[LP] Swedish Shrimps Special

October 31st, 2010 20:00 GMT

Liquipedia Weekly #9

It's that time of the year again! And by that I mean it's time for an interview. Several users have been dedicating lots of time to editing Liquipedia, and we think these people are doing an outstanding job. That's why we've decided to feature some of the best! The first ~~sacrifice~~person on the podium is (Wiki)

Kokkan! He's been doing an astounding job with the wiki, so I sat down with him to ask him a few questions.

Kokkan wanted to remain anonymous (or as anonymous as he could), but with my sources I've narrowed it down a bit. He's either a 30-something black man from Louisiana who farms shrimp after having left the army, or he's 27 and lives in Sweden.

This is probably the guy I'm talking to

Hi Kokkan! You don't have many posts at all on TL, so I don't think too many people know who you are. Introduce yourself!
Well, I'm kinda new to the Starcraft community. I started playing the Sc2 beta and found the TL community shortly there after.

So what got you into editing LP?
Firstly I started using it as a online resource, when I needed info on units or strat. Then slowly as I learned more, I started to make small additions. Mostly spelling and small corrections at the start. But as time grew and I became more and more at home with the wiki I started adding more and more. I have a background in computer software and use to do some webcoding at home.

Speaking of which, you've been doing a lot of editing and upkeep as opposed to writing articles. Do you feel that you're more suited to this style of editing? Can anyone do it?
Yes, I don't feel as I have enough experience to outright say: "This strategy wont work" if I read it. To some extent, I can, but since im not a top diamond player I have to be restrictive in what I write or edit. I'm more use to the role as editor/administrator than writer. Hmmm.... sure anyone can add content. But you need a solid base of editors and users to go through the additions to keep the quality of the wiki. just like LP does.

If a woodchuck could chuck wood, what's the cube root of 54,872?
Square root you mean? ahh no... long time since I did my calculus. No idea. =P

The answer is 38, but good effort!
What's your favorite part of editing?
Contributing to the community and learning new stuff I would say.

So it's not the thrill of bending words to your will?
I enjoy the writing part as well, the quality of the content is important. But I have it easier to re-write a text than to write something new.

As anyone can see by looking at your contribution history, you've been all over Liquipedia. What do you think is the best page right now?
Pages I have been involved in or the entire LP?

Any page at all.
Hmmm... that's a hard one. Perhaps the Sentry page since it's so complete and quite well written.

(Protoss whore!) How about the worst page?
=D the old "How to Improve" page.... it was to much copy-paste from the forum. So I re-wrote it. And ofc, the T strat page on MMM push (being a P whore!) =P

Ok, and the coup-de-gras of "what page" questions: What page is your personal favorite?
My personal favorite: The Strategy Pages... really good info there.

Any final comments to your audience?
Log in and start contributing to the LP, it's a lot of fun. =D
As well as join the IRC channel.

Thanks for your time, and keep on truckin'!
=)

So, what is it that Kokkan has been doing? Well, he's certainly spent a lot of time working on Templates (which we'll see more of in Liquipedia soon, I'm sure).

Hey that's pretty nifty.

Specifically, he's made that cool little (Wiki)

progress bar come to life! It seems he enjoys fixing mistakes as well as making things look pretty, since he's also made sure that all of the Ability and Spell boxes are uniform, and that they all have the correct info! In fact, if we go and look at what he's done, we can see that he's been basically categorizing every single page. What a trooper.

The human filing system

Kokkan hasn't been with Liquipedia for that long (his first edit was only in July), but without him LP2 might still be utilizing the "I know it's probably around here somewhere..." filing system. Categorizing Liquipedia isn't an easy task, either. At the time of writing, there are 931 articles. And that doesn't include things like images and templates.

"Holy Hellion! So many #if-cases.
I'll re-write this as soon as I can."
Kokkan on Template:Flag

And speaking of templates, he organizes them too! He's spent a bit of time making some templates much simpler and easier to use. One of them you probably don't even realize, but is on Kokkan's ~~hit~~to-do list is the Flag template. You know, that one you see all over LP? It makes flags? Yeah, that one. It's the 5th most used template on Liquipedia. It's used on 4 times more pages than the icon for minerals! But oddly not as much as gas, which is #4, and also the brainchild of Kokkan.

You know what? I am just going to put it out there: if you use a template, odds are Kokkan's done something with it. He's one of those people who you never see, hear about, notice, or smell, but without him Liquipedia would be quite a bit less pretty and organized.

Before Kokkan came along...

There you have it, the first interview! Good luck Kokkan! And remember everyone, if you edit Liquipedia with lots of qualityness, you too can get into the news! Exclamation points!!!!

- Liquipedia staff