sliced bread....
Well thats exactly what I used to do way back when and would possibly wanna do now too! I'll rock/paper/scissors you for it haha.
On January 09 2013 15:08 Shady Sands wrote: How many positions are you looking for?
undetermined
I would assume the more volunteers you recruit, the more varied the style of the work will be, thus keeping it fresh, and alleviating the average amount of workload the writers have. It will also prevent burn outs of writers, with the amount of tournaments going on. Although that would depend on the writer rotation system quality and communication speed between the writers.
I have a few questions : * won't different time zones be a problem ? * are there any plans for writers to actually go to the events they are covering ? (are thoses passes you are talking about just online passes ?) * are there any plans for the writers to from time to time do other stuff than pure coverage, like interviews etc ? * is TL looking necessarily for some really good writing skills (expression, grammar...) or is a lower level also acceptable ?
I understand that its unpaid but TL actually makes money and they make money of what you write page hits etc., so it sounds kinda wrong that you get no compensation =/
On January 09 2013 15:32 spalding wrote: Seems absolutely ridiculous not to pay people for something that requires so much work and will get you money too.
At least in Germany it's ridiculously hard to find a writer job, even when you are qualified like hell.
So while it seems ridiculous to you, and it really is, it is also realistic. At least maybe some professional writer, who is passionate about the game, will get some exposure and thus a paid job later. Hopefully.
On January 09 2013 17:47 Erlin. wrote: I understand that its unpaid but TL actually makes money and they make money of what you write page hits etc., so it sounds kinda wrong that you get no compensation =/
Respect for those writing the articles.
It depends on what you mean by no compensation. You will be given the pass the watch the event/VODs for the writing assignment, which is something.
On January 09 2013 16:11 i99 wrote: its incredibly scummy for a website like TL which is a starcraft team + #1 starcraft site that makes a lot of money based on the great content that is available to not pay for its writers.
Why? Should banlings and liquidpedia editors and translators also get paid? We are on TL because we love something about TL whether SCBW, SC2, DOTA2, LoL, General, etc. And many of us like it so much we want to contribute to make TL an even greater community.
On January 09 2013 15:32 spalding wrote: Seems absolutely ridiculous not to pay people for something that requires so much work and will get you money too.
I dont think TL is trying to reach out to proffssional writers who wants to get paid, they are reaching out to those who like writing, likes esports, and want a cool "hobby" on the side, wich is helping out a great site and a great community with writing articles etc. If you want pay, you go somewhere els, simple as that
It's a tad pathetic that all the positions are unpaid. It's no longer 2003, TL.net is turning a profit, no doubt. I've been with WGTour for years and I did my share of work and did it for free and never complained. That said, it was a completely different time in esports.
On January 09 2013 15:32 spalding wrote: Seems absolutely ridiculous not to pay people for something that requires so much work and will get you money too.
I dont think TL is trying to reach out to proffssional writers who wants to get paid, they are reaching out to those who like writing, likes esports, and want a cool "hobby" on the side, wich is helping out a great site and a great community with writing articles etc. If you want pay, you go somewhere els, simple as that
The thing is TL.net is a business venture, not an amateur site run by fans, at least no more.
I'm confused about all the ppl who think that thought or think that writers should get paid/are getting paid for content. Where do you think should the money come from?
I myself am a writer for the oldest (and biggest) german sc community and I wouldnt be able to do this stuff tl requires. Noone gets paid as far as I know for writing stuff. (besides some newssides/teamsides) Ppl do this because of their passion and because they want to give something back to the community. If you are lucky and incredibly good you can get invited to events by blizzard or you are able to drive to an event by yourself and get a press pass and do some coverage behind the scenes.
But the biggest problem is that there is mostly bad feedback/no feedback. After 2 years I finally got 1 message which said that hes thankful for the effort i put into it. You cant motivate ppl when they want to receive anything for doing something/writing. They need to be motivated by themselves and by the stuff they are doing. good luck tl!
On January 09 2013 15:32 spalding wrote: Seems absolutely ridiculous not to pay people for something that requires so much work and will get you money too.
I dont think TL is trying to reach out to proffssional writers who wants to get paid, they are reaching out to those who like writing, likes esports, and want a cool "hobby" on the side, wich is helping out a great site and a great community with writing articles etc. If you want pay, you go somewhere els, simple as that
The thing is TL.net is a business venture, not an amateur site run by fans, at least no more.
This is the only reason I even brought the topic up, I view TL now as a business. Given the comment earlier in the thread though I may be ignorant towards the profit side of things.
On January 09 2013 15:32 spalding wrote: Seems absolutely ridiculous not to pay people for something that requires so much work and will get you money too.
I dont think TL is trying to reach out to proffssional writers who wants to get paid, they are reaching out to those who like writing, likes esports, and want a cool "hobby" on the side, wich is helping out a great site and a great community with writing articles etc. If you want pay, you go somewhere els, simple as that
It can work the other way around as well since writers can use TL as a stepping stone to paid positions at other sites. People have tried to recruit TL staff before but it doesn't happen too often since most who get hired as TL staff tend to be pretty loyal to TL (they have been working for free).
I don't quite get why people are against volunteer positions, you decide whether you want, and of course there is requirements, so it's up to you if you want to do it.
Take for example, DreamHack, they are a big organisation and how many volunteers do you think they have?
Around 500, These can be anything from helping to setup the event, maintain it during the event, and clean up after, now their reward? I heard something about getting a free DH pass the next year, or a discount, which is the same that TL is giving the volunteers, passes to events (Online), you do less than the volunteers at DreamHack and get less rewards.
I would like to contribute but covering events outside of Europe is outside my limitations as the time zones will fuck me up for school :/
Question: when you say unless the resume contains relevant work experience, would a writer's resume outside of the e-sports field be appropriate? Or do you mean something specifically related to e-sports?
I don't see why people are making a big deal of writers not getting paid, it's not like TL is holding their families as hostage or making big money with their work.
Even likes of olympic games only happen thanks to the thousands of volunteers, I'd imagine it's a experience or hobby for most writers here.
Plus you get a fancy pen next to your name, no money compares to that.
On January 09 2013 15:32 spalding wrote: Seems absolutely ridiculous not to pay people for something that requires so much work and will get you money too.
I dont think TL is trying to reach out to proffssional writers who wants to get paid, they are reaching out to those who like writing, likes esports, and want a cool "hobby" on the side, wich is helping out a great site and a great community with writing articles etc. If you want pay, you go somewhere els, simple as that
The thing is TL.net is a business venture, not an amateur site run by fans, at least no more.
This is the only reason I even brought the topic up, I view TL now as a business. Given the comment earlier in the thread though I may be ignorant towards the profit side of things.
I think most of you are severly overestimating the profit of the website. There is only 1 banner with an ad on the site so that doesn´t make a lot of money for them. And a lot of people use adblock so the site doesn´t get anything from them at all. The only other source of income is the margin between cost and sellprice of the articles in the store (assuming this goes to the site and not the team).
The costs on the otherside are: - Access for the writers to leagues - Servercost - Fulltime admin staff (and they work really long days) - Miscelanious and things I can´t think of right now
So in they end there just isn´t any money to pay the other people that volunteer on the site. There are about 250 people involved in the writing/translating/graphics/moderating etc. and no way to pay them all.
If they end up with a little extra cash, most of the time, they also invest it back into the community through something like a tournament with prizemoney.
Perhaps when the revenue increases a bit more the senior members of the different volunteerteams can get some income but it will be a long way of before all volunteers can get a monetary compensation.
----
To bad I don´t have the insight for the stories etc. they are asking for. Lately I found I watch most streams while doing other responsibilities so I don´t really pick up on the details
On January 09 2013 19:19 wUndertUnge wrote: Question: when you say unless the resume contains relevant work experience, would a writer's resume outside of the e-sports field be appropriate? Or do you mean something specifically related to e-sports?
If you have previous experience as a writer surely that is relevant for an SC2 writer position :-)
On January 09 2013 19:38 EnumaAvalon wrote: I would love to join but I don't think I have the resources to even watch a league online, never mind attend a tournament!
That's why they give passes for SC2 leagues to their writers.
On January 09 2013 15:35 jiberish wrote: Wow they do it for free. Now I appreciate their write ups even more.
So sad that most of the fantastic articles get 5 pages of comments even though they have gorgeous artwork and amazing writing... and a 20 word post with a pasted Tweet from Destiny gets 100 pages in 24 hours.
I think a reason of this cause it's a different section. Even when you select the sc2 forum from the top bar you don't get to the news stuff. Hell its only recently i found those recaps/previews exist at all.
On January 09 2013 15:35 jiberish wrote: Wow they do it for free. Now I appreciate their write ups even more.
So sad that most of the fantastic articles get 5 pages of comments even though they have gorgeous artwork and amazing writing... and a 20 word post with a pasted Tweet from Destiny gets 100 pages in 24 hours.
I think a reason of this cause it's a different section. Even when you select the sc2 forum from the top bar you don't get to the news stuff. Hell its only recently i found those recaps/previews exist at all.
What? You have almost 3000 posts. Are you serious? O_O
On January 09 2013 15:35 jiberish wrote: Wow they do it for free. Now I appreciate their write ups even more.
So sad that most of the fantastic articles get 5 pages of comments even though they have gorgeous artwork and amazing writing... and a 20 word post with a pasted Tweet from Destiny gets 100 pages in 24 hours.
I think a reason of this cause it's a different section. Even when you select the sc2 forum from the top bar you don't get to the news stuff. Hell its only recently i found those recaps/previews exist at all.
What? You have almost 3000 posts. Are you serious? O_O
I am unfortunately. Makes me sad thinking about what i missed during some preview and recaps of certain tournaments
On January 09 2013 15:32 spalding wrote: Seems absolutely ridiculous not to pay people for something that requires so much work and will get you money too.
I dont think TL is trying to reach out to proffssional writers who wants to get paid, they are reaching out to those who like writing, likes esports, and want a cool "hobby" on the side, wich is helping out a great site and a great community with writing articles etc. If you want pay, you go somewhere els, simple as that
The thing is TL.net is a business venture, not an amateur site run by fans, at least no more.
This is the only reason I even brought the topic up, I view TL now as a business. Given the comment earlier in the thread though I may be ignorant towards the profit side of things.
I think most of you are severly overestimating the profit of the website. There is only 1 banner with an ad on the site so that doesn´t make a lot of money for them. And a lot of people use adblock so the site doesn´t get anything from them at all. The only other source of income is the margin between cost and sellprice of the articles in the store (assuming this goes to the site and not the team).
The costs on the otherside are: - Access for the writers to leagues - Servercost - Fulltime admin staff (and they work really long days) - Miscelanious and things I can´t think of right now
So in they end there just isn´t any money to pay the other people that volunteer on the site. There are about 250 people involved in the writing/translating/graphics/moderating etc. and no way to pay them all.
If they end up with a little extra cash, most of the time, they also invest it back into the community through something like a tournament with prizemoney.
Perhaps when the revenue increases a bit more the senior members of the different volunteerteams can get some income but it will be a long way of before all volunteers can get a monetary compensation.
----
To bad I don´t have the insight for the stories etc. they are asking for. Lately I found I watch most streams while doing other responsibilities so I don´t really pick up on the details
I'm sure they make quite a bit from that single ad, this site has a lot of pageviews. Another revenue stream, the TL store (which has sold out of thousands of t-shirts and other items), has to bring in a decent amount of money. Not to mention miscellaneous things such as the documentary they released "Liquid Rising" which had over $50,000 donated to it.
I am not claiming to know the finances of Team Liquid however I think people are severely underestimating it's profitability.
On January 09 2013 15:32 spalding wrote: Seems absolutely ridiculous not to pay people for something that requires so much work and will get you money too.
I dont think TL is trying to reach out to proffssional writers who wants to get paid, they are reaching out to those who like writing, likes esports, and want a cool "hobby" on the side, wich is helping out a great site and a great community with writing articles etc. If you want pay, you go somewhere els, simple as that
The thing is TL.net is a business venture, not an amateur site run by fans, at least no more.
This is the only reason I even brought the topic up, I view TL now as a business. Given the comment earlier in the thread though I may be ignorant towards the profit side of things.
I think most of you are severly overestimating the profit of the website. There is only 1 banner with an ad on the site so that doesn´t make a lot of money for them. And a lot of people use adblock so the site doesn´t get anything from them at all. The only other source of income is the margin between cost and sellprice of the articles in the store (assuming this goes to the site and not the team).
The costs on the otherside are: - Access for the writers to leagues - Servercost - Fulltime admin staff (and they work really long days) - Miscelanious and things I can´t think of right now
So in they end there just isn´t any money to pay the other people that volunteer on the site. There are about 250 people involved in the writing/translating/graphics/moderating etc. and no way to pay them all.
If they end up with a little extra cash, most of the time, they also invest it back into the community through something like a tournament with prizemoney.
Perhaps when the revenue increases a bit more the senior members of the different volunteerteams can get some income but it will be a long way of before all volunteers can get a monetary compensation.
----
To bad I don´t have the insight for the stories etc. they are asking for. Lately I found I watch most streams while doing other responsibilities so I don´t really pick up on the details
I'm sure they make quite a bit from that single ad, this site has a lot of pageviews. Also, you are forgetting another revenue stream, the TL store (which has sold out of thousands of t-shirts and other items). Not to mention miscellaneous things such as the documentary they released "Liquid Rising" which had over $50,000 donated to it.
I am not claiming to know the finances of Team Liquid however I think people are severely underestimating it's profitability.
The team and the site are two different entities as far as I know. You don't know where the profit from the store goes to or any profit for that matter
On January 09 2013 20:54 Aunvilgod wrote: Why would TL give people money for doing stuff like that. There are quite a few people doing it for free anyways.
I think TL and other sites value their writers work and would pay them if they could. Hell, even Cadred.org doesn't offer salary to their writers (as far as i remember reading their recruiting posts) and they are fairly big site, aren't they?
IMO this is great opportunity to get some experience and get better as a writer. If i would be interested and capable of doing stuff like this, i wouldn't hesitate to apply and work for free. Even getting tournament pass is great for starters.
On January 09 2013 15:35 jiberish wrote: Wow they do it for free. Now I appreciate their write ups even more.
So sad that most of the fantastic articles get 5 pages of comments even though they have gorgeous artwork and amazing writing... and a 20 word post with a pasted Tweet from Destiny gets 100 pages in 24 hours.
I think a reason of this cause it's a different section. Even when you select the sc2 forum from the top bar you don't get to the news stuff. Hell its only recently i found those recaps/previews exist at all.
What? You have almost 3000 posts. Are you serious? O_O
I am unfortunately. Makes me sad thinking about what i missed during some preview and recaps of certain tournaments
You missed all of my terrible puns and Inca jokes T_T
On January 09 2013 15:35 jiberish wrote: Wow they do it for free. Now I appreciate their write ups even more.
So sad that most of the fantastic articles get 5 pages of comments even though they have gorgeous artwork and amazing writing... and a 20 word post with a pasted Tweet from Destiny gets 100 pages in 24 hours.
I think a reason of this cause it's a different section. Even when you select the sc2 forum from the top bar you don't get to the news stuff. Hell its only recently i found those recaps/previews exist at all.
Wow, seriously? There are people who visit the sc2 forums instead of the front page? O_o
On January 09 2013 15:32 spalding wrote: Seems absolutely ridiculous not to pay people for something that requires so much work and will get you money too.
I dont think TL is trying to reach out to proffssional writers who wants to get paid, they are reaching out to those who like writing, likes esports, and want a cool "hobby" on the side, wich is helping out a great site and a great community with writing articles etc. If you want pay, you go somewhere els, simple as that
The thing is TL.net is a business venture, not an amateur site run by fans, at least no more.
This is the only reason I even brought the topic up, I view TL now as a business. Given the comment earlier in the thread though I may be ignorant towards the profit side of things.
I think most of you are severly overestimating the profit of the website. There is only 1 banner with an ad on the site so that doesn´t make a lot of money for them. And a lot of people use adblock so the site doesn´t get anything from them at all. The only other source of income is the margin between cost and sellprice of the articles in the store (assuming this goes to the site and not the team).
The costs on the otherside are: - Access for the writers to leagues - Servercost - Fulltime admin staff (and they work really long days) - Miscelanious and things I can´t think of right now
So in they end there just isn´t any money to pay the other people that volunteer on the site. There are about 250 people involved in the writing/translating/graphics/moderating etc. and no way to pay them all.
If they end up with a little extra cash, most of the time, they also invest it back into the community through something like a tournament with prizemoney.
Perhaps when the revenue increases a bit more the senior members of the different volunteerteams can get some income but it will be a long way of before all volunteers can get a monetary compensation.
----
To bad I don´t have the insight for the stories etc. they are asking for. Lately I found I watch most streams while doing other responsibilities so I don´t really pick up on the details
I'm sure they make quite a bit from that single ad, this site has a lot of pageviews. Another revenue stream, the TL store (which has sold out of thousands of t-shirts and other items), has to bring in a decent amount of money. Not to mention miscellaneous things such as the documentary they released "Liquid Rising" which had over $50,000 donated to it.
I am not claiming to know the finances of Team Liquid however I think people are severely underestimating it's profitability.
I think you're severely, severely over-estimating it.
Btw, I've been a volunteer here now for about 7-8ish years or so and have never received a dime, nor would I want to.
Why are people even arguing about the pay; don't apply if it puts you off.. A better question would be: How much emphasis do you place on one's moderation history?
Why need money when u can get herO Taeja TLO and all the rest of TL players signatures for free jk. Hope we will get more awesome writers in the future ^_^
On January 09 2013 15:28 TBone- wrote: Wow, that seems like an insane amount of effort for just volunteer work. I understand why your not paying them, but damn.
It's been like this for a long time in eSports; most sites run off the backs of a lot of volunteers. I can probably count on both hands how many people I know (in eSports) that were getting paid as writers. I was lucky enough to be paid for a period of time, but you're right that it ends up being a lot of work. Gets really hard to justify for some people without compensation, especially those where their heart isn't in it.
I probably could have applied for this position a few months back. I was watching an incredible amount of sc2, basically every offline tournament and daily streams.
Maybe if my interest is rekindled in HOTS, I could look into a position.
Really nice to see them recruiting for even more content providers.
As a writer, I'd love to find a position at a prominent organization such as Team Liquid, but there's no way I'd do it for free. Not because of a lack of passion, but because I've worked in eSports for free for too long and no longer have time for it with a full time job. As well as I'm sure many people here feel the same, I also that know many people are available to help benefit eSports for the sake of the game.
I wish I had good grammer and decent writing skills, I think it would be awesome to write for TL but I am no where near the quality that they would need t.t If you are a decent writer totally do it. Plus I bet you get the **I am a writer on TL** Icon and thats awesome
If you don't have the motivation and the passion to do it for free, why the fuck would anyone want to hire you? Most esports jobs happen when people do something from the heart, for a really long time, and do it damn well, and then someone decides to support them financially.
On January 09 2013 19:38 EnumaAvalon wrote: I would love to join but I don't think I have the resources to even watch a league online, never mind attend a tournament!
That's why they give passes for SC2 leagues to their writers.
I mean internet and stuff. Our country's internet is sub par. Can't watch anything streamed unless I pay more than what I should. Even that is not a guarantee.
I know I'm not a talented writer, but that doesn't stop me from writing my own creative articles from time to time independently. The Spotlight section was made for people like me
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.
On January 09 2013 16:11 i99 wrote: its incredibly scummy for a website like TL which is a starcraft team + #1 starcraft site that makes a lot of money based on the great content that is available to not pay for its writers.
Though I would like to hear the reasons why such a demanding position comes without pay.
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.
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
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
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.
This is great for people are looking to produce some content for future endeavors. Volunteer work always works out in the end, as long as you enjoy what you are doing. If you don't it will feel like a waste of time.
I hope the people that take this on are passionate enough to continue through this beyond this first event they have to cover.
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).
This is something I would love to do as I don't really contribute too much to the site however I know after several weeks I wouldn't be able to keep up with demand :/
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...
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.
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.
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.
If people suddenly started getting paid for their work, their incentive to work harder might change. Now they're writing because it's a hobby. It's their passion. But if suddenly money is involved, that will definitely change their perspective on things. Sometimes, physical incentives are not necessary, and introducing them only makes things worse.
On January 09 2013 15:09 StarStruck wrote: Good luck to all those who apply! AirbladeOrange with so many tournaments and the pick-up of games like DotA2 can you really say you're surprised?
Actually yeah because it's just for SC2 writers. And with talks of the scene in decline and many peoples' waning interest I'd expect DOTA2 to gain all the momentum here. But it looks like it's just TL kicking up their standards for tournament coverage which I am not surprised about. TL has high standards and usually delivers.
I'd do the work for free. And a lot of people clearly do. I also edit Liquipedia, and expect no money from that. It may well take up a lot of time, but I do it in my free time and as a hobby, so that's fine for me. And honestly, 2400 words a week isn't that bad. If you don't have the time to do it, fine you won't be able to. But for the people who do and are willing to do it for free then I see no problem with them doing it for free. EDIT: Also is it OK if you go over the word limit? I'm doing a very TL-esque preview for group e of the up/downs and I am not sure I can keep it in the word limit ^^
On January 09 2013 18:37 Hiea wrote: I don't quite get why people are against volunteer positions, you decide whether you want, and of course there is requirements, so it's up to you if you want to do it.
Take for example, DreamHack, they are a big organisation and how many volunteers do you think they have?
Around 500, These can be anything from helping to setup the event, maintain it during the event, and clean up after, now their reward? I heard something about getting a free DH pass the next year, or a discount, which is the same that TL is giving the volunteers, passes to events (Online), you do less than the volunteers at DreamHack and get less rewards.
I would like to contribute but covering events outside of Europe is outside my limitations as the time zones will fuck me up for school :/
There's a big difference between being a volunteer worker for DreamHack and a volunteer writer for TL. First of all, you would only work about two weeks for DreamHack, TL has you working year round. Second, DH workers spend less than 100 hours there, while TL writers easily spend two or three times more. Third, this is a full time job while DH volunteering is not.
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.
I really don't understand what you are trying to say. Do you disagree with how we presented the post or our philosophy in general? You seem to take issue with the way we present it, but everything I said in my post about volunteerism and TL is true. You seem to think it is some sort of subtle manipulation or "playing the emotional card" to hypocritically gain more profits, well if you are set on that there is nothing I can really say to dissuade you from that.
The bottom line is there is no deceit here, we don't promise payment or even the a substantial opportunity of future payment. Our writers know that very few make it to fulltime employment within ESPORTS. They simply enjoy doing what they do, and find reasons that are rewarding outside of money. You're comparing us to some sort of organized religion that exploits its members, laughing at people and saying "how can you work for free!??!" Why do artists paint and writers without the end goal of selling their product? Why do people make fan videos? Not everything is driven by money.
What you are suggesting is that there exists a model where people can be paid wages to write about ESPORTS but TL chooses not to because we're attempting to cut costs and make more profits. Unfortunately there is nothing more I can say about this accusation other than it's not true. Right now the industry isn't at a point where TL paying writers is feasible. You also seem to think this will somehow be the downfall of our website and you won't "cry when we're gone" well we'll simply just disagree on that.
On January 10 2013 02:02 kollin wrote: I'd do the work for free. And a lot of people clearly do. I also edit Liquipedia, and expect no money from that. It may well take up a lot of time, but I do it in my free time and as a hobby, so that's fine for me. And honestly, 2400 words a week isn't that bad. If you don't have the time to do it, fine you won't be able to. But for the people who do and are willing to do it for free then I see no problem with them doing it for free. EDIT: Also is it OK if you go over the word limit? I'm doing a very TL-esque preview for group e of the up/downs and I am not sure I can keep it in the word limit ^^
2400 words is absolute max. If its word longer than that, no one will read it!
I appreciate the work you guys do, especially those who edit Liquipedia. Big up.
On January 09 2013 18:37 Hiea wrote: I don't quite get why people are against volunteer positions, you decide whether you want, and of course there is requirements, so it's up to you if you want to do it.
Take for example, DreamHack, they are a big organisation and how many volunteers do you think they have?
Around 500, These can be anything from helping to setup the event, maintain it during the event, and clean up after, now their reward? I heard something about getting a free DH pass the next year, or a discount, which is the same that TL is giving the volunteers, passes to events (Online), you do less than the volunteers at DreamHack and get less rewards.
I would like to contribute but covering events outside of Europe is outside my limitations as the time zones will fuck me up for school :/
There's a big difference between being a volunteer worker for DreamHack and a volunteer writer for TL. First of all, you would only work about two weeks for DreamHack, TL has you working year round. Second, DH workers spend less than 100 hours there, while TL writers easily spend two or three times more. Third, this is a full time job while DH volunteering is not.
I don't know if you're being serious, but covering a league is not a full time job, it's not even actually close to a full time job. Where do you see people being forced into yearly positions? You can cover a league for one or two seasons and then stop, you can write a few editorials and that's it.
I feel like you have a very inaccurate perception of what it means to be a TL volunteer writer...
On January 10 2013 02:02 kollin wrote: I'd do the work for free. And a lot of people clearly do. I also edit Liquipedia, and expect no money from that. It may well take up a lot of time, but I do it in my free time and as a hobby, so that's fine for me. And honestly, 2400 words a week isn't that bad. If you don't have the time to do it, fine you won't be able to. But for the people who do and are willing to do it for free then I see no problem with them doing it for free. EDIT: Also is it OK if you go over the word limit? I'm doing a very TL-esque preview for group e of the up/downs and I am not sure I can keep it in the word limit ^^
2400 words is absolute max. If its word longer than that, no one will read it!
I appreciate the work you guys do, especially those who edit Liquipedia. Big up.
My article will probably be about 1000, not too bad ^^ And thanks for the, err...thanks :D Always nice to see what you do is appreciated.
On January 10 2013 01:46 Luftmensch wrote: 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.
The funny thing is, that all the whine about money would have been spot on 6-8 years ago where banner commercials was hot and investors threw all their money into potential new large websites. Today, sadly, banner commercials are almost a joke, and therefor most online-only media is struggling or at least not bathing in money.
See, I actually know since I started and ran the StarCraft II section on the largest danish eSport website (xplayn.com) for about a year. My pay? A steelseries headset. And in some periods I worked at least twice of what TL is asking.
What people obviously don't get is that its about fucking passion. It's about having some knowledge and wanting a platform where you can show it to others like; "Look at this shit? Isn't this awesome/stupid/funny?!". And when you reach an audience and they respond with "Fuck yeah this is awesome/stupid/funny!", it's worth every second spend.
Now, if just my English wasn't so bad it made me feel awkward, i would apply in a heartbeat. I actually applied for a position on a competing website some weeks ago but they never returned. Maybe it's time to do the thing that makes the least sense, start something from scratch. Because fuck money!
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.
This post is way over the top. The nice thing about volunteering is that it's voluntary, so if people don't like the fact TL is turning a profit (I'm guessing any profit is very small) in part based on their efforts, they don't have to help out. Even if TL was turning a huge profit, who cares? People might want to write for free for all sorts of reasons -- they simply enjoy it and appreciate an outlet that allows them to be read by a reasonably large audience; they're trying to break into e-sports and want to rub elbows with people who are on the scene, etc. Is TL bad because they would allow these people (who want to write about e-sports for free) to write about e-sports for no pay? What are you angry about?
TL is a community not an outsider venture capitalist company that has a 'genius' business plan to harness free labour. Things get done because people in the community are interested and passionate about furthering the community and if 'volunteerism' seems odious, then this is not for you.
In my opinion, we cannot yet pay enough of the actual people competing, so then why would there magically be all this cash lying around for people to write about said competitors? We are fortunate that a couple people get paid, but it seems people are taking that for granted. No doubt 95% of what happens on TL, happens because of volunteers.
Sorry, just thought of another question, sorry for not having them in a single post. Is it OK if I do a preview of the group E of the up and downs and send it in after the up and downs have been played. I only ask because I'm not sure if I can do that and a recap by tomorrow essentially, and while I'll do my best I'd rather not take any chances.
On January 10 2013 03:59 kollin wrote: Sorry, just thought of another question, sorry for not having them in a single post. Is it OK if I do a preview of the group E of the up and downs and send it in after the up and downs have been played. I only ask because I'm not sure if I can do that and a recap by tomorrow essentially, and while I'll do my best I'd rather not take any chances.
This recruitment is open until January 31st, so you don't have to finish it by tomorrow.
On January 10 2013 02:45 Hot_Bid wrote: I don't know if you're being serious, but covering a league is not a full time job, it's not even actually close to a full time job.
I'm not sure if you meant it this way, but the comment came off kind of trivializing (or I'm reading it that way because I'm a writer myself).
If we're talking about real coverage, one league could be more than enough than a full-time job. Previews, battle reports/recaps, interviews, editorials by one person for that one league. Nevermind the actual writing, watching all the coverage and matches, taking notes, and preparing to write, you're looking at a bulky amount of work each week (depending on each league of course, some play daily etc...). Of course, if you lower the amount of content you want to produce, and divide one person per task, then sure, it's not much.
I think it's sad that people are even complaining about shit like this being unpaid. I never imagined a day that people would demand to be paid for a writer spot or a spot on Liquipedia.
Maybe I never imagined it as such when I actually cared. I always wanted to help out simply because I enjoyed it. Twas a hobby and a passion to do what I can to share eSports with others. Now I understand that this has gotten bigger, but it still puts a on my face.
Hot_Bid wrote: I really don't understand what you are trying to say. Do you disagree with how we presented the post or our philosophy in general? You seem to take issue with the way we present it, but everything I said in my post about volunteerism and TL is true. You seem to think it is some sort of subtle manipulation or "playing the emotional card" to hypocritically gain more profits, well if you are set on that there is nothing I can really say to dissuade you from that.
The bottom line is there is no deceit here, we don't promise payment or even the a substantial opportunity of future payment. Our writers know that very few make it to fulltime employment within ESPORTS. They simply enjoy doing what they do, and find reasons that are rewarding outside of money.
What I disagree with is the demagogy used as justification of the situation. When people started mentioning the unpaid part, you could have simply responded with "Sorry, but we cannot pay a salary to these new writers" and that's it. It may be a bit cold, but it is a clean way to do it because it is a fact. However you decided to add those things about how other writers write for free as well and how they do it out of love and passion and whatnot. You may or may not have done that purposefully, but either way I now have to take into consideration that there is a chance it was done with said manipulation in mind. The effect you've achieved is now worse than if you simply chose to avoid answering why the writers will not get paid. I am fully aware that these actions will not bite you in the behind because people love thinking with their hearts and they love TL and want to help, I'm just giving you an objective view of the situation.
Hot_Bid wrote: You're comparing us to some sort of organized religion that exploits its members, laughing at people and saying "how can you work for free!??!"
I'm not sure I understood this correctly. I didn't say you laugh at people, I mentioned the organized religions because of how they count on the emotional in people for their money/time. What you said about how people who volunteer for TL do that out of love and passion for TL, it just reminded me of it. Imagine a "help repaint your church" kind of situation.
Hot_Bid wrote: Why do artists paint and writers without the end goal of selling their product? Why do people make fan videos? Not everything is driven by money.
Research has shown that some of the greatest inventions in history were driven purely by passion and not the desire to make money off of them. I completely agree with you on that one. However, what you want here is free quality content for your for-profit website. When they publish an article on TL, from then on it belongs to TL, not to them. If you are not willing or able to pay them salaries but still appropriate their work, then some drastic changes are required to point 6, paragraph 1 of your Terms Of Use in order for it to be at least somewhat fair for the said writers.
Hot_Bid wrote: What you are suggesting is that there exists a model where people can be paid wages to write about ESPORTS but TL chooses not to because we're attempting to cut costs and make more profits. Unfortunately there is nothing more I can say about this accusation other than it's not true.
I wasn't talking about that when I mentioned "business model", but when you now mention that, a model which you just described certainly could exist. Without making the company's business model and finances public, we, the public, can not know either way. Oh and, please, don't say that you don't want to cut costs as much as you can and make profits as much as you can because that would be an outright lie.
Hot_Bid wrote: You also seem to think this will somehow be the downfall of our website and you won't "cry when we're gone" well we'll simply just disagree on that.
No, I actually don't think at all that this is the downfall, I'm just saying that if you can't make a business model that works to a 100%, then you should switch to a Wikipedia style non-profit model because this "half this half that" is in a gray area and there will always be doubts while it is so.
On January 10 2013 01:46 Luftmensch wrote: 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.
And no one will cry when you're gone.
Well I do have family and friends, this offensive post is quite silly.
On January 10 2013 01:46 Luftmensch wrote: 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.
And no one will cry when you're gone.
Well I do have family and friends, this offensive post is quite silly.
He meant gone from TL, not from life or something harsh like that. Just clarifying.
On January 10 2013 03:19 The_Darkness wrote: What are you angry about?
I'm honestly more sad than angry. I am an opponent of volunteerism in a capitalistic society but what struck a nerve so that I had to say something, I already wrote in my first post. There are ideological reasons to why I oppose volunteerism in capitalism but this isn't the place to discuss them.
On January 10 2013 03:47 Falling wrote: Meh. I had a big argument, but it's not worth it.
TL is a community not an outsider venture capitalist company that has a 'genius' business plan to harness free labour. Things get done because people in the community are interested and passionate about furthering the community and if 'volunteerism' seems odious, then this is not for you.
In my opinion, we cannot yet pay enough of the actual people competing, so then why would there magically be all this cash lying around for people to write about said competitors? We are fortunate that a couple people get paid, but it seems people are taking that for granted. No doubt 95% of what happens on TL, happens because of volunteers.
