On December 02 2014 07:10 Canucklehead wrote:No, I'm actually pro kickstarter because people have a choice to donate there. I never tell people where to donate their money to and think it's in bad taste to tell them to. Like during the ALS ice bucket challenge when critics were like donate to starving african children instead! People are free to pick the charities they donate to.
Yes, and people are donating their time to TL by volunteering.
I hope you're not going to suggest some organizations deserve donations more than others in response.
No, my stance has always been pro people getting fair compensation for their work. I guess I see volunteering for a for profit business as different than volunteering for a non profit business. I've said my piece on this so will refrain from commentating further now since there's nothing more to add.
On December 02 2014 07:10 Canucklehead wrote:No, I'm actually pro kickstarter because people have a choice to donate there. I never tell people where to donate their money to and think it's in bad taste to tell them to. Like during the ALS ice bucket challenge when critics were like donate to starving african children instead! People are free to pick the charities they donate to.
Yes, and people are donating their time to TL by volunteering.
I hope you're not going to suggest some organizations deserve donations more than others in response.
No, my stance has always been pro people getting fair compensation for their work. I guess I see volunteering for a for profit business as different than volunteering for a non profit business. I've said my piece on this so will refrain from commentating further now since there's nothing more to add.
On December 02 2014 06:51 DarkLordOlli wrote: So since you understand that TL wouldn't be possible without these over 200 volunteers, how exactly are you coming to the conclusion that TL would be able to pay them? The volunteers don't make TL an extremely rich organisation, they make it possible for TL to exist. They make it possible for people like you to come to the site and complain about why they're not getting paid, and even calling them out for volunteering? You wouldn't even be here if they didn't.
Surely you must realize the irony.
No, I realize TL wouldn't exist without volunteers, hence why I said it's a genius business model. When ongamers got the reddit ban Sir Scoots would tweet things like if your business survival relies on reddit then you have a bad business model. The same could be said of TL sort of like if your business model relies on volunteers to exist, then you have a bad business model. Except in TL's case it's a genius business model because it works for them, but they're an exception. Ongamers could have survived if it was volunteer based like TL.
If TL died because all the volunteers left one day, then so be it. Other sites like reddit would take its place. If TL can't afford to pay all their volunteers then run a kickstarter like hotbid. At least then people would get paid and I wouldn't have issue with it since kickstarter is a choice for people to donate.
I don't really see where a business model comes into this. Most community forums don't aim to make a lot of a ton of money.
That's the thing though. You see TL as just community forums. I see TL for the whole thing as a for profit esports site and all my comments reflect that.
I see that, but I don't think the initial goal for TL.net as a website is to make profit as an organisation reporting esports.
Yes, I know TL started out as a fan site and not a for profit site. That's why I brought up that mission statement article I read when SC2 was released about TL changing from a non profit site to a for profit site. That article is real old now, so I'll see if I can google it.
I can't find the article now. Maybe someone else is better at finding TL articles from 2010 than me. It was a big write up around the time SC 2 was released.
You do realize that you're being argued down by every writer here, right?
Literally, your argument is invalid because the apparent fools that we are simply DO NOT CARE that we aren't getting paid. If I weren't writing as part of the organization, I would be releasing my own strategy blogs because I just like to write about strategy. In fact, this is what I was doing before I was asked to join the all-volunteer group that made articles 100x better.
I consider writing for TL Strategy a job that a do for free, much like Day9 treated his dailies. Ultimately, his work grew into a self-supporting business, and he was able to make a career off of it. I, myself, have been contacted before by other sites willing to pay me for my work, but they requested stronger turn around time and lower quality articles for very little; if TL paid its writers, this is probably the model they would use, and, by result, it would not be the #1 hub of English-speaking ESPORTS news, strategy, and discussion.
You have to understand that what you are saying is simply wrong. You are on the outside of what goes on, and you can't possibly understand what we do unless you do it yourself. It doesn't matter that "TL is a for-profit business" -- we do the work for free because we would do the work anyway; we gain by the experience, create new friendships, and are enriched by the experience in a way that lower quality paid writing position would never bestow upon us.
I'd like to correct something you mentioned about reddit. Reddit is nothing more than a giant content aggregator that completely depends on the work of others to function correctly. If for example TL stopped all SC coverage, reddit would not be in a position to do anything about it, except pray that someone else decided to fill the void.
I actually really dislike reddits content model. It might get people more views on their articles, and it is in a way very convenient, but unfortunately a major downside is that it siphons off quite a bit of discussion from the original source, thereby reducing the actual creators traffic, and subsequent ad revenue. Great for reddit, terrible for everyone else.
Also, don't think a lot of people who work for / run non-profits work for free either. It's just a different business model, and people still make their salaries. Often times, a lot of the "profits" end up going into a larger percentage of administrative costs than similar "for profit" businesses.
I would just think of writing for TL as a hobby more than a job. It's more applicable than posting random musings on a personal blog.
yes there's probably a misconception by a lot of people to what a 501c3 does (non-profit). A 501c3 does in fact generate revenue, but the whole reason for their classification is that the business model of these organizations is so that they aren't making boatloads of cash but are generally hovering around the 'breaking even' line.
On December 02 2014 08:18 Mysticesper wrote: Also, don't think a lot of people who work for / run non-profits work for free either. It's just a different business model, and people still make their salaries. Often times, a lot of the "profits" end up going into a larger percentage of administrative costs than similar "for profit" businesses.
