We're the esports wiki, Liquipedia. Ask Us Anything!

Have you put any thought into picking up CSGO?

Yes.

And? Soon^TM or what?

:3

What's the first/most basic thing a volunteer can do to help contribute to Liquipedia?

Is there a large backlog of something that people can help with en masse? Are there daily/weekly things that someone could potentially help take care of?

I've used your service for years, usually a few times a week. I can always expect quality from you guys. Thanks for your hard work

There are “How to contribute” sections on most of our wikis. Just start there, or hop on IRC (#liquipedia on QuakeNet) and we’ll happily help you getting started!

There’s always loads of work to do, tournaments to update, achievements to put into the respective players page, as well as misc edits on various pages.

Currently we are still missing some GvG cards on our Hearthstone wiki for example. Most player and team profiles can always be improved by someone writing a bit about their history. Fixing spelling mistakes and grammatical errors is also a very easy thing to start with, just hit random page, read it and fix anything that sticks out.

Who is gonna win Starcraft II Starleague?

Per our guidelines, we cannot post spoilers. ^{But Scarlett will wreck that entire line-up.}

If she shows up^Kappa

Oh, we know she will, she’s the foreign hope after all. ;) ^{GL! <3}

Do you guys ever check similar (Gamepedia) and say 'huh' we're better?

(super politically correct answer:) We’re better in some respects, they’re better in others, it depends what your priorities are. Also, due to our CC-BY-SA license, we’d like to share with them, but we can’t since they’re CC-BY-NC-SA.

tl;dr Hell yeah!!

There was a point raised in the recent Chuan/Demon AMA, and i'd like your opinion.
Do you think using real names in game in esports make people take it more seriously? Handles were used on internet basically for anonymity and I feel in competitive play I don't think it's 'professional'.

No, we think people of our generation are completely fine with using online aliases. Even in traditional sports a lot of the most renowned sportsmen (and women) are usually called by a nickname. It’s not like their names are secret once they become professional players. As you can find out if you go through our player profile pages.

pPingu:

I think the scene is slowly switching to real names, some players like jaedong (lee jae dong) in sc2 or hao (chen zhihao) in dota have already IDs that are or part of their real name, but on the top of my head it’s mostly non-english speakers that do so, except for catspajamas (old sc2 caster) that switched to his real name in the middle of his career.

why isn't ixmike88 in charge of redacting every single page?

Would be too much awesomeness to handle for our server.

What do you think of the growth of Liquipedia Smash? Satisfied or unsatisfied?

Both. It is getting better recently. We have some awesome new contributors giving it the help it deserves, even creating awesome new tools to help out. Obviously it could always be better, but it’s not too bad.

Hi guys ! What's your best memory about Liquipedia ?

Back in 2006 when we were first set up. Unlike you humans we can remember our birth....

Aesop: Probably when it started rolling … which was some time after the sc2 version was set up. Suddenly people needed little motivation to edit at all, tournaments were instantly updated, eventually players, organizers, casters started displaying us on screen.

salle: when I crashed it…. and it was down for like two hours, when I was still a scrub.

Noam: It was one of the first SC2 MLGs. MLG’s open brackets were not even posted online back then. We had people taking pictures of the brackets and sending it to us so we could update results in real time. I think it was the first time Liquipedia really shined as an amazing resource.

How do you manage to keep the servers running even under huge load caused by big events?!

We have no clue how the wizard does it. <3

[deleted]

We have at least 20k registered users and about 400 different contributors in the last month. All are volunteers though.

How many paid employees do you have updating the site? Is it independent from teamliquid and just associated/third party? Are you owned by teamliquid.net? How many volunteers regularly update the site? Artosis is right, Liquipedia has such a huge amount of information, it's incredible.

We don’t have any paid employees, everyone’s a volunteer. So it’s driven by thousands of individuals, like yourself, who just want to make the best resource for the esports title they love. The website is owned by teamliquid.net, but in no way that influences the tone of the wiki, which we try to keep neutral. We have between 400 and 20 regular contributors, depending on the game/wiki.

If you could change anything about league of legends what would it be?

The name.

If you don't mind me asking, why would you change the name?