Then just ditch the for-profit model, embrace the Wikipedia-like style non-profit model and I'll be a happy camper.
Except they are both owned by the same company and expecting people who complain about paying $20 for a weekend of high level Starcraft 2 to donate is not going to happen.
Not sure whether I'd be efficient/prolific enough, or even good enough for the position in the first place. Might apply though, will have to see after exams or so. Wish there were more editorial positions available since I'm actually a decent editor (or so I like to think). Editorship implies holistic knowledge, however, which I may not have with regard to the entire scene. Still definitely intrigued, though.
On January 10 2013 03:59 kollin wrote: Sorry, just thought of another question, sorry for not having them in a single post. Is it OK if I do a preview of the group E of the up and downs and send it in after the up and downs have been played. I only ask because I'm not sure if I can do that and a recap by tomorrow essentially, and while I'll do my best I'd rather not take any chances.
This recruitment is open until January 31st, so you don't have to finish it by tomorrow.
Taking into consideration that all foreseeable positions are occupied by January 31st, is there still a chance to apply afterwards outside of this recruitment drive?
On January 10 2013 04:16 Roffles wrote: I think it's sad that people are even complaining about shit like this being unpaid. I never imagined a day that people would demand to be paid for a writer spot or a spot on Liquipedia.
Maybe I never imagined it as such when I actually cared. I always wanted to help out simply because I enjoyed it. Twas a hobby and a passion to do what I can to share eSports with others. Now I understand that this has gotten bigger, but it still puts a on my face.
So was I, and not only a writer, but also the head of WGTour's ladder, an editor, a translator. I helped out in many tournaments, organized a few myself and co-ran a freakishly successful team. 16-hour work days were not a rare occurance. All that for years, all that for free, fueled only by my immense passion for the game and my love for the people who gathered around it; our starcraft community, *my* community. That said, however, time's are changing. TL.net (both the site and the team) is a for-profit venture, it's as simple as that. If it relies so heavily on volunteer work than its business model needs to be changed. TL.net does look for new ways of monetizing the community, albeit not as aggressively as it could have, and rightly so (the so-called liquid "documentary" was followed by a plead for donations, the english proleague 720p cast is subscription based, the TSL+ was a monetizing effort, as well). A model completely relying on volunteer work was a must in the past, because nobody was getting anything. A for-profit organization relying on the same model just looks wrong, at least in my book.
With the immense growth of esports came change, yes, but it's not limited to the community, to the mentality of people - it struck everyone the same, our beloved tl.net included.
On January 10 2013 03:47 Falling wrote: Meh. I had a big argument, but it's not worth it.
TL is a community not an outsider venture capitalist company that has a 'genius' business plan to harness free labour. Things get done because people in the community are interested and passionate about furthering the community and if 'volunteerism' seems odious, then this is not for you.
It's still a community site, but the method and goal of running the site has changed since this site started. I didn't follow bw or this site before SC 2, so I don't feel the same nostalgic feel everyone else has about volunteer work back in the day. What I do know is one of the first articles I read on this site (I can't find it right now) shortly after SC 2 launched was that their philosophy behind running this site was changing from a non-profit site to a for profit site. Was a big article by Nazgul I believe. I can't remember it all since it was over 2 years ago.
I'm not saying it's wrong for TL to use all the volunteers wanting to work for free in esports as I've said it's smart of them to do so and regular for profit businesses would jump at the chance to have a volunteer work force as well. TL is using the conditions of their industry to their advantage and I can't fault them for that.
You also have to understand that TL is a business just like any other company now. They currently have a monopoly on this type of site and it's basically impossible for any other site to compete with TL now as it's too entrenched into the Startcraft scene. Wellplayed tried and failed and I remember reading one of their frustrations was that TL would never feature any of their events on their calendar because obviously, they were a competing site. TL is just as cut throat as any other business trying to protect their domain and I just feel some people forget that fact and still feel TL is run the same as it was when it was non profit site.
Do I believe the site makes as much as others claim? Probably not, but I also don't believe it makes as little as people like hot bid claim.
On January 10 2013 03:47 Falling wrote: Meh. I had a big argument, but it's not worth it.
TL is a community not an outsider venture capitalist company that has a 'genius' business plan to harness free labour. Things get done because people in the community are interested and passionate about furthering the community and if 'volunteerism' seems odious, then this is not for you.
In my opinion, we cannot yet pay enough of the actual people competing, so then why would there magically be all this cash lying around for people to write about said competitors? We are fortunate that a couple people get paid, but it seems people are taking that for granted. No doubt 95% of what happens on TL, happens because of volunteers.
Then just ditch the for-profit model, embrace the Wikipedia-like style non-profit model and I'll be a happy camper.
so ask everyone for donations non stop rather than running a for profit? fuck that. its annoying a s fuck seeing those donation banners on wikipedia. i'd much rather see ads.
I will try to apply, paid or not, I just will write for my passions and love for the game, not things like money. Think of this as volunteering almost, a beneficial act for the community that is done more for one's passion for the act, rather than financial motivations.
Hot_Bid wrote: I really don't understand what you are trying to say. Do you disagree with how we presented the post or our philosophy in general? You seem to take issue with the way we present it, but everything I said in my post about volunteerism and TL is true. You seem to think it is some sort of subtle manipulation or "playing the emotional card" to hypocritically gain more profits, well if you are set on that there is nothing I can really say to dissuade you from that.
The bottom line is there is no deceit here, we don't promise payment or even the a substantial opportunity of future payment. Our writers know that very few make it to fulltime employment within ESPORTS. They simply enjoy doing what they do, and find reasons that are rewarding outside of money.
What I disagree with is the demagogy used as justification of the situation. When people started mentioning the unpaid part, you could have simply responded with "Sorry, but we cannot pay a salary to these new writers" and that's it. It may be a bit cold, but it is a clean way to do it because it is a fact. However you decided to add those things about how other writers write for free as well and how they do it out of love and passion and whatnot. You may or may not have done that purposefully, but either way I now have to take into consideration that there is a chance it was done with said manipulation in mind. The effect you've achieved is now worse than if you simply chose to avoid answering why the writers will not get paid. I am fully aware that these actions will not bite you in the behind because people love thinking with their hearts and they love TL and want to help, I'm just giving you an objective view of the situation.
We have always been honest and upfront about these kinds of things with community members, and this is no different. We simply don't care that some people may feel there is a chance that it's emotional manipulation. All the stuff we wrote about motivations and all that is true, and partially in response to users asking "why would people do this for no pay?" Frankly, just because you feel it its the "cleaner" way to remove all doubt about possible manipulation doesn't mean we're going to sacrifice openness and communication with our potential contributors. You can either believe us or not.
Hot_Bid wrote: You're comparing us to some sort of organized religion that exploits its members, laughing at people and saying "how can you work for free!??!"
I'm not sure I understood this correctly. I didn't say you laugh at people, I mentioned the organized religions because of how they count on the emotional in people for their money/time. What you said about how people who volunteer for TL do that out of love and passion for TL, it just reminded me of it. Imagine a "help repaint your church" kind of situation.
I only brought this up because organized religion has all sorts of issues that we don't typically deal with, especially in the United States. We don't ask for donations, we're not tax exempt, we don't expect our contributors to pray for TL. The fact that I have to list differences here for you is really silly, since the analogy you made in the first place comparing us to a religion is just unreasonable and frankly kind of insulting.
Hot_Bid wrote: Why do artists paint and writers without the end goal of selling their product? Why do people make fan videos? Not everything is driven by money.
Research has shown that some of the greatest inventions in history were driven purely by passion and not the desire to make money off of them. I completely agree with you on that one. However, what you want here is free quality content for your for-profit website. When they publish an article on TL, from then on it belongs to TL, not to them. If you are not willing or able to pay them salaries but still appropriate their work, then some drastic changes are required to point 6, paragraph 1 of your Terms Of Use in order for it to be at least somewhat fair for the said writers.
What makes something fair and not fair? I'm not going to get into a debate on why TL needs to own the content that we put out on our front page, because the implications are obvious there. It seems again you are very hung up on the fact that there is no monetary compensation, when in fact there is plenty of intangible non-monetary gains and rewards that our writers feel make it worth it for themselves. I posted some of these earlier, but you again said that it was manipulative to state what these possibly could be. You seem to believe that money is the only form of compensation, it is not.
Hot_Bid wrote: What you are suggesting is that there exists a model where people can be paid wages to write about ESPORTS but TL chooses not to because we're attempting to cut costs and make more profits. Unfortunately there is nothing more I can say about this accusation other than it's not true.
I wasn't talking about that when I mentioned "business model", but when you now mention that, a model which you just described certainly could exist. Without making the company's business model and finances public, we, the public, can not know either way. Oh and, please, don't say that you don't want to cut costs as much as you can and make profits as much as you can because that would be an outright lie.
The model I described obviously could exist but doesn't. Will it exist in the future? Maybe. I was responding to your accusation that the model exists and is viable right now but TL doesn't do it because we want to hoard money. That is what I said was not true, not that in general we want to keep costs down.
Hot_Bid wrote: You also seem to think this will somehow be the downfall of our website and you won't "cry when we're gone" well we'll simply just disagree on that.
No, I actually don't think at all that this is the downfall, I'm just saying that if you can't make a business model that works to a 100%, then you should switch to a Wikipedia style non-profit model because this "half this half that" is in a gray area and there will always be doubts while it is so.
First, you seem to believe that just because our volunteers aren't paid means our business model "doesn't work." Do you feel other for-profit enterprises that have volunteers don't have business models that work? Volunteer work is pretty common in even mainstream sports, for example NFL cheerleaders receive virtually nominal pay ($100 a game or something) for essentially another fulltime job. Why do they do it? There are intangible nonmonetary benefits, personal and otherwise. Just like here. Many sports writers employed fulltime by sports teams are unpaid internships. Is it because the Yankees are manipulating their ballboys to accept lower than minimum wage? I don't believe so.
Second, you make it sound so easy to just "be" Wikipedia, a site with over 35 million users and 2.7 billion monthly pageviews. Let's not enter into a debate about whether a yearly donation drive asking for handouts from an audience that is notoriously made up of young frugal college students who already pay for content across a lot of other ESPORTS channels is wise or not. I would say "we need your donations to survive!!!" from our audience demographic is far more ethically dubious than asking for volunteer writers who know exactly what they're getting into.
Lastly, I would argue that allowing non-monetary contributions like writing and liquipedia editing is far more rewarding and mutually beneficial for people that want to contribute to TL than strictly donating money to us. If you notice, we don't ask for $ donations anywhere on this site, unlike the churches you seem to compare us to.
People will contribute to TL for free because they believe in what TL does. TL contributors know that there are some people that have paid positions at TL and some others that have ownership interests, and yet they still will contribute for free to TL because they believe in what TL does--no one is being exploited here.
Another model is EG's--they pay lots of people to do lots of things. Yet their web community presence is nothing compared to TL's. They work a different model and it works for them.
I am a highly educated and busy professional with tons of responsibilities and yet I am tempted to apply for these positions for the opportunity to give back to the scene and to do interesting work. I understand that I would be giving away content that could potentially used to profit myself--the trade off is that if I write for TL, thousands more people will immediately read it than if I try to make my own website.
Finally--TL writers make great content, but there are tons of grammatical and typographical errors that come with most of their posts. These would not be tolerated if TL had a highly paid writing and editing staff. TL gets what it pays for--if TL paid some writers, it could demand more professionalism. It relies on volunteers so, while it gets an admirable amount of well-produced and passionately driven content, it do not get the benefit of the accountability that a paid position would entail. I imagine that one reason TL is looking for an undetermined amount of volunteers rather than one or two full-time writers is that it has to deal with people suddenly flaking on projects, having scheduling conflicts, and all the other things that come with trying to get unpaid work from people. Hell, my business makes use of unpaid interns frequently--we don't expect much out of them, and only rarely do they produce usable work.
TL is a great example of synergy between a business and its customer-base/community. Nobody is being enslaved or fooled or exploited. Anyone smart enough to be picked as a TL writer is smart enough to understand the implications of being an unpaid worker.
...I should have spent this time doing my RL job, but instead I wrote, for free, about something I believed in. TL sure has me brainwashed ^____^
Finally--TL writers make great content, but there are tons of grammatical and typographical errors that come with most of their posts. These would not be tolerated if TL had a highly paid writing and editing staff. TL gets what it pays for--if TL paid some writers, it could demand more professionalism. It relies on volunteers so, while it gets an admirable amount of well-produced and passionately driven content, it do not get the benefit of the accountability that a paid position would entail. I imagine that one reason TL is looking for an undetermined amount of volunteers rather than one or two full-time writers is that it has to deal with people suddenly flaking on projects, having scheduling conflicts, and all the other things that come with trying to get unpaid work from people. Hell, my business makes use of unpaid interns frequently--we don't expect much out of them, and only rarely do they produce usable work.
I disagree with this sentiment rather strongly, as the grammar nazi within me searches through TL published material for errors like a Zerg player hunts down proxy pylons, and I rarely run into glaring errors. Small tense issues and the occasional implementation of unclear language pop up from time to time, but to suggest that TL published material is definitively "lower quality" is utter nonsense.
I completely agree with what Hot_Bid is saying here. The thing about writers getting compensation through means other than money is completely true. Here is a list of some of the rewards that I enjoy the most:
-Lifetime friends made on TL staff, and even just in the community with normal users. -Work experience doing something I really enjoy, and want to get better at. -Great thing to tell people if you are looking for other jobs in esports. -thousands of views on each article with many posts in response. Most of these posts are praising our work, which feels good. -Giving back to a community that helped shape my life(no joke, BW/SC2/dota has taken up most of my life). -Huge increase in E-Peen measurement(Just kidding)
These are just a few of the rewards btw. Some staff get great opportunities from time-to-time as well. An example would be monk going to China to cover wcs. He got a 5 star hotel, free tickets, backstage passes, was allowed to interview high profile pros and scene figureheads,etcetc. Most of the time TL staff get VIP passes when going to tournaments, and that is definitely a reward.
Finally--TL writers make great content, but there are tons of grammatical and typographical errors that come with most of their posts. These would not be tolerated if TL had a highly paid writing and editing staff. TL gets what it pays for--if TL paid some writers, it could demand more professionalism. It relies on volunteers so, while it gets an admirable amount of well-produced and passionately driven content, it do not get the benefit of the accountability that a paid position would entail. I imagine that one reason TL is looking for an undetermined amount of volunteers rather than one or two full-time writers is that it has to deal with people suddenly flaking on projects, having scheduling conflicts, and all the other things that come with trying to get unpaid work from people. Hell, my business makes use of unpaid interns frequently--we don't expect much out of them, and only rarely do they produce usable work.
I disagree with this sentiment rather strongly, as the grammar nazi within me searches through TL published material for errors like a Zerg player hunts down proxy pylons, and I rarely run into glaring errors. Small tense issues and the occasional implementation of unclear language pop up from time to time, but to suggest that TL published material is definitively "lower quality" is utter nonsense.
Yeah, especially the sc2 articles. These are near pristine from what I can tell. I will admit we have had a few problems with some Dota 2 articles, but this is due to only having one full time editor. With the recent move of me to doing more editing than writing, and a few others who are now editing, the articles should be near perfect as well.
On January 10 2013 05:24 kollin wrote: Also an icon. Bitches love icons.
oh yeah, good catch. Funny story actually. I met someone in one of my uni classes, and he saw me browsing TL. So he asked whether I visited often, and how I liked it,etc. And I was like, "I am staff dude, I visit the site almost 24/7". And he was like," omg do you get one of those sexy ass icons?".
On January 10 2013 05:47 Poopi wrote: Does the candidature of someone having a historic with bans has a chance to be accepted?
Yeah, ScintilliaSD writes a bit for our Dota 2 coverage. And ScintilliaSD is not his first account on TL
Not sure what the sc2 guys think, but I am sure if you haven't pissed them off personally, they wouldn't care too much. Depends on how bad your bans are as well.
On January 10 2013 05:05 Hot_Bid wrote:Lastly, I would argue that allowing non-monetary contributions like writing and liquipedia editing is far more rewarding and mutually beneficial for people that want to contribute to TL than strictly donating money to us. If you notice, we don't ask for $ donations anywhere on this site, unlike the churches you seem to compare us to.
There fly my dreams of ever hoarding money with my LP coins. Screw you Hot_Bid, my life is over now !
I don't get the people who ask for money in this thread. I admire the writers and their work so much, that the chance that I could be part of that gets me so excited that I started to prepare my application. Let alone the experience you get! So I don't get those, but maybe thats why they are probably not the right ones for a writer spot.
Hot_Bid wrote: I really don't understand what you are trying to say. Do you disagree with how we presented the post or our philosophy in general? You seem to take issue with the way we present it, but everything I said in my post about volunteerism and TL is true. You seem to think it is some sort of subtle manipulation or "playing the emotional card" to hypocritically gain more profits, well if you are set on that there is nothing I can really say to dissuade you from that.
The bottom line is there is no deceit here, we don't promise payment or even the a substantial opportunity of future payment. Our writers know that very few make it to fulltime employment within ESPORTS. They simply enjoy doing what they do, and find reasons that are rewarding outside of money.
What I disagree with is the demagogy used as justification of the situation. When people started mentioning the unpaid part, you could have simply responded with "Sorry, but we cannot pay a salary to these new writers" and that's it. It may be a bit cold, but it is a clean way to do it because it is a fact. However you decided to add those things about how other writers write for free as well and how they do it out of love and passion and whatnot. You may or may not have done that purposefully, but either way I now have to take into consideration that there is a chance it was done with said manipulation in mind. The effect you've achieved is now worse than if you simply chose to avoid answering why the writers will not get paid. I am fully aware that these actions will not bite you in the behind because people love thinking with their hearts and they love TL and want to help, I'm just giving you an objective view of the situation.
We have always been honest and upfront about these kinds of things with community members, and this is no different. We simply don't care that some people may feel there is a chance that it's emotional manipulation. All the stuff we wrote about motivations and all that is true, and partially in response to users asking "why would people do this for no pay?" Frankly, just because you feel it its the "cleaner" way to remove all doubt about possible manipulation doesn't mean we're going to sacrifice openness and communication with our potential contributors. You can either believe us or not.
Hot_Bid wrote: You're comparing us to some sort of organized religion that exploits its members, laughing at people and saying "how can you work for free!??!"
I'm not sure I understood this correctly. I didn't say you laugh at people, I mentioned the organized religions because of how they count on the emotional in people for their money/time. What you said about how people who volunteer for TL do that out of love and passion for TL, it just reminded me of it. Imagine a "help repaint your church" kind of situation.
I only brought this up because organized religion has all sorts of issues that we don't typically deal with, especially in the United States. We don't ask for donations, we're not tax exempt, we don't expect our contributors to pray for TL. The fact that I have to list differences here for you is really silly, since the analogy you made in the first place comparing us to a religion is just unreasonable and frankly kind of insulting.
Hot_Bid wrote: Why do artists paint and writers without the end goal of selling their product? Why do people make fan videos? Not everything is driven by money.
Research has shown that some of the greatest inventions in history were driven purely by passion and not the desire to make money off of them. I completely agree with you on that one. However, what you want here is free quality content for your for-profit website. When they publish an article on TL, from then on it belongs to TL, not to them. If you are not willing or able to pay them salaries but still appropriate their work, then some drastic changes are required to point 6, paragraph 1 of your Terms Of Use in order for it to be at least somewhat fair for the said writers.
What makes something fair and not fair? I'm not going to get into a debate on why TL needs to own the content that we put out on our front page, because the implications are obvious there. It seems again you are very hung up on the fact that there is no monetary compensation, when in fact there is plenty of intangible non-monetary gains and rewards that our writers feel make it worth it for themselves. I posted some of these earlier, but you again said that it was manipulative to state what these possibly could be. You seem to believe that money is the only form of compensation, it is not.
Hot_Bid wrote: What you are suggesting is that there exists a model where people can be paid wages to write about ESPORTS but TL chooses not to because we're attempting to cut costs and make more profits. Unfortunately there is nothing more I can say about this accusation other than it's not true.
I wasn't talking about that when I mentioned "business model", but when you now mention that, a model which you just described certainly could exist. Without making the company's business model and finances public, we, the public, can not know either way. Oh and, please, don't say that you don't want to cut costs as much as you can and make profits as much as you can because that would be an outright lie.
The model I described obviously could exist but doesn't. Will it exist in the future? Maybe. I was responding to your accusation that the model exists and is viable right now but TL doesn't do it because we want to hoard money. That is what I said was not true, not that in general we want to keep costs down.
Hot_Bid wrote: You also seem to think this will somehow be the downfall of our website and you won't "cry when we're gone" well we'll simply just disagree on that.
No, I actually don't think at all that this is the downfall, I'm just saying that if you can't make a business model that works to a 100%, then you should switch to a Wikipedia style non-profit model because this "half this half that" is in a gray area and there will always be doubts while it is so.
First, you seem to believe that just because our volunteers aren't paid means our business model "doesn't work." Do you feel other for-profit enterprises that have volunteers don't have business models that work? Volunteer work is pretty common in even mainstream sports, for example NFL cheerleaders receive virtually nominal pay ($100 a game or something) for essentially another fulltime job. Why do they do it? There are intangible nonmonetary benefits, personal and otherwise. Just like here. Many sports writers employed fulltime by sports teams are unpaid internships. Is it because the Yankees are manipulating their ballboys to accept lower than minimum wage? I don't believe so.
Second, you make it sound so easy to just "be" Wikipedia, a site with over 35 million users and 2.7 billion monthly pageviews. Let's not enter into a debate about whether a yearly donation drive asking for handouts from an audience that is notoriously made up of young frugal college students who already pay for content across a lot of other ESPORTS channels is wise or not. I would say "we need your donations to survive!!!" from our audience demographic is far more ethically dubious than asking for volunteer writers who know exactly what they're getting into.
Lastly, I would argue that allowing non-monetary contributions like writing and liquipedia editing is far more rewarding and mutually beneficial for people that want to contribute to TL than strictly donating money to us. If you notice, we don't ask for $ donations anywhere on this site, unlike the churches you seem to compare us to.
Of course you don't want to sacrifice openness and communication with your potential contributors... because they are free labor. That I do believe. Ok, I know I can be harsh and of course that everything you're saying could be completely true, benign and altruistic, it's just that I have to cover every possible angle. If you as a person value truth and full disclosure, you should appreciate what I'm doing here, at least from an objective point of view.
You're a little hung up on my comparison with organized religion even though I only used it as the most obvious representation of the "brand loyalty" kind of situation (the brand here is SC and TL as its main distributor). Exchange "religion" with "Apple" if it helps. I didn't have any intention to insult.
No, not everything is about money. Some of it is about intellectual property. Attribution and copyright to the writers who don't get paid for their work is the bare minimum that they should have. I'm avoiding the word "royalty" because it's "about money" but you know it should be there as well. I have a funny scenario in my mind where Fionn once again writes an article with every prediction wrong and then decides to call on his copyrighted material and pulls his article from the website. That of course shouldn't be able to happen and the article shouldn't be able to be pulled from the website, but if you don't buy his article, he should nonetheless have copyright to use it outside of TL in any way he wants.
Yes, I do believe your business model doesn't work. Again you are saying that "others do it too" which is not much of a comfort, because if there were no women willing to cheer in NFL for that nominal pay, what would happen? The teams would hire cheerleaders for full pay. What would happen if people weren't willing to write for TL for free? A big part of the problem are of course the people themselves. Lets mention the cheerleaders again: since the teams would have to hire people, volunteering reduces job opportunities. Every volunteer on a position that would have to have a paid worker anyway is devoiding that potential worker of putting bread on his table. That was an intentionally melodramatic way to put it, however it doesn't change the point.
You know what I do want for TL? I want for it to become the IMDb of esports, with a big paid staff, awesome production and great content. But we are at peak SC2 interest now and I don't see anything different about this site than it was 2 years ago.
No we are not at peak interest about SC2. You know why, because the foreign scene has only existed in a large capacity for 2 years. People don't get rich off of this yet. You do this for the love of the game and the love of the writing, not for the the dollars. If you disagree with that fine, but come back in 10 years when LotV has been released and TL maybe can support paid writing positions. Saying this is as good as it gets is just plain wrong.
On January 10 2013 05:23 TheEmulator wrote: I completely agree with what Hot_Bid is saying here. The thing about writers getting compensation through means other than money is completely true. Here is a list of some of the rewards that I enjoy the most:
-Lifetime friends made on TL staff, and even just in the community with normal users. -Work experience doing something I really enjoy, and want to get better at. -Great thing to tell people if you are looking for other jobs in esports. -thousands of views on each article with many posts in response. Most of these posts are praising our work, which feels good. -Giving back to a community that helped shape my life(no joke, BW/SC2/dota has taken up most of my life). -Huge increase in E-Peen measurement(Just kidding)
These are just a few of the rewards btw. Some staff get great opportunities from time-to-time as well. An example would be monk going to China to cover wcs. He got a 5 star hotel, free tickets, backstage passes, was allowed to interview high profile pros and scene figureheads,etcetc. Most of the time TL staff get VIP passes when going to tournaments, and that is definitely a reward.
If it was a paid position you would, in addition to all that, also be doing something you love for a living. Imagine how good would that feel.
Finally--TL writers make great content, but there are tons of grammatical and typographical errors that come with most of their posts. These would not be tolerated if TL had a highly paid writing and editing staff. TL gets what it pays for--if TL paid some writers, it could demand more professionalism. It relies on volunteers so, while it gets an admirable amount of well-produced and passionately driven content, it do not get the benefit of the accountability that a paid position would entail. I imagine that one reason TL is looking for an undetermined amount of volunteers rather than one or two full-time writers is that it has to deal with people suddenly flaking on projects, having scheduling conflicts, and all the other things that come with trying to get unpaid work from people. Hell, my business makes use of unpaid interns frequently--we don't expect much out of them, and only rarely do they produce usable work.
I disagree with this sentiment rather strongly, as the grammar nazi within me searches through TL published material for errors like a Zerg player hunts down proxy pylons, and I rarely run into glaring errors. Small tense issues and the occasional implementation of unclear language pop up from time to time, but to suggest that TL published material is definitively "lower quality" is utter nonsense.
Ok, perhaps I exaggerated the amount of errors in TL content--I find them frequently, but rarely more than one or two in a writeup. TL quality is great, but it is not the New York times. My point is that if TL paid writers and editors, the writers and editors could both focus more time on the small things that distinguish professionals from highly motivated amateurs. Also, people who are being paid know that they can be fired and will attend to these "small things" more closely. By relying on volunteers, TL cannot exert the level of control over employees that it could over paid positions.
That said, TL content is great. Just because TL is not the New York Times does not mean that TL < NYT. They are different beasts. I certainly do not suggest that "TL published material is definitively 'lower quality'"--a misquote by the way. TL is better than my business at motivating unpaid people because it's easier to get young people excited about Starcraft than, say, filing documents.
TL is great and its writers produce great things, even without a salary. But it cannot be denied that a paid writer must be more accountable to his employer than an unpaid one.
If you look at my whole post, the point is that TL needs to keep doing what it's doing.
On January 10 2013 01:17 MCDayC wrote: Probably would sign up if I was in a better place with my work, call again in 6 months time? :p
While there are rarely these big recruitment posts, writers are always looking to expand. In 6 months, if you still want to write for TL, send a PM to Wax and ask if there's anything you can do to help.
Or just start writing blogs. Write them like you're writing news. If they are the quality TL wants and they are regular posts, someone will notice.
Hot_Bid wrote: I really don't understand what you are trying to say. Do you disagree with how we presented the post or our philosophy in general? You seem to take issue with the way we present it, but everything I said in my post about volunteerism and TL is true. You seem to think it is some sort of subtle manipulation or "playing the emotional card" to hypocritically gain more profits, well if you are set on that there is nothing I can really say to dissuade you from that.
The bottom line is there is no deceit here, we don't promise payment or even the a substantial opportunity of future payment. Our writers know that very few make it to fulltime employment within ESPORTS. They simply enjoy doing what they do, and find reasons that are rewarding outside of money.
What I disagree with is the demagogy used as justification of the situation. When people started mentioning the unpaid part, you could have simply responded with "Sorry, but we cannot pay a salary to these new writers" and that's it. It may be a bit cold, but it is a clean way to do it because it is a fact. However you decided to add those things about how other writers write for free as well and how they do it out of love and passion and whatnot. You may or may not have done that purposefully, but either way I now have to take into consideration that there is a chance it was done with said manipulation in mind. The effect you've achieved is now worse than if you simply chose to avoid answering why the writers will not get paid. I am fully aware that these actions will not bite you in the behind because people love thinking with their hearts and they love TL and want to help, I'm just giving you an objective view of the situation.
We have always been honest and upfront about these kinds of things with community members, and this is no different. We simply don't care that some people may feel there is a chance that it's emotional manipulation. All the stuff we wrote about motivations and all that is true, and partially in response to users asking "why would people do this for no pay?" Frankly, just because you feel it its the "cleaner" way to remove all doubt about possible manipulation doesn't mean we're going to sacrifice openness and communication with our potential contributors. You can either believe us or not.
Hot_Bid wrote: You're comparing us to some sort of organized religion that exploits its members, laughing at people and saying "how can you work for free!??!"
I'm not sure I understood this correctly. I didn't say you laugh at people, I mentioned the organized religions because of how they count on the emotional in people for their money/time. What you said about how people who volunteer for TL do that out of love and passion for TL, it just reminded me of it. Imagine a "help repaint your church" kind of situation.
I only brought this up because organized religion has all sorts of issues that we don't typically deal with, especially in the United States. We don't ask for donations, we're not tax exempt, we don't expect our contributors to pray for TL. The fact that I have to list differences here for you is really silly, since the analogy you made in the first place comparing us to a religion is just unreasonable and frankly kind of insulting.
Hot_Bid wrote: Why do artists paint and writers without the end goal of selling their product? Why do people make fan videos? Not everything is driven by money.
Research has shown that some of the greatest inventions in history were driven purely by passion and not the desire to make money off of them. I completely agree with you on that one. However, what you want here is free quality content for your for-profit website. When they publish an article on TL, from then on it belongs to TL, not to them. If you are not willing or able to pay them salaries but still appropriate their work, then some drastic changes are required to point 6, paragraph 1 of your Terms Of Use in order for it to be at least somewhat fair for the said writers.
What makes something fair and not fair? I'm not going to get into a debate on why TL needs to own the content that we put out on our front page, because the implications are obvious there. It seems again you are very hung up on the fact that there is no monetary compensation, when in fact there is plenty of intangible non-monetary gains and rewards that our writers feel make it worth it for themselves. I posted some of these earlier, but you again said that it was manipulative to state what these possibly could be. You seem to believe that money is the only form of compensation, it is not.
Hot_Bid wrote: What you are suggesting is that there exists a model where people can be paid wages to write about ESPORTS but TL chooses not to because we're attempting to cut costs and make more profits. Unfortunately there is nothing more I can say about this accusation other than it's not true.
I wasn't talking about that when I mentioned "business model", but when you now mention that, a model which you just described certainly could exist. Without making the company's business model and finances public, we, the public, can not know either way. Oh and, please, don't say that you don't want to cut costs as much as you can and make profits as much as you can because that would be an outright lie.
The model I described obviously could exist but doesn't. Will it exist in the future? Maybe. I was responding to your accusation that the model exists and is viable right now but TL doesn't do it because we want to hoard money. That is what I said was not true, not that in general we want to keep costs down.
Hot_Bid wrote: You also seem to think this will somehow be the downfall of our website and you won't "cry when we're gone" well we'll simply just disagree on that.
No, I actually don't think at all that this is the downfall, I'm just saying that if you can't make a business model that works to a 100%, then you should switch to a Wikipedia style non-profit model because this "half this half that" is in a gray area and there will always be doubts while it is so.
First, you seem to believe that just because our volunteers aren't paid means our business model "doesn't work." Do you feel other for-profit enterprises that have volunteers don't have business models that work? Volunteer work is pretty common in even mainstream sports, for example NFL cheerleaders receive virtually nominal pay ($100 a game or something) for essentially another fulltime job. Why do they do it? There are intangible nonmonetary benefits, personal and otherwise. Just like here. Many sports writers employed fulltime by sports teams are unpaid internships. Is it because the Yankees are manipulating their ballboys to accept lower than minimum wage? I don't believe so.
Second, you make it sound so easy to just "be" Wikipedia, a site with over 35 million users and 2.7 billion monthly pageviews. Let's not enter into a debate about whether a yearly donation drive asking for handouts from an audience that is notoriously made up of young frugal college students who already pay for content across a lot of other ESPORTS channels is wise or not. I would say "we need your donations to survive!!!" from our audience demographic is far more ethically dubious than asking for volunteer writers who know exactly what they're getting into.
Lastly, I would argue that allowing non-monetary contributions like writing and liquipedia editing is far more rewarding and mutually beneficial for people that want to contribute to TL than strictly donating money to us. If you notice, we don't ask for $ donations anywhere on this site, unlike the churches you seem to compare us to.
Yes, I do believe your business model doesn't work. Again you are saying that "others do it too" which is not much of a comfort, because if there were no women willing to cheer in NFL for that nominal pay, what would happen? The teams would hire cheerleaders for full pay. What would happen if people weren't willing to write for TL for free?
