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<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/wo1fwood/TLStrategy/layout2.css"><link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Source+Sans+Pro:400,300,300italic,400italic' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'><style type="text/css">.fp1 .forumPost{background:url('http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/shiroiusagi/misc/callforpartici_tl.jpg')no-repeat;background-size:100%;}#tlshead{padding-bottom:40.25%}</style><!-- TLS HEAD--><div id="tls"><!-- --><div id="tlshead"> </div><!-- --><div id="tlsbody" style="background-color:#F0F1F3"> <div class="section"><h2 id="1-0">Liquid in Future Tense: A Call for Participation</h2><div class="author">by wo1fwood (gfx by shiro)</div> Today I'd like to briefly talk about a project that has far reaching implications for tl.net and its users. For some time I have been working on - or considering the question of - what tl.net is, what it does, and how it could grow to reach its fullest potential as a site and community that over the last number of years has bloomed with not just content about all things StarCraft, but for Hearthstone, Dota, League, Smash, Heroes, and now Counter-Strike.
I've opened this topic because I'm looking to get ideally about 100 users or more (from tl.net, liquiddota, liquidhearth, liquidlegends, yes even you causal reddit viewers) to take part in a survey/questionnaire that will show us a clearer idea of what everyone is doing on TL and how, and why. Additionally, I'll want to ask further questions/tasks for a smaller group of people as needed.
The obvious question you may be asking is why are you looking for user input like this? Just curious? Well yes I am, but that's not really answering why. Recently there's been quite a bit of discussion regarding user interface design on TL with the Announcement by Valve on the new Dota 2 UI, and this TL Redesign Thread about one persons' design exercise. While the latter was an unofficial creation, what I'm excited to say is that we've been discussing this idea of a redesign internally for some time already and wanted to let everyone know that we decided to rebuild and streamline the TL experience the best we can. In order to get it right however, we need as much data about how, what, and why you are interacting with the content and platform that is teamliquid.net (and perhaps even esports as a whole) before we make any moves in that direction.
So... interested in helping us out? If so simply <a href="http://www.teamliquid.net/mytlnet/index.php?view=new&to=wo1fwood" target="_blank">shoot me a PM</a>. Please include what site you are from, how often you visit TL as a start, and whether you'd be willing to be available for more questions as we need them. Overall I'd like to get a relatively even sample size from all walks of people who visit here, so even if you casually visit TL your experiences could be very helpful in figuring out what we need to do, or be mindful of throughout this process.
The last thing I should probably mention is that we don't really have a time frame for when this project will be complete right now. Rebuilding TL is a complicated process as the content that we have to offer is very diverse, and the time we have to work on it can and will be a bit sporadic. We'll be updating you as things develop so you have an idea of what we're thinking about and how we're progressing, so stay tuned. :D </div> </div><!--EndBody --></div>
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Germany25649 Posts
Do I still "need" to PM you eventhough we already talked about it in the staff thread?
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nope, staff need not worry as you're covered already.
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Interesting, I sent my PM
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Am interested in helping out and offering some ideas.
Have been a member for around 4-5 years I think,came to the site when I started playing starcraft and was looking for community sites. Was active in the beginning but activity did drop over the years till virtually zero. It feels as if the whole site gets less visitors these days then a few years ago though I do not have any data for that. If its the case I think the reason is the decline of starcraft 2, the release of lotv should give the site and its activity a boost again. Maybe tl could start focus more on other games and become a gaming forum in general. It is however not easy to penetrate other games where other sides have a dominant position already.
Come to the site mostly when I like to post something on a general forum,and sometimes for specific new games I started playing,like agario recently and hearthstone a year ago. When I look at agario or even hearthstone then the lack of activity more or less made me stop posting as well. lot more people post on reddit for example. And people usually do flock to the place that has the most users. It might sound blasphemy but maybe tl should lower its standards. The gaming forums have a sort of elite feel to it and the attitude of many posters is somewhat elite, one looks down on the official gaming forums from blizzard where "only noobs post" so to say. With gaming becoming more casual maybe users are looking for a more casual site with more casual users. Not sure if this is an issue at all but its just a thought that came to my mind.
Am open to intervieuw but I am not the most active user so I think other people will be more suited.
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Well I'm registered since 2010, been visiting the site since 2006 or 2007 and I log in everyday, multiple times per day.
I appreciate this initiative. When I get home from work I'll probably PM you to help out with the survey. I'm a fairly busy person due to work (T_T) but I'll gladly help in what I can
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France7248 Posts
"I've opened this topic is because I'm looking to get ideally about 100 users" either you are missing "why" or "is" is too much
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You do know that you won't even get close to a "relatively even sample size from all walks of people who visit here", right? Also, the expression is "people from all walks of life". If you're looking for walks of people, this documentary is probably better suited.
