Now on Fridays!
At Liquipedia we can't make editing more fun. We can make it more easy. Therefore this week a feature about some tools we have to make all our jobs a little lighter. They are ready for use and eagerly awaiting some action!
Say you want to write the article for a cool strat you've seen, maybe you have a running tournament that you'd like chronicled for future generations or maybe you simply want to add your favourite player to the wiki. Where do you start?? Liquipedia is a big scary place after all, and with no wiki or coding experience is it even possible to contribute?
Nowadays, Liquipedia features several Page Templates. What's that you ask? Basically these pages contain the entire framework for a Liquipedia article. All the coding is there and all it needs is content that you can fill in by simply following the instructions. So, how do we use these templates to start a page of our own? Keep reading for a simple 4 step tutorial that will help you become of us.
Step 1.
Visit the template page of the type of article you want to write. There are several: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Player_Template - http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Strategy_Template - http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Map_Template - http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Tournament_tutorial .
Step 2.
Hit the "edit" button on top of the page.
Select all the text (ctrl + a) in the textbox and copy it to your clipboard (ctrl + c)
Step 3.
Create a new page by putting your article's name behind /starcraft2/ in the page url.
NOTE: When naming your build make sure to include the match-up - 3 Rax (vs. Protoss) is different from 3 Rax (vs. Zerg). Hit "edit this page" and paste the copied text into the textbox
Step 4.
Write the article! There may be some funky boxes in the template that need filling out, so we've laid out exactly how to manipulate these for two types of article - builds and tournaments. The other templates are very similar to the two below.
A Build Article
Before we get into actually writing the article. You may notice these fancy textlines in the code:
<!-- Hello, I am an article -->
Any text between these "tags" will not show up in the actual article, so we use them to leave instructions for our editors. Super nifty!
A build article grossly consists of three parts: An introduction, the build order itself and the execution of the build. First though, let's fill out the build template.
<!-- Fill out the Infobox_Strategy template: -->
{{Infobox_Strategy
|name=
|race=
|image=
|caption=
|matchups=TvP
|creator=
|popularized=
}}
Filling in this small list of will magically be turned into a neat Infobox at the top of the article:
Introduction.
Going on to the actual article, simple follow the instructions below the headers and subheaders:
==Overview==
<!-- A general description of the build-->
===Goal===
<!-- Describe what the goal of the opening is (doing damage, economic advantage). Include pros and cons of the build (examples: pro = strong vs a variety of builds, con = micro intensive)
-->
In the Overview describe what the build entails, even feel free to add a bit of history to your story. In Goal you describe what this build is good for - what does the player want to achieve?
Build Order
==Basic Build Order==
{{build
|
<!-- Use bullet points to describe the build. Include Supply count or relative timings. If possible include scout time and start of unit production. You can <ref>Tage references</ref> with these instructions for additional information.-->
*
*
*
}}
Speaks for itself doesn't it? :D
This section has two subheaders: Notes on the BO and Scouting. Whereas the Build Order itself is really concise, the Notes section gives you the opportunity to elaborate on Building Placement, Relative Timings and the build's deviations based on, say, the map.
Execution
As your BO comes to an end, how do you successfully reach your goals? Describe how to perform that timing attack, how to take that expansion or how to prepare that counter to what your scouted your opponent doing.
After all this, we have some room to discuss how your build will work on different maps, as well as a section for recommended games-to-watch.
A Tournament Article
With gigantic amount increase of tournaments it's hard for us to keep up. My buddy Julmust wrote an excellent tutorial on how to make your own tournament page.
Starting out we begin with an Information Box. This will let readers instantly know What's Up with your tournament. The code is pretty simple: answer the questions and the result will look something like this...
Write down all the info about the tournament. For this you can use headers that you can simply mark by using the = symbol. You can come up with all kinds of paragraphs. Some examples include:
===Overview===
What would generally describe your tournament?
===Rules===
Let people know what they are and aren't allowed to do.
===Highlight Games===
Go all out by even recommending some games to future generations!
No tourney is complete without a tournament bracket. Trust you me, some of our coders have spent hours upon hours on making our special Liqui-brackets as user-friendly as possible. Simply follow the instructions in the tutorial and the end result well look something like this...
When you're done typing, don't forget to hit the Save button and a reviewer will get to it as soon as possible
That's it for this week, we'll return to the juicy strategy stuff next week. Remember, if you get stuck, a Liquipedia staff member is always around and willing to help you out. Just shoot them a PM or join us on IRC.
- Liquipedia team
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PM a Liquipedia Staff Member: Aesop, Pholon, Imperator, Mystlord, Steeeeve, TheFallofTroy, Slugbreath, Julmust