That's easy. The number of news articles drops down to whatever Wax, Hotbid, R1CH, and a few others can manage. But because news articles doesn't seem to be R1CH's thing, we would mostly rely on Wax. So basically content creation drops to whatever forum posts are created, unless people refuse to create threads about tourneys because they're giving away their labour for free.
Basically TL shuts down to an average forum. What won't happen is a huge number of job postings.
But if you're problem is with volunteers as a whole, then your issue is not really TL specific than a much broader ideological issue. Ye ol Barn Raisers and volunteer relief workers
On January 10 2013 07:37 Falling wrote: Basically TL shuts down to an average forum. What won't happen is a huge number of job postings.
But if you're problem is with volunteers as a whole, then your issue is not really TL specific than a much broader ideological issue. Ye ol Barn Raisers and volunteer relief workers
Yes exactly, the quality and quantity of content will drop; I know that there won't be more job postings. That's why HotBids "it's all good" when he defended TL's business model - doesn't hold water. If it were "all good" they would hire professionals to replace the lost personnel.
And yes, I do have an ideological problem with volunteerism (in capitalism + helping for-profit ventures, both those parts are important) and I wrote that in one post to someone already. Sorry, I don't understand that reference from the last sentence.
Hot_Bid wrote: I really don't understand what you are trying to say. Do you disagree with how we presented the post or our philosophy in general? You seem to take issue with the way we present it, but everything I said in my post about volunteerism and TL is true. You seem to think it is some sort of subtle manipulation or "playing the emotional card" to hypocritically gain more profits, well if you are set on that there is nothing I can really say to dissuade you from that.
The bottom line is there is no deceit here, we don't promise payment or even the a substantial opportunity of future payment. Our writers know that very few make it to fulltime employment within ESPORTS. They simply enjoy doing what they do, and find reasons that are rewarding outside of money.
What I disagree with is the demagogy used as justification of the situation. When people started mentioning the unpaid part, you could have simply responded with "Sorry, but we cannot pay a salary to these new writers" and that's it. It may be a bit cold, but it is a clean way to do it because it is a fact. However you decided to add those things about how other writers write for free as well and how they do it out of love and passion and whatnot. You may or may not have done that purposefully, but either way I now have to take into consideration that there is a chance it was done with said manipulation in mind. The effect you've achieved is now worse than if you simply chose to avoid answering why the writers will not get paid. I am fully aware that these actions will not bite you in the behind because people love thinking with their hearts and they love TL and want to help, I'm just giving you an objective view of the situation.
We have always been honest and upfront about these kinds of things with community members, and this is no different. We simply don't care that some people may feel there is a chance that it's emotional manipulation. All the stuff we wrote about motivations and all that is true, and partially in response to users asking "why would people do this for no pay?" Frankly, just because you feel it its the "cleaner" way to remove all doubt about possible manipulation doesn't mean we're going to sacrifice openness and communication with our potential contributors. You can either believe us or not.
Hot_Bid wrote: You're comparing us to some sort of organized religion that exploits its members, laughing at people and saying "how can you work for free!??!"
I'm not sure I understood this correctly. I didn't say you laugh at people, I mentioned the organized religions because of how they count on the emotional in people for their money/time. What you said about how people who volunteer for TL do that out of love and passion for TL, it just reminded me of it. Imagine a "help repaint your church" kind of situation.
I only brought this up because organized religion has all sorts of issues that we don't typically deal with, especially in the United States. We don't ask for donations, we're not tax exempt, we don't expect our contributors to pray for TL. The fact that I have to list differences here for you is really silly, since the analogy you made in the first place comparing us to a religion is just unreasonable and frankly kind of insulting.
Hot_Bid wrote: Why do artists paint and writers without the end goal of selling their product? Why do people make fan videos? Not everything is driven by money.
Research has shown that some of the greatest inventions in history were driven purely by passion and not the desire to make money off of them. I completely agree with you on that one. However, what you want here is free quality content for your for-profit website. When they publish an article on TL, from then on it belongs to TL, not to them. If you are not willing or able to pay them salaries but still appropriate their work, then some drastic changes are required to point 6, paragraph 1 of your Terms Of Use in order for it to be at least somewhat fair for the said writers.
What makes something fair and not fair? I'm not going to get into a debate on why TL needs to own the content that we put out on our front page, because the implications are obvious there. It seems again you are very hung up on the fact that there is no monetary compensation, when in fact there is plenty of intangible non-monetary gains and rewards that our writers feel make it worth it for themselves. I posted some of these earlier, but you again said that it was manipulative to state what these possibly could be. You seem to believe that money is the only form of compensation, it is not.
Hot_Bid wrote: What you are suggesting is that there exists a model where people can be paid wages to write about ESPORTS but TL chooses not to because we're attempting to cut costs and make more profits. Unfortunately there is nothing more I can say about this accusation other than it's not true.
I wasn't talking about that when I mentioned "business model", but when you now mention that, a model which you just described certainly could exist. Without making the company's business model and finances public, we, the public, can not know either way. Oh and, please, don't say that you don't want to cut costs as much as you can and make profits as much as you can because that would be an outright lie.
The model I described obviously could exist but doesn't. Will it exist in the future? Maybe. I was responding to your accusation that the model exists and is viable right now but TL doesn't do it because we want to hoard money. That is what I said was not true, not that in general we want to keep costs down.
Hot_Bid wrote: You also seem to think this will somehow be the downfall of our website and you won't "cry when we're gone" well we'll simply just disagree on that.
No, I actually don't think at all that this is the downfall, I'm just saying that if you can't make a business model that works to a 100%, then you should switch to a Wikipedia style non-profit model because this "half this half that" is in a gray area and there will always be doubts while it is so.
First, you seem to believe that just because our volunteers aren't paid means our business model "doesn't work." Do you feel other for-profit enterprises that have volunteers don't have business models that work? Volunteer work is pretty common in even mainstream sports, for example NFL cheerleaders receive virtually nominal pay ($100 a game or something) for essentially another fulltime job. Why do they do it? There are intangible nonmonetary benefits, personal and otherwise. Just like here. Many sports writers employed fulltime by sports teams are unpaid internships. Is it because the Yankees are manipulating their ballboys to accept lower than minimum wage? I don't believe so.
Second, you make it sound so easy to just "be" Wikipedia, a site with over 35 million users and 2.7 billion monthly pageviews. Let's not enter into a debate about whether a yearly donation drive asking for handouts from an audience that is notoriously made up of young frugal college students who already pay for content across a lot of other ESPORTS channels is wise or not. I would say "we need your donations to survive!!!" from our audience demographic is far more ethically dubious than asking for volunteer writers who know exactly what they're getting into.
Lastly, I would argue that allowing non-monetary contributions like writing and liquipedia editing is far more rewarding and mutually beneficial for people that want to contribute to TL than strictly donating money to us. If you notice, we don't ask for $ donations anywhere on this site, unlike the churches you seem to compare us to.
Yes, I do believe your business model doesn't work. Again you are saying that "others do it too" which is not much of a comfort, because if there were no women willing to cheer in NFL for that nominal pay, what would happen? The teams would hire cheerleaders for full pay. What would happen if people weren't willing to write for TL for free?
That's easy. The number of news articles drops down to whatever Wax, Hotbid, R1CH, and a few others can manage. But because news articles doesn't seem to be R1CH's thing, we would mostly rely on Wax. So basically content creation drops to whatever forum posts are created, unless people refuse to create threads about tourneys because they're giving away their labour for free.
I'm actually curious to know how most people use TL. I myself mainly just read TL for the forums and stream links and rarely read any of the original content myself. If there was a similar forum with the same amount of forum activity I would also probably read those forums, but to my knowledge there's no forum comparable except reddit, but reddit isn't the same as a traditional forum. However, TL and reddit are the only two esports forums I read.
I also do that for other sites as well. I'm a huge hockey fan and like to read hfboards a lot because it has a large user base with very active forums, but I never read any of the original content from hfboards itself and am just there to read their forums because I am only interested in their forums and not their original content.
On January 10 2013 06:54 snively wrote: are the application essays going to be published??? i wanna read the awesome things people can come up with!!! :DDDD <3
To my knowledge TL doesn't post submissions. Applicants are free to post what they submit, though.
On January 10 2013 08:26 Falling wrote: I was just guessing you would also be against volunteer relief workers, barn raisers, soup kitchens, church volunteer, Doctor without Borders, etc.
I'm not sure why you compare volunteers for non profit businesses and volunteers for for profit businesses. I think that other poster has a similar, but more drastic stance than myself. I don't have issues with volunteers myself. I'm just baffled at the extent people will go to make excuses for why people should volunteer for a for profit site and that anyone to question that is wrong or doesn't have enough passion.
Would you volunteer your time for your job and forgo some of your salary if your employer asked you to? Should all the EA employees and other people in the games industry be happy at getting shafted on OT pay before or should they be happy to volunteer their OT time for the sake of the games industry? I know a lot of a salaried jobs have expectations of some unpaid OT, so I'm not talking about those situations.
I understand that the esports scene isn't healthy enough to pay everyone in the scene and volunteers are needed, but I equate those spots more for small sites or small tournaments. TL is the dominant site in the the starcraft scene and is a for profit site. I just feel a lot of people tend to overlook the fact that TL has been a for profit site since SC 2 launched and still tend to think of it the same way it was during bw. If TL wasn't a for profit site, I wouldn't hold the same stance. No one thinks people should line up to volunteer for microsoft and google (in regards to actually doing work for them and not helping in any charitable functions they may be involved in), but everyone thinks people should line up to work for TL for free.
Application sent. I'd wish myself good luck, but I never have any luck either way, so I'll wish luck to all applicants but myself! Given what the volunteers here on the site have put out before, I'm sure the people who end up writing on TL will be nothing short of amazing, as I would expect from the site.
No, not everything is about money. Some of it is about intellectual property. Attribution and copyright to the writers who don't get paid for their work is the bare minimum that they should have. I'm avoiding the word "royalty" because it's "about money" but you know it should be there as well.
I have a funny scenario in my mind where Fionn once again writes an article with every prediction wrong and then decides to call on his copyrighted material and pulls his article from the website. That of course shouldn't be able to happen and the article shouldn't be able to be pulled from the website, but if you don't buy his article, he should nonetheless have copyright to use it outside of TL in any way he wants.
Why wouldnt he have the copyright to use it outside of TL? How do you come to this conclusion?
Are people seriously complaining about this being on a volunteer basis? People want to volunteer. Teamliquid wants volunteers. Everybody is happy. What the hell is the problem?
No, not everything is about money. Some of it is about intellectual property. Attribution and copyright to the writers who don't get paid for their work is the bare minimum that they should have. I'm avoiding the word "royalty" because it's "about money" but you know it should be there as well.
I have a funny scenario in my mind where Fionn once again writes an article with every prediction wrong and then decides to call on his copyrighted material and pulls his article from the website. That of course shouldn't be able to happen and the article shouldn't be able to be pulled from the website, but if you don't buy his article, he should nonetheless have copyright to use it outside of TL in any way he wants.
Why wouldnt he have the copyright to use it outside of TL? How do you come to this conclusion?
No, not everything is about money. Some of it is about intellectual property. Attribution and copyright to the writers who don't get paid for their work is the bare minimum that they should have. I'm avoiding the word "royalty" because it's "about money" but you know it should be there as well.