Since you're opt-in, you're effectively advertising the survey, which is going to give you very skewed data. You do not have a random sample, so you cannot extrapolate to the TL user group as a whole. Here's what you should do if you want (at least) halfway representative results: Send an authoritative PM to a random subset of all registered users, with a nice text and link to the survey.
Expect <1/3 to respond, expect ~20% of the responses to be incomplete; you'll end up with roughly 25% useful responses, so I'd say about 400+ invitations should do the job.
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Russian Federation249 Posts
I like Dagobert's approach. But sent a pm anyway
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I'm a UX/UI/Interaction designer. wo1fwood, do you need help from a design aspect?
Also, the redesign of the website would be most welcome from most users in my opinion, for example one problem with it is that it's too small. For this reason i've been looking at it on 150% zoom for years now
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On June 26 2015 23:20 Dagobert wrote:You do know that you won't even get close to a "relatively even sample size from all walks of people who visit here", right? Also, the expression is "people from all walks of life". If you're looking for walks of people, this documentary is probably better suited. Since you're opt-in, you're effectively advertising the survey, which is going to give you very skewed data. You do not have a random sample, so you cannot extrapolate to the TL user group as a whole. Here's what you should do if you want (at least) halfway representative results: Send an authoritative PM to a random subset of all registered users, with a nice text and link to the survey. Expect <1/3 to respond, expect ~20% of the responses to be incomplete; you'll end up with roughly 25% useful responses, so I'd say about 400+ invitations should do the job.
The way you suggest will hardly prove much better as the randomness is lost by the fact you use the 25% or less useful responses. The same people who fill in a useful response would respond to this opt in and so your data will be skewed in the same way. There is a reason it's the law to respond to government surveys, any opt in system will produce skewed data.
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PM sent, glad to help out.
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On June 26 2015 23:10 KobraKay wrote:Well I'm registered since 2010, been visiting the site since 2006 or 2007 and I log in everyday, multiple times per day. I appreciate this initiative. When I get home from work I'll probably PM you to help out with the survey. I'm a fairly busy person due to work (T_T) but I'll gladly help in what I can 
.... I am you
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On June 26 2015 23:29 Tngabor wrote:I'm a UX/UI/Interaction designer. wo1fwood, do you need help from a design aspect? Also, the redesign of the website would be most welcome from most users in my opinion, for example one problem with it is that it's too small. For this reason i've been looking at it on 150% zoom for years now  I don't know where you get your data from, that you can say that most users think it's too small or some such? I never have problems reading things (except occasionally on mobile, not preferred).
I like the concept of the data shown. All forum activity on the left, pro dota on the right, content in the middle.
+ Show Spoiler [whoops this became a long rant] +My main concern is with possible improvement with discussion structure. Dota's complexity makes discussion difficult. Difficult to follow and to engage in. (All just my opinion and to some extent theorizing.) One example is the hero strategy discussion. There's so many heroes with each their own thread, but hero interaction is also very relevant as well as all the items, which could also have their own discussion. General strategy is difficult to discuss with many factors, starting with hero picks. I don't have an answer how to provide better grip for enjoyable discourse. But this would mean less graphical design, more technical design and perhaps conceptual innovation in how to structure a forum. Compare this to starcraft, I would say that it's rather simple to discuss strategy. And this is not saying that starcraft is less of a game in terms of strategy, but as a game it builds up context over game-time in a steady fashion, where you can anchor a discussion comparatively easy to a certain time and space in a game. The most difficult part of the discussion is not being smart enough to see the better choices and understanding the ramifications in a given situation. The last point there, the difficult part for starcraft, also holds for Dota and basically any game (right?) but dota builds up context in game-time at a stupendous rate. How are you gonna convey those things in a discussion when talking scenario's, and alternative choices with some branching. This is also why I liked the setup of this and this discussion because it had limited context and can provide for entertaining thoughts. How this can relate to a LiquidDota redesign... that's up to TL in the first place 
Edit: I've taken another look at the redesign and I see a good point with dropping the right bar at various places. Easy access to the pro happenings is major, but when people start browsing site and community content they already choose to explicitly ignore that info. Easy pull up of the bar might be important, or perhaps the ability to mark a calendar entry to make sure it's in a visible spot with a timer, at all times. And conversely it might make sense, when showing a stream or calendar info, that the community bar drops away from view. It would be very orthogonal in experience.
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Of course I'm helping out!
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Would love to help! Sent PM.
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Wouldn't mind helping out, sent in a PM!
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So... interested in helping us out? If so simply shoot me a PM. Please include what site you are from
I don't get it... I'm not from... a site? Are you looking for people with website-building experience to apply to support a redesign project, or for users of this site to offer to help complete a questionnaire about how we use it?
I would be happy to fill out the questionnaire - do you want a PM?
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TLADT24920 Posts
On June 27 2015 01:38 Haighstrom wrote:Show nested quote +So... interested in helping us out? If so simply shoot me a PM. Please include what site you are from I don't get it... I'm not from... a site? Are you looking for people with website-building experience to apply to support a redesign project, or for users of this site to offer to help complete a questionnaire about how we use it? I would be happy to fill out the questionnaire - do you want a PM? he means what site you mostly visit afaik. The second option in your post.
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PM sent
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sent you a pm.hope i can be useful
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France1887 Posts
On June 27 2015 01:38 Haighstrom wrote:Show nested quote +So... interested in helping us out? If so simply shoot me a PM. Please include what site you are from I don't get it... I'm not from... a site? Are you looking for people with website-building experience to apply to support a redesign project, or for users of this site to offer to help complete a questionnaire about how we use it? I would be happy to fill out the questionnaire - do you want a PM? The post is not on TeamLiquid only. It's on LiquidDota, LiquidHearth, and LiquidLegends as well. I think the question is which one of these websites do you use (most).
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why do u always make headlines that sound interesting but then
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On June 27 2015 02:37 teddyoojo wrote: why do u always make headlines that sound interesting but then
To me, there was nothing ambiguous about that headline. It was actually precisely what I assumed it would be. This needs an explanation.
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France1887 Posts
On June 27 2015 03:06 Spinoza wrote:Show nested quote +On June 27 2015 02:37 teddyoojo wrote: why do u always make headlines that sound interesting but then To me, there was nothing ambiguous about that headline. It was actually precisely what I assumed it would be. This needs an explanation. Coming from LiquidDota, maybe he wished for a Team Liquid Dota 2 team.
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Send 400 invites and give out TL+ to people who participate. You'll get a lot more replys and a random sample.
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GRAND OLD AMERICA16375 Posts
On June 27 2015 03:20 Geiko wrote: Send 400 invites and give out TL+ to people who participate. You'll get a lot more replys and a random sample.
and what does TL+ offer? this was also another thing that needs to be looked at as its offering is quite lackluster
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On June 27 2015 03:23 amazingxkcd wrote:Show nested quote +On June 27 2015 03:20 Geiko wrote: Send 400 invites and give out TL+ to people who participate. You'll get a lot more replys and a random sample. and what does TL+ offer? this was also another thing that needs to be looked at as its offering is quite lackluster Nice + icon
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GRAND OLD AMERICA16375 Posts
On June 27 2015 03:24 TheBloodyDwarf wrote:Show nested quote +On June 27 2015 03:23 amazingxkcd wrote:On June 27 2015 03:20 Geiko wrote: Send 400 invites and give out TL+ to people who participate. You'll get a lot more replys and a random sample. and what does TL+ offer? this was also another thing that needs to be looked at as its offering is quite lackluster Nice + icon 
and? (I used to have one year of TL+ so I know the feature it offers)
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Hmmm
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United States744 Posts
despite what people from larger corporations might say we should be cautious of, this overhaul doesn't mean more than half of the staff are likely to get axed within the next 3 months :D
right?
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On June 27 2015 03:26 amazingxkcd wrote:Show nested quote +On June 27 2015 03:24 TheBloodyDwarf wrote:On June 27 2015 03:23 amazingxkcd wrote:On June 27 2015 03:20 Geiko wrote: Send 400 invites and give out TL+ to people who participate. You'll get a lot more replys and a random sample. and what does TL+ offer? this was also another thing that needs to be looked at as its offering is quite lackluster Nice + icon  and? (I used to have one year of TL+ so I know the feature it offers) Small icon is worth of the price!
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Mexico2170 Posts
I'm glad that liquid staff is taking things more seriously now as they are realizing that the Liquid network needs to evolve. I will gadly help sending you a PM and everything else I can help with.
And yeah TL plus sucks. I don't know of a way to make it better though..but I believe there was a thread like 1-2 months ago in the website section or in blogs that gave some cool suggestions.
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On June 27 2015 03:20 Geiko wrote: Send 400 invites and give out TL+ to people who participate. You'll get a lot more replys and a random sample.
That's not a very good idea either. People who are interested in TL+ will be more likely to participate, which could easily create sampling bias. It wouldn't be as much of an incentive for me (I'm not very active here) as it would for a heavier TL user. I don't really have a good alternative, though, good sampling is tough as hell to achieve.
