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[LP] New Brackets and Old Tournaments
September 26th, 2011 17:59 GMT
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/disciple/forwiki/articlebannernew1.jpg) 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 takingborrowing our big brother Wikipedia's brackets.
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://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 
Useful Liquipedia Links:
Liquipedia Feedback Thread
PM a Liquipedia Staff Member: Aesop, Pholon, Imperator, Noam, Flicky, salle, tofucake, ZodaSoda
#Liquipedia IRC on Quakenet.
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Estonia4644 Posts
holy shit that is handy!
kudos to everyone involved in zis project!
makes it sooo much easier
time to get back editing hehe
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Switzerland2892 Posts
I suppose that's why liquipedia has been a bit fcked up this afternoon?
Great changes, it will be easier now to edit 
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Awesome, I'm getting a bit of knowledge about this coding stuff in school this year, might try and find somewhere I can help out!
Edit: PM me if anybody has an idea of where I could start.
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Lovely new brackets. I prefer them a lot more tbh. Much easier to follow.
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Proud to be a part of that.
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You guys truely are nerd baller heroes! <3
Great work, and know that I and many others realy appreciate the hard work you guys put into this! You guys make this game so much better. Thank you!
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That is pretty cool, it makes the actual bracket a lot closer to the representation you use for pool play, which is pretty self-explanatory
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I HATE Liquipedia. Most of the times I try to be nice and edit in a result of a just finished game, it's already there. Damn.
Seriously though, I find myself clicking on LR threads only to go to liquipedia a second afterwards.
BTW, what about brackets of >64 players. I know the trend of braking these up into several smaller ones, but could one extend the template by oneself if one wanted to create a consolidated 128-man bracket? (Yes, I am too lazy to check it myself)
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Awesome New Brackets, will try to contribute stuff
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This is great. I usually don't notice this stuff, but I have noticed how nice and clean brackets look on liquipedia. The flags and race colors are excellent. Thanks for your work!
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I think I can speak for everyone when I say "Oooooh pretty colors"
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I'm not sure if you'll see this or not, but there's something that's been frustrating me and I'm not sure how to change it. When you go to Liquipedia 2 and type "GSL" in the search box, the Global Starcraft II League comes up.
Looks like this: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/GSL
So far so good. The only thing is, I check this page almost daily so I can see the brackets and they are nowhere to be found in the tabs at the top. The only way I know to find it (other than being more specific in the search bar) is to scroll down to GSL events and click on the event you want to see. There used to be a series of bars across the top which let you simply choose your event and navigate to previous events so you can compare progress.
I personally preferred the old system with the tabs at the top for each event, but I recognize that more events makes the bar at the top more awkward. Perhaps you could divide the events by year (choose 2010, 2011 or w/e), then each event in the year below it.
I don't know if this is an unwieldy or unpopular request, but it's something I'd like to have back.
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Hungary11304 Posts
On September 27 2011 04:21 Fuhrmaaj wrote:I'm not sure if you'll see this or not, but there's something that's been frustrating me and I'm not sure how to change it. When you go to Liquipedia 2 and type "GSL" in the search box, the Global Starcraft II League comes up. Looks like this: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/GSLSo far so good. The only thing is, I check this page almost daily so I can see the brackets and they are nowhere to be found in the tabs at the top. The only way I know to find it (other than being more specific in the search bar) is to scroll down to GSL events and click on the event you want to see. There used to be a series of bars across the top which let you simply choose your event and navigate to previous events so you can compare progress. I personally preferred the old system with the tabs at the top for each event, but I recognize that more events makes the bar at the top more awkward. Perhaps you could divide the events by year (choose 2010, 2011 or w/e), then each event in the year below it. I don't know if this is an unwieldy or unpopular request, but it's something I'd like to have back.
There is a "GOMTV Leagues and Events" bar on top which you can unfold. It leads to all events.
If you are just looking for results, maybe http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Recent_Tournament_Results is for you.
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Liquipedia II is the single most awesome thing since Liquipedia.
Admire everyone's hard work on it!
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Sweden5554 Posts
On September 27 2011 03:36 myzael wrote:
[...]BTW, what about brackets of >64 players. I know the trend of braking these up into several smaller ones, but could one extend the template by oneself if one wanted to create a consolidated 128-man bracket? (Yes, I am too lazy to check it myself)
The issues with brackets for more than 32 players is that they're too big. if you have a 128 player bracket when you get to the quarter finals there are then 32 rows between each of the matches and the semis are 64 rows apart. This doesn't look too good on a computer screen, as you have to scroll a lot in the later, and more important, stages. So this is currently the best compromise we've found to the problem, but we would of course readily accept a better solution if some one could make one.
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On September 27 2011 03:11 fusefuse wrote:
holy shit that is handy!
No kidding!
LP is a fantastic project, my constant admiration to the admins who keep all the pieces moving together!
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When following an MLG tournament I dont actually use any of MLGs resources, I go directly to liquipedia because I know that is actually updated faster and more reliable than MLGs own live coverage.
I think that says alot about how fucking good liquipedia is.
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I love Liquipedia. I'm glad TL is pushing for more people to get involved.
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The only problem I have with Liquipedia - which is a good thing - is that when I try to add something. It is already done. Will keep trying to help if I see something. And keep up the good work at all the guys who are helping Liquipedia grow. They need some love!