I have a funny scenario in my mind where Fionn once again writes an article with every prediction wrong and then decides to call on his copyrighted material and pulls his article from the website. That of course shouldn't be able to happen and the article shouldn't be able to be pulled from the website, but if you don't buy his article, he should nonetheless have copyright to use it outside of TL in any way he wants.
Why wouldnt he have the copyright to use it outside of TL? How do you come to this conclusion?
The tricky part is that TL was based in translating content from the korean websites. Technically there is little TL can do if I decide to store all what I post here on another website (like my own) and monetize it (through ads) as I am the sole owner of my work. And it becomes even weirder if I decides to translate it.
In fact, like almost all terms of use in the IT industry, the wording you used probably wouldn't stand a trial in the USA - and that's if the person you sue is willing to be trialed under New York's State laws which he could refuse.
On January 10 2013 08:26 Falling wrote: I was just guessing you would also be against volunteer relief workers, barn raisers, soup kitchens, church volunteer, Doctor without Borders, etc.
Not that I don't think TL is great, but those that you listed are bare/basic needs, whereas TL is secondary to having a house or food or not being diseased.
I can do a tournament recap of HyperX 10-Year Anniversary Tournament right?(under major tournaments in liquipedia) And for the tournament preview, I can do any tournament? Just want to make sure
Come on guys, can the paid position speech please. The people who are applying aren't gullible naive idiots who are being taken advantage of, they are well in a position to understand the nature of the situation and probably understand the English language quite well and are capable of reading the fine print due to them applying for WRITING POSITIONS and all. But if you honestly want to make a point about this, then let's just look at some facts shall we?
1. Brass tax There are over 200 contributors to TL, and hundreds more if not thousands who are contributing to the community in some manner, putting in tens if not hundreds of hours every month. If we attempt to distinguish between what is quality content deserving of pay, where do you draw the line? Do we pay people every time they start and maintain an LR thread? Do we start paying people for writing articles and blogs? Do we pay people for contributing to the strategy forums? If we restrict the pay to people who occupy a specific role already, mods, writers, liquipedia editors, etc, how would payment be quantified? Do we start tracking a user's log in info on rigid time schedules and say "you were only X amount active on TL this month, 10% pay deduction for you"? Some very simple math would reveal that if they were paid on an hourly basis that TL would close down with in months having to pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars in accordance with minimum wage levels in respective countries (hundreds of contributors x hundreds of hours x single or double digit wage rates = ????).
2. What does this actually encourage? So far it's been obvious that the reason why the quality of content is relatively high on TL is the passion for esports, do you HONESTLY want to replace that passion with a drive for financial gain? Have you seen the gaming journalism industry and what avarice has turned that into? The truth of the matter is financial gain is in reality usually incongruous with the quality of the service or product that is provided, it's all about marketing and bells and whistles. Do you want TL's threads to turn into gigantic advertising campaigns? We already have enough of those, many of us turn to TL for a respite from those commercial cesspools, not to see it turned into another one.
3. What does this actually mean for writers? - Content would have to be checked and approved on a regular basis to ensure that it means "employment qualifications" or "work quotas" or "quality assurance", control is taken away from the community itself and put into the hands of editors and admins as regards to what content is put out on TL. - Quantification of quality of an articles means inevitable conflicts of financial interest between different segments of the community, "Why should that strategy forum writer get paid more for putting out X when I have to put out Y for the general forums?", "Why should BW writers get paid the same as a SC2 writer when SC2 writers do more work due to the active community?", etc etc etc. - Inevitably more restrictive rubrics limiting how a writer can construct his/her post, taking away from alot of the actual humour and interesting content that TL is known for.
4. The will of the individual and consent. Let's not be ridiculous and suggest that writers are being "ripped off" when they could be doing their service for a premium. They are agreeing to terms after being made fully aware of how they should or shouldn't act or expect when they commit to something like this. In legal terms there is absolutely no problem with what TL is doing. TL's writers aren't people speaking a different language who are incapable of understanding the terms of their service rendered and its effects on the community, if you honestly think that take your trolling else where.
5. What's in it for the writer? - Contributing to a site they are obviously passionate about for a subject that they are passionate about. - A already popular avenue for them to voice their opinions on an existing medium that they don't have to go through the process of growing themselves. - Community recognition and comradery. - An opportunity and motivation to continue a constructive hobby. - Experience - Doing so under a relatively lax and friendly environment where they can see their work actually amounting to some value.
6. Hypocrisy? Is it inherently hypocritical for TL, a site which operates on a for profit basis (regardless of the actual financial situation of the site, whether or not it is making a net profit on a monthly basis, among other information that we are not entitled to know) to ask for its writers to work with out pay? There are two ways to look at this, the corporate angle, and the passion angle. Under the corporate angle, all individuals and corporate entities are looking out to maximize personal short term financial gain while holding stakeholders interests as irrelevant, under this angle it isn't HYPOCRISY that TL is trying to get away with this action, it is in fact LEGITIMATE ABUSE of a demographic that they understand. For Profit companies (not to mention a shit tonne of supposedly not for profit organizations) do shit like this all the bloody time in the real world with in the legal constraints of local law. If TL.net was just a corporate entity making marketing decisions on this basis, they would trumpet a no pay position from the rooftops as the privilege of being a part of something great and bigger than they (the writers) are among other shameful emotional appeals. If you are truly a cynic you can obviously understand this. Is this quote "unethical" unquote? I thought we already disregarded ethics when we are talking from a purely capitalist corporate angle, who's the hypocrite now?
Under the passion angle, it is obvious that it isn't hypocritical at all when the primary concern or gain of the writer and TL is to contribute to esports where financial gain is secondary or tertiary to the main goal.
7. Is financial gain a legitimate motivating force for better content? Yes. But only if financial gain was directly proportional to the quality of the content, hence the problems listed above regarding how you quantify quality in a diverse community. It would also be inequitable to only apply this principle to one portion of the site, do you want to see the commercialization of everything on TL? I certainly don't.
There, argument over, can we please get back to people talking about writing?
On January 10 2013 10:36 NovemberstOrm wrote: I can do a tournament recap of HyperX 10-Year Anniversary Tournament right?(under major tournaments in liquipedia) And for the tournament preview, I can do any tournament? Just want to make sure
is it necessary to have a lot of experience in writing to attend to this? As a student in university i have a lot of spare time ( except when having exams ) to do this, but my experience in writing is limited to writing papers and stuff for school.
On January 10 2013 10:52 biobug1 wrote: is it necessary to have a lot of experience in writing to attend to this? As a student in university i have a lot of spare time ( except when having exams ) to do this, but my experience in writing is limited to writing papers and stuff for school.
Experience doesn't matter. If you have the necessary skills that is all that matters. Also, they don't have it in the requirements in the original post.
The reward for this is recognition amongst the community and writing experience on a topic that intrests us all. Good enough for me, as soon as my week of hell ends i am applying!
No, not everything is about money. Some of it is about intellectual property. Attribution and copyright to the writers who don't get paid for their work is the bare minimum that they should have. I'm avoiding the word "royalty" because it's "about money" but you know it should be there as well.
I have a funny scenario in my mind where Fionn once again writes an article with every prediction wrong and then decides to call on his copyrighted material and pulls his article from the website. That of course shouldn't be able to happen and the article shouldn't be able to be pulled from the website, but if you don't buy his article, he should nonetheless have copyright to use it outside of TL in any way he wants.
Why wouldnt he have the copyright to use it outside of TL? How do you come to this conclusion?
Yeah, I read that. Especially the part where it's a non-exclusive (!) license. Also a license isnt copyright, you dont loose copyright if someone gets a license for your work.
On January 10 2013 16:29 Zealously wrote: Can we expect confirmation that our applications have been read before the end date, or will possible responses come after that point?
Wow some people. This position isn't exploiting people, TL knowhow kind of was, but not this. If i had free time and enough interest in sc2 i could see myself writing these for free for sure. Gl to all applicants.
On January 11 2013 07:41 TheEmulator wrote: Application Process: Send an application containing the following information to 2forge1win@gmail.com (monk.)
That is for the strategy position. The other position is sent to this:
Application Process: Send an application containing the following information to k.woo@teamliquid.net (Waxangel)
Thanks for the quick reply! I'll be sending an application in soon :D
On January 09 2013 15:32 spalding wrote: Seems absolutely ridiculous not to pay people for something that requires so much work and will get you money too.
You have no idea how much work people put into getting TL.net, completely on voluntary basis, where it is now.
Most of its staff is still unpaid, and no wonder, it's a privilege to fulfill a function and have an impact on such a stage. If someone doesnt want to do anything unless he s paid, that s fine too, but then look at it from a different perspective. Would you pay for something that can be gotten for free? People write articles and stuff on the site regardless, working for TL is just a huge added bonus to one's hobby-writing.
On January 12 2013 01:41 RiPPy wrote: So basically ur looking for welfare client without any family which have time to do a fulltime job for u for free..
3 articles a week isn't even close to a fulltime job. At all.
On January 12 2013 01:41 RiPPy wrote: So basically ur looking for welfare client without any family which have time to do a fulltime job for u for free..
Damn, I knew Norway was a nice country, but I didn't think you consider something like 12 hours a week a full-time job.
On January 12 2013 02:42 kollin wrote: 3 articles a week isn't even close to a fulltime job. At all.
Not to be nit-picky, but having worked in an office that housed a newspaper and several magazines, this isn't true at all.
It always depends on the content 3 articles that requires no Interview and no background work and little to no research mostly just fact checking can be done pretty fast if you already watch quite a bit of starcraft which I'd expect of people applying for the job
On January 14 2013 12:18 Recoil wrote: Are people going to be contacted about positions prior to Jan 31st? Or are you going to wait until the end to make any decisions?
I am going to quote monk and say that people will be selected in waves as there is an immediate need for writers.
On January 14 2013 12:18 Recoil wrote: Are people going to be contacted about positions prior to Jan 31st? Or are you going to wait until the end to make any decisions?
I am going to quote monk and say that people will be selected in waves as there is an immediate need for writers.
On January 14 2013 12:18 Recoil wrote: Are people going to be contacted about positions prior to Jan 31st? Or are you going to wait until the end to make any decisions?
I am going to quote monk and say that people will be selected in waves as there is an immediate need for writers.
Really? That's funky.
Does that mean you could be contacted now, or in 6 months just depending on need?
Hey Waxangel, you guys still need writers? People keep telling me to stop writing my blog and do a goddamned book... I figured I might as well not write a book but contribute to TL with some tournament coverage... So I might actually give this a go once I get out of clinic duty today. ^__^
On February 01 2013 03:35 UmbraaeternuS wrote: Hey Waxangel, you guys still need writers? People keep telling me to stop writing my blog and do a goddamned book... I figured I might as well not write a book but contribute to TL with some tournament coverage... So I might actually give this a go once I get out of clinic duty today. ^__^
I recommend sending in an application if you haven't already. I reckon more writers means more coverage, which is the ultimate goal. Also, I like your blogs :D
On February 01 2013 03:35 UmbraaeternuS wrote: Hey Waxangel, you guys still need writers? People keep telling me to stop writing my blog and do a goddamned book... I figured I might as well not write a book but contribute to TL with some tournament coverage... So I might actually give this a go once I get out of clinic duty today. ^__^
Your blogs are awesome. Give it a try! I would love to have more SC2 content, so there's one cheering for you!
EPT