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Oh yeah. I cant wait to input my expert opinion.
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if you want casual users to respond you'll need to reach out to them via mass pm and not rely on this thread
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Interesting. I'm busy at the moment, but will PM you this evening.
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Why make people PM and stuff instead of putting out an open survey through like google forms or whatever? You'll get more responses that way.
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PM's give a feeling of closeness/meaning/importance/ so people will spill more bs; and, you can always spot a faker.
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Consequences of using the following sampling strategies:
(A) Open letter - nonrandom sample (<= N users who open this thread) -> analysis would only tell us something about thread-readers - committed users only (<= n1 users who send a PM) - very unlikely to be representative of the entire userbase (bear in mind: OPs main goal was to get representative data) + useful for exploring a small number of individual ideas (if you have no standardized survey ready)
(B) Random PM responder sample + random sample (erases most systematic selection biases) o perhaps non-random subsample (inevitable risk of surveys, if participation is voluntary), but this can be tested and if necessary, you can bootstrap + large sample planning allows for sufficient N to run decent analyses + allows you to do (non-)response analysis (who did not reply, what are the common factors for people who do/nt, ...) - N < registered users < users
(C) Stratified random responder sampling (added bonus) How-to: Prepare online survey (as easy-to-use and foolproof as possible), release announcements in every corner of the website, allow unregistered users to do the same survey (preferably a unique survey button or similar on the main page), collect data, clean it up a little, categorize every datapoint by region, choose random subsample from each (can be proportional to region sample size or even). + widest audience + random subsampling (provided large enough n) allows for multivariate analyses - no universal non-response analysis but + with sufficient N and n, you can now run and compare analyses (including at least response rates) taking each region into account - may introduce noise (users replying more than once, troll behavior) if not careful, on the other hand + allows for trolling analysis
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@Dagobert
Unfortunately for TL most of what he is saying is true. I have an advanced degree related to survey analysis and have studied sampling methods for quite some time. What I will say though is often-time an organization uses a convenient sample, a focus group, opt in group etc and still gathers relevant data from it so I think doing this survey would still be valuable to your team. Unfortunately the group all shares one thing in common, we have all volunteered for the survey because we read this thread.. To account for members that did not see this post, or maybe would not opt in through reading it on this forum it would be cool if you had an option to mass message the registered members who have logged on in the "X" last amount of time.
Good Luck.
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i don't want a redesign, i actually like the "classic 90s/2000s" forum style.
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On June 28 2015 06:00 -NegativeZero- wrote: i don't want a redesign, i actually like the "classic 90s/2000s" forum style. Redesign doesn't need to change the style necessarily.....but rather makes it easier for people to find what they are looking for, and easier to use overall.
If it's done right, the visual style can be made a preference.
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the feature is clear, LiquidCS site incoming!
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Just as an update I'm still waiting for possible stragglers, but I wanted to let everyone know that we've received quite a few responses from this so thank you to everyone who's shown interest. I'll be shooting people a message once i've combed through everything.
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On June 30 2015 10:26 wo1fwood wrote: Just as an update I'm still waiting for possible stragglers, but I wanted to let everyone know that we've received quite a few responses from this so thank you to everyone who's shown interest. I'll be shooting people a message once i've combed through everything. cool, hope I get picked.
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I just sent the PMs to everyone so check your Inbox on tl.
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quick question. are these anonymous or not? I'm just asking because I said to pm me if you have extra questions and if its anonymous I realized that would be kind of hard for you to do
so to clarify since it never asked me for my identification I was wondering if it actually knows which specific survey I filled out. so for example if you wanted to see what I put you'd know which one was mine. not a major deal just a curiosity.
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Mexico2170 Posts
didn't recieve the pm meh
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the results are anonymous (deliberately) so we won't know who's posted what, save for staff.
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Hey! I didn't receive a pm back
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On June 27 2015 03:26 amazingxkcd wrote:Show nested quote +On June 27 2015 03:24 TheBloodyDwarf wrote:On June 27 2015 03:23 amazingxkcd wrote:On June 27 2015 03:20 Geiko wrote: Send 400 invites and give out TL+ to people who participate. You'll get a lot more replys and a random sample. and what does TL+ offer? this was also another thing that needs to be looked at as its offering is quite lackluster Nice + icon  and? (I used to have one year of TL+ so I know the feature it offers) No ad banner! Or are you one of those evil people who use AdBlock?! If yes, can I self-righteously internet-shame you for doing something that enhances your quality of life?
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I've just sent a second and much shorter round of questions to people. It's taken this long because you all wrote so damned much the first time. :D
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You never answered my PM. Is that because you already have enough people (which look like it :p), or did it slipped by?
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