East Gorteau22261 Posts
Cross-posting this to make sure more people read it:
So, as promised, here is a summary of what the interested staff members had to say about the idea of moving Dota2 to its own site:
- The issue of too much content: Yes, filters exist. But as a rule of thumb, I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of TL's visitors do not know of or do not use filters, and first-time visitors were very likely to feel overwhelmed by the abundance of content - with Dota and two Starcrafts, there was so much of it that it became periodically hard to navigate. It is true that filters may be the most comfortable solution for established members, but if you come to a new site you typically don't want to go through the trouble of finding a filter function before you start browsing through the stuff you're interested in. With Liquiddota, TL goes back to being a source of Starcraft news, and thus more 'welcoming' for Starcraft fans visiting the site for the first time, whereas Liquiddota becomes a dedicated Dota site that runs no risk of confusing new visitors.
- Competition: Most of TL's competitors are dedicated sites. This ties in with the previous point in that a site covering many different games will be, in general, less attractive to a dedicated fan than a site covering your game specifically. The quality of content can be the same, or even slightly worse, on a dedicated site, and the fan that cares only about that single game is still more likely to go there, both for the sense of community and because it feels more natural to go to LiquidHearth than it does to go to LiquidSeveralGamesYouDontLikeAndHearthstone. The idea is that a dedicated site will offer more competition and attract more visitors than TL's Dota section did.
Also, I think it's fair to say that the Dota community as a whole views Teamliquid as "the Starcraft site that also does Dota" rather than "a Dota site like any other", and not without reason. Below is a quote by monk on the subject when Nazgul first brought up the idea of a separate Dota site.
+ Show Spoiler +On February 13 2014 20:44 monk wrote:
The way I see TL Dota right now is the same way I view Gosugamers HS coverage. Besides LH, Gosugamers actually has the best HS articles on the web right now. However, even though you might read a HS article by them linked on reddit, it's very unlikely that you'll stay on their site. There's just way too many games covered there and everything is impossible to find, especially HS content. As a result, there's no HS community there and their forums are barren. The same problem seems to be happening for Dota 2 on TL. As far as I can tell or what I've heard is that we have some best articles on the web, but articles aren't what are going to draw users to stay on the site if everything is so difficult to find and there isn't a sense of shared community
Relating to that, I've noticed that Dota has way fewer, if any, cool ancillary features compared to what SC2 currently has on TL or what LH is planned to have. SC2 currently has TLPD, FPL, and Liquibet. LH is planned to have a Deck Builder, Arena Simulator, and Puzzle Maker. To the best of my knowledge, Dota has none of that. I don't know the particular reasons for that but if Dota had its own site, there'd at least be additional room to put these features.
Although the HS move to LH was a much more drastic change than the proposed Dota move, I already see a lot of cool things resulting from it. I see 1 post users posting all the time. There's also a ton of HS blogs where there weren't before (we average about 1 blog a day). We almost never had HS blogs on TL and looking over blogs now, I don't think I see a single Dota 2 blog.
Speaking from experience working on LH, I enjoy working on the site a lot more and there's just so many more opportunities to display content. For example, we have a featured video everyday. In addition, because we don't have to compete with another game, each article we put out can get a lot more time on the front page. All in all, I think a new TL Dota site is a great idea and it'll be great for both the Dota staff and the building of a Liquid Dota community.
- With LiquidHearth in mind:
On May 12 2014 07:59 Hot_Bid wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2014 07:20 FiWiFaKi wrote:
Was hoping mod/staff would be able to answer....
How successful would you guys rate the splitting of Hearthstone from teamliquid? It was successful. It definitely wouldn't have worked putting it on TL frontpage and having HS, StarCraft, Dota, etc on it. If you were to compare LH to the option of keeping it on TL, it's not really even close in terms of how it can grow. Show nested quote +On May 12 2014 07:37 FiWiFaKi wrote:
I mean it's hard to say if teamliquid has been making good decisions recently, as their viewership has dropped to around 50% of what it was a year ago (going off of "active", as well as the activity I've been seeing). The real question is whether this will continue that streak or change it. This can be a really big nail in the coffin for teamliquid if it doesn't work out. In terms of traffic, viewership across all StarCraft sites has declined since 2012. I don't think this has much to do with any decisions we're making, it's just a reality in the scene. Dota was not growing on TL (at least not at the rate we consider acceptable) and the reason for this is because our Dota audience is just people that already use TL, not new users. This is because you have a site with a calendar not tailored to the game, with StarCraft icons, etc. It's not a very welcoming place for a Dota fan. This move at minimum will give our Dota staff and community a chance to grow. Status quo simply wasn't cutting it.
- Front page oversaturation: The separation of Hearthstone and Teamliquid alleviated this somewhat, but with potentially three games on the front page for some fans, it was impossible for the content we churned out to receive the attention it deserves. On some days, the articles on the front page would all be replaced within 24 hours, thus decreasing the amount of views that the different writer groups create. TL as a site wants to create great coverage for several games, and on the whole that's something TL succeeds in doing, but when something like 6 or 7 articles all go up within the span of a day, the content suddenly becomes overwhelming. For a fan interested in more than one game, there's suddenly too much, and too little attention given to the people that put hours in to create that content.
On that note, though this is a minor issue, there is some overlap once The International starts, and that tournament drowns out everything else for the duration of it due to its incredible magnitude. Remember last year, when WCS' Regional finals all took place during TI3? Do you remember the amount of content put out pretty much every hour? I swear at least one of the editors had a heart attack as a result.
- The issue of separation: A lot of people seem to feel like Liquiddota shatters the TL community, and I suppose in a way that is true. But the consensus was, and this is how I feel as well, that simply breaking TL down further with more and more sub-forums and sub-communities within a larger whole does not significantly aid the creation of a "community". The people that hang out in General tend to hang out in General, while those who frequented Dota did so and little else. Of course, there are a select few veteran members that browsed most of the site, but they are in the minority. The creation of Liquiddota is an attempt to create a Dota community with minor ties to TL (Starcraft), not simply a relocation of the site's Dota fans to another URL.
The purpose of the new site is to build a community for Dota fans much like other significant Dota sites available, and create a community just like a community was built around Brood War when TL first launched in 2002. People will come to Liquiddota as Dota fans and to Teamliquid as Starcraft fans, and those who really care about both games have the option to utilize the features including shared PMs and the like and visit both sites. It will be inconvenient for some users, yes, but long-term, Liquiddota allows for much more growth than cramming several games into the same site ever did.
- The "family" factor: One issue that was brought up was the concern that the different communities will feel much more separate now than as a single site, thus losing some of the "Family"-feeling that was present during the site's earlier years. Especially for those veterans that frequented multiple sub-forums, I see how this may be a concern. But if you feel like this is an issue, keep in mind that TL is massive now compared to five-or-so years ago. That sense of a tight-knit community was already half-gone with just how large the site has become. It wasn't possible, even for those who spend four hours a day on TL like some of us do, to know everyone byname.
Quote on the subject below:
+ Show Spoiler +On February 16 2014 06:26 2Pacalypse- wrote:
I think you may be overselling the "family" factor. This may have been true once in the old days of BW, but now TL has become too big to have that feeling across the site. For example, and don't take this the wrong way, but I have never seen your account until a couple of days ago and you're a staff user with 9k posts.
The point is that you're much likely to have that feeling of family with people who share your interests. This is why I'm against sharing the non-game specific forums across the sites. I think our main focus should be in attracting new users and building new sub-communities, and best way to achieve this is by letting community creates itself and not by us micromanaging it.
- On the subject of having shared General/Community sub-forums: It's been brought up earlier in this thread, and it was brought up in the staff forums as well. I think the response was generally positive, though there are technical quirks to work out before it can happen. I think it is going to happen eventually though, provided the technical issues can be solved.
Hopefully that explains a few things.
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EPT
Wraith King. 
