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Liquipedia Review #20
Hey everyone!
Exciting stuff today as we finish up a project that took us nearly two weeks to finish while launching a project that will take much longer!
![[image loading]](http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/1816/headeralittlebitofhisto.png)
Anyone who isn't into coding or programming would probably follow up looking at the inside of a Liquipedia page and with wondering what demon this language would summon from the depths of some forbidden inferno if spoken.
<includeonly>{| border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 style="font-size: 90%;
margin:1em 2em 1em 1em;"
| align="center" colspan="2" style="border:1px solid #aaa;"
bgcolor=#f2f2f2|{{{RD1|Round 1}}}| colspan=2|
| style="border-width:0 1px 0 0; border-style:solid;border-color:black;"|
| rowspan=2 style="border:1px solid;" bgcolor="{{RaceColor|{{{R2D1race|}}}}}"|
{{flag|{{{R2D1|}}}}} {{{R2D1|R2D1}}}
| rowspan=2 align=center style="border:1px solid #aaa;" bgcolor=#f9f9f9| Holy shit!
When we started out building Liquipedia, we were just like that. At heart, our founding fathers were StarCraft loving nerd ballers who wanted to write about their game, and I can only imagine how daunting it must have been to take the first steps. We've been more than lucky to have coding masters like R1CH and MoC to hold our hands while we tread into these unknown lands and, fortunately, one quickly finds that the coding for basic formatting is easily understood and reproduced.
The bit of code above is from a bracket. For most of the editors among us, building Additional Pylons is something we're good at, while building a full-fledged 32 Player Single Elimination Bracket is a completely different story. In the beginning we managed by
They didn't quite meet our StarCraft related demands though. After some tinkering and adjusting, the brackets on Liquipedia became linked to TLPD. And surely you are all familiar with our brackets being colour coded to represent the races of the players.
Yeah, we managed. Until MLG came along. Their beastly tournament format wasn't understood by a whole lot of people, let alone understood well enough to be able to give it a shape and form. Nonetheless, it had to happen. If Liquipedia wanted to be the premier resource of StarCraft related information it had better be able to report on the premier StarCraft competition in the USA.
It took us a good while, delving into countless lines of code, trying to piece together MLG's system which combines Round Robin, Single Elimination, KOTH and a Losers' Bracket all in a single format. After many hours of puzzling and toiling, the monstrous
MLG Bracket is still something I personally see as one of our greatest achievements.The next challenge came when MLG added their 4 Korean invites to their system, prompting massive changes to LP bracket's coding, and shortly afterwards we challenged ourselves by running TSL3's Bracket Contest. From that time onwards, we have been learning more and more, building several additional brackets to serve our StarCraft needs. Eventually, we made the decision...
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Pholon/Liquipedia/10241729.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/3668/headernewbrackets.png)
Last week we decided to completely revamp our bracket section. We've tried to create some uniformity in how brackets look, how they work and their functionalities. Not only do cells still color green, blue, or red for Protoss, Terran or Zerg, we've also added Random (orange) and BYE (grey). Users can add flags easily, bold the winners, add a 3rd place match, link players to their own Liquipedia pages, and add Team Logos. All brackets have proper documentation explaining how everything works and on top of that we have a fine array of formats: Single Elimination, Losers' Brackets, and Double Elimination from 2 all the way up to 64 players.
Click HERE to view all the brackets.
Most importantly though: making brackets for your tournament page has become flipping easy.
Let's do a brief example run. Suppose your tournament has 4 invites and they play in a Single Elimination format. Your bracket of choice is the
4SEBracket. On it's page is a simple copy/pastable bit of code.{{4SEBracket
|R1D1=|R1D1score=|R1D1race=
|R1D2=|R1D2score=|R1D2race=
|R1D3=|R1D3score=|R1D3race=
|R1D4=|R1D4score=|R1D4race=
|R2W1=|R2W1score=|R2W1race=
|R2W2=|R2W2score=|R2W2race=
}}Filling this out simply yields:
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Pholon/Liquipedia/brackets1.png)
I can even add in flags and bold the winners, to give some more aesthetic appeal.
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Pholon/Liquipedia/brackets4.png)
On top of that, I can add a 3rd place match and customize the Round Title cells.
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Pholon/Liquipedia/brackets3.png)
It took us a week of hard work, and I do like to shoutout everyone who helped, but but the result is certainly rewarding. We'll start promoting the use of this new batch as we continue to make Liquipedia's coverage of tournaments even better. Lastly, should you have any thoughts or advice on how to make these brackets even better, feel free to let us know by contacting someone on the Liquipedia staff.
![[image loading]](http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/2483/headeroldtournaments.png)
If Liquipedia 2 has taught us anything, it's that tournament coverage is one of the strongest points of the Wikipedia. Unlike an R&S kept by one person, anyone can keep a wiki up-to-date. Unlike TLPD, wiki has visuals to explain the format and matches and their VODs can be orchestrated around that. Unlike having to search for TL's newsposts on the league, the wiki can link them all centrally. And on top of that, the wiki always has room for improvement - be it adding in the Music Score used for the Stout MSL, documenting all the team line-ups through a seaon of proleague, or recommending excellent games that wrote history - the wiki has a place for it.
In this light, it pains me to say that Liquipedia is lagging severely behind. Of the
GOMTV Classic Starleagues, only the first invitational is half recorded and of the MSL many of the links actually go to TLPD entries, not Liquipedia pages.We've therefore started to make an effort to chronicle these legendary tournaments that dawned the eras of Boxer, Oov, Nal_Ra, NaDa and their contemporaries. Last week I finished working on the recent
2011 STX Cup Masters and have now started on 2009 Gyeongnam STX Cup Masters. Corumjhaelen has started on the MSL side of things and, after we finished up 2003 Stout MSL have now start on the 2003 TriGem MSL. Additionally, shoutouts to Hyde and blahz0r for contributing to the Kaal's International StarLeague/Bracket article. I truly believe that Liquipedia can be the greatest resource when it comes to recording these leagues. No more piecing together of the old live report threads and news articles. No more endless searching for VODs before having to try and figure which game was played when.
However, we need help. It's a lot of work trying to find the info, piecing it together, and copying it down into the right place. I'm promoting it here because after experiencing the immense value tournament articles have added to Liquipedia 2, I've become fully convinced it is a section that can flourish on its predecessor as well. In this light, we've also posted a recruitement post to find people motivated to work on this project. Contact me or anyone else on staff if you'd like to help out (there's coins to be had! kekeke) so that you, too, can contribute to ESPORTS. For posterity!
Happy editing!
- Liquipedia staff
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