I would just think of writing for TL as a hobby more than a job. It's more applicable than posting random musings on a personal blog.
Oh yeah I didn't mean to imply non profit workers work for free as full time workers still make salaries. I was talking more about someone volunteering over a weekend or something like that for a charity or cause.
I'd like to correct something you mentioned about reddit. Reddit is nothing more than a giant content aggregator that completely depends on the work of others to function correctly. If for example TL stopped all SC coverage, reddit would not be in a position to do anything about it, except pray that someone else decided to fill the void.
I actually really dislike reddits content model. It might get people more views on their articles, and it is in a way very convenient, but unfortunately a major downside is that it siphons off quite a bit of discussion from the original source, thereby reducing the actual creators traffic, and subsequent ad revenue. Great for reddit, terrible for everyone else.
Oh yes, I know reddit is a site aggregator that relies on other sites for content. One of my favourite reddits is the android one and I used to visit a lot of different phone sites to read articles, but now I just read reddit as any good phone article finds its way on reddit. Sure it's bad for the sites that I don't visit them anymore, but that's just the reality of how reddit changed things now.
I'll disagree with you about the starcraft reddit though. Very few of the reddit posts are original TL written stories and the majority of them are just articles from elsewhere, general news, or just a topic in this forum that is cross posted there as well or just a meme/video, etc. For example, one of the top posts there right now is squirtle retires with a team liquid link. That however isn't an original TL story and is just a twitter post in a TL thread. Therefore, if TL stopped all SC coverage, it would have very little effect on the sc2 reddit because like I said very few of the posts there are original TL written stories. It's just a simple numbers game. TL isn't writing 20 articles a day, but there are tons of reddit posts per day so there is never a flood of TL original content on reddit. Any TL story on reddit is just a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things there.
If you want to write things and you want to get paid, you need to go somewhere else.
If you want a join a team of people who love StarCraft (and other games) and contribute your time and energy while meeting cool people while learning new skills or improving on them then apply to help us out.
We don't do this for money because we don't care about money. We care about the game, and we like to create content for others.
I know for a fact if a lot of my TL strat guys weren't in TL strat they would be posting blogs or smaller strategy guides on their own. What TL strat does is bring a bunch of people together and we can help eachother make better content. Instead of just build orders you get decision making thrown in. Instead of just one VOD, you get some replays and multiple VODs.
Its about more than working on your own and being paid for work you are forced to do, its about choosing what you find passion in and working on it. All of our game analyses are because whoever wrote it fell in love with the game being analysed so much that they wanted to share that love with everyone else.
The Protoss Book was our version of an April Fool's joke. Ridiculous builds that are completely broken can be fun and when they are so broken they are on the edge of crazy its a fantastic experience working on the BO and sharing it with people.
On December 02 2014 09:05 ZeromuS wrote: Look, everyone its simple.
this entire post. seriously guys just stop fighting and read this.
nobody is saying writers shouldn't be paid. what's being said is, teamliquid is a fan site that doesn't make a profit, or if it does, any profit it makes goes toward making itself better.
contributions are welcome so that passionate people step up and make this site the best that it can be, not so that constant content is forced whether or not it deserves it. we're doing this for the love of the game here.
anyone familiar with the competitive TF2 scene should know exactly what i'm talking about with things like i49 and i52. TF2 is a game that has received absolutely no competitive love from its own developer since 2008 when they added a couple of competitive cvars to servers. literally nothing else has been added. over the course of 6 years, a community formed to try and force a competitive scene to a game that didn't get any love from the developer in that way. valve made csgo and dota 2 competitive, and they openly embrace those scenes, while they practically shun the TF2 and L4D2 comp scenes. but from the will of the community and the love for the game itself, a competitive scene was born and thrives today based entirely off of user contributions. so many things that scene takes for granted - soapdm, various leaderboards, plenty of plugins, nearly every competitive map, was made by the community, for the community. nothing was done for profit. any money raised went towards bettering the scene. multiple international tournaments - i49 and i52, specifically - were funded entirely from community contributions for the love of the game, so that a LAN could be had. all the tools to watch the games, play the games, balance the games... almost everything was made by the community. for the love of the game.
while SC2 receives plenty of love from sponsors, the developer, and more (holy shit, gameheart), it's still this shared passion and love for the game that drives TL, the same as TF2 and TF.TV. don't change that.
(also, if anyone is interested in learning about the TF2 scene or i49, the community made a fantastic documentary on their own about the entire event and the passion behind it. go watch it.)
You guys sure take his opinion beyond what it is: an opinion.
It's a valid one at that, but you don't need to keep bashing his head in as if he's missing the moral of the story (of a community). I think he gets it, just values the straight-forward answer to work: getting paid. Which is fine.
On December 04 2014 12:55 Maxilicious wrote: I have sent an email on 1 December, and I've yet to receive a reply. Do I get an email even if I do not get on?
If you are interested in writing for TL Strategy, send an email entitled "TL Strat Application" with the following content to recruitment@teamliquid.net.
If you are interested in writing for TL Strategy, send an email entitled "TL Strat Application" with the following content to recruitment@teamliquid.net.
Recruitment@teamliquid.net
We've only just started discussing it, don't worry.
If you are interested in writing for TL Strategy, send an email entitled "TL Strat Application" with the following content to recruitment@teamliquid.net.
Recruitment@teamliquid.net
We've only just started discussing it, don't worry.
EPT