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Yay updates to Liquidpedia!
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I'll get more actively involved when time frees up 
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On September 27 2011 05:55 Baituri wrote:
The only problem I have with Liquipedia - which is a good thing - is that when I try to add something. It is already done. Will keep trying to help if I see something. And keep up the good work at all the guys who are helping Liquipedia grow. They need some love! My thoughts exactly! I'll keep looking for some way to help.
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Sweden5554 Posts
On September 27 2011 03:13 pPingu wrote:
I suppose that's why liquipedia has been a bit fcked up this afternoon?
+ Show Spoiler +No that was probably just me me making a silly mistake in another template >_>
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Haha it was a very funny reading, I'm sure many people will appreciate the work behind this, especially tournament staff
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Australia8532 Posts
Pholon 3-2 Sheth - you had a credible news post until then :p
This makes things a lot easier - i mean i am certainly no coder but that looks like something even R1CH could explain to Hot_Bid
Thank you LP and goodluck with the BW project!
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If only they could be embedded in forum posts, that would make lazy Op's very happy.
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Did Pholon really beat ShetH and almost HerO once, or are you just pulling my leg? I think ur pulling my leg, lol...
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Estonia4644 Posts
On September 27 2011 08:32 GhandiEAGLE wrote:
Did Pholon really beat ShetH and almost HerO once, or are you just pulling my leg? I think ur pulling my leg, lol...
if its on LP, it must be true!
:D
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Holy crap you beat sheth in a bo5!
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Good job guys
Looking forward using this new feature 
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On September 27 2011 05:55 Baituri wrote:
The only problem I have with Liquipedia - which is a good thing - is that when I try to add something. It is already done. Will keep trying to help if I see something. And keep up the good work at all the guys who are helping Liquipedia grow. They need some love!
I know, I go to edit a result that just happened and it's already up :-/
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i think a small line of code to make an auto generated bracket code program on a linux environment or even javascript is not that hard (like 40 mins of coding max?) why dont u guys create 1 like that instead of copy paste all the time?
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this is probably a not needed post
but i hope all of this stuff is backed up :o
i would hate for you guys to somehow lose all this amazing information !
and sick job on the MLG bracket.
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Awesome stuff guys!
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I feel as if i should just post, in recognition of all the hard work that's been put into this. Liquipedia has been my go-to source for all tournament updates!
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On September 27 2011 08:32 GhandiEAGLE wrote:
Did Pholon really beat ShetH and almost HerO once, or are you just pulling my leg? I think ur pulling my leg, lol...
not for nothing is he known as pholonjwa
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Sick, Liquipedia has improved so much over the years and so quickly too!
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3030 Posts
Great article! The new brackets are much cleaner. A lot of discussion and work went into those. miwi, Noam, Pholon, and salle deserve a very big thank you for their efforts(sorry if I missed anyone!).
So I recently went back to do some updates on an OSL page and man it's annoying to do without all those fancy new templates on Liquipedia 2. Now I know how those people felt back when LP was in its infant stages. Really spoiled by LP2
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Great. Im sorry to say Im not involved, but I love that people will be better to make even sweeter graphics!
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Liquipedia is trully amazing and you guys are simply awesome!!
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wow. i can't believe how much effort is put into this!
ty for your hard work and determination
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good job guys keep up the good work. New brackets rock!!!
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France1887 Posts
Thanks to everybody who worked on the new brackets!
The format is now the same for every size and type of bracket, which make creating tournament brackets so much easier.
The documentation is clear.
The third place match is a nice feature too... Kudos!
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For anyone who wants to do MSL pages from scratch, I have txt files for skeletons of the format I've been using for the pages (will look like 2009 Avalon MSL and 2011 PDPop MSL)
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ohh god... it took me while to notice that "' ' ' (player x) ' ' '" puts the name in bold letters. thats what happens when idiots like me try to understand the syntax of those coding shinanigans :D
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I still feel TL is missing a "real" Matchticker. I love your content but if I want to check results or want to look who is where in any competition i surfe to other sides.
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Netherlands6142 Posts
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excellent work!
i like the way that u standardize the leagues ^^
now u can understand a unique format
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I love everyone who is contributing to LP so I can sit on my fat ass and read tournament results.
you guys > normal guys
<3<3<3
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Thank you and great job, the effort is appreciated
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i love TL, R1ch and all coders, hand holders, LP staff etc. much love
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The only thing I can say, is thank you to all the people who do t he work here, without it we would have nothing.
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On September 27 2011 05:29 Wolf wrote:
I love Liquipedia. I'm glad TL is pushing for more people to get involved.
I'd just like to point out/thank Wolf for being an awesome resource on site at so many korean events for LP. Sitting at the table, casting GSL qualifiers, updating LP as soon as he knows results, HUGE karma points!
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Sweden647 Posts
moar brackets! moar flags! I love how the new ones turned out :D
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Um, does anyone else have like, extremely corrupted brackets in Firefox? Running FF7 on Windows 7 x64. Looks fine in IE9.
Here is what the IPL3 brackets (and all other brackets on LP) look like for me:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/4j01V.png)
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EPT![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Pholon/Liquipedia/10241729.jpg)