The acronym makes it a joke “LOL” but also there's no one “League” they are not united so something more adversarial would make more sense: "Clash of Legends"(CoL), "Battle of Legends"(BoL), "Legends running across a river to kill each other's villages"(LRARKEOV) would all make more sense in our humble opinions.

fav bw moment?

Noam: Flash vs Jaedong. LIGHTS GO OUT. OMG!

Aesop: 3-3-7. Never forget!

Chapatiyaq: I don’t follow BW much, but I really like the last JangBi vs Fantasy finals.

salle: chill vs CombatX grudgematch

Do you think Starcraft is dying? And if so, what specifically has caused that and do you think it can be revived with Legacy of the Void?

Eurgh, you really had to ask this?

Okay well here goes: No. According to our numbers it’s not dying, when people were calling for it’s demise in 2013 we had the same numbers as in 2012, this year we have seen a slight drop for StarCraft II, but it’s mostly been at the start of the year, and it’s nothing that LotV can’t regain, and vastly improve upon.

Clubfan:

I personally don’t think it’s “dying”. The viewer numbers surely have gone down a little bit, but the overall scene still seems to be healthy, especially with the amount of tournaments we’ll see in Korea as well as the rest of the world. LotV can (and will!) nonetheless get more attention which might results in higher view counts or even more tournaments with higher prizepools. At the moment, we surely have the highest level of competition yet.

Aesop:

I think the question, what a healthy esports ecosystem looks like, hasn’t been successfully answered yet. All in all there are plenty of tournaments, a huge amount of price money is poured out, there are exciting matchups and the games are on an amazing level. Viewer numbers might fluctuate, but what does that say?

prech:

Just to address StarCraft: Brood War -- the scene is actually enjoying a resurgence after a dormant few years. Just see in Korea with OnGameNet having been announced as the broadcaster for the next Sonic Starleague. Then there are the various other Korean tournaments featuring prominent players (such as Bisu and Sea) and sizable prize pools (over $25,000) that have recently sprung up. The Chinese scene is also humming along nicely, with fan contributions leading to sizable prize purses, and gatherings of international players.

Why is pPingu still staff?

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

<3 Liquipedia :)

What kind of software tools are used to generate / fill out brackets and pools results more quickly?

-]343[

Manpower mostly :D

Some use regex text editors, but knowing the hotkeys to save a page comes in very handy if you want to be as fast as you can. (Alt + Shift + S)

Any news on a possible DOTA squad?

You would have to ask Teamliquid’s owner Nazgul about a professional team.

However if you mean an amateur team made up of liquipedia staff, that has already happened… but let’s not talk about that….

Also this: http://www.liquiddota.com/forum/dota-2-general/473325-12-days-of-christmas

What is your favorite Starcraft 2 Trivia?

pPingu:

I think MC has some all around pretty good trivia with the pickpocket in France story being one of the best, otherwise in bw I love the story of StarCue because the only reason I remember him is just because he once put his headphones backward (to even find his name I had to google “bw player backward headphones”)

Chapatiyaq:

Apollo has owed tofucake $20 since IPL3 where he lost a bet that EDT = GMT - 4

salle:

Think it’s on wolf’s page hidden in the history of the page so I’m not gonna go look for it but where it says he doesn’t like ice cream and he saw it and was creeped out Liquipedia knew so much about him. Glorious.

Could you please input the 2 letter abbreviation code for Qatar into your database?

We don’t have a database for countries. However if you’re talking about flag templates we surely can. However the wiki is open for everyone to edit, so you could do it on your own as well.

what is your favorite city in Michigan?

Detroit!

I use your site for basically everything regarding e-sports. I was wondering if you've ever thought of the possibility of having a way to see upcoming games for at least the higher level teams. I'm someone who plays favorites when it comes to what games I choose to watch, and this would be mighty helpful. I understand that with hundreds of tournaments going on a day that this might be difficult. Is there any chance that we could see something like this?

In general: there are tons of things where people initially thought “wow, that would be a huge effort to add” or “wow, I think that will never happen”. Then a skilled and determined individual set to work and made it happen. In that vein: would be awesome, needs someone to pursue it till the end. That’s the equally sad and awesome reality of the wiki.

We have been thinking about something like that, but it would really take a lot of time to add/update everything manually. On the other hand, with further integration/usage of Semantic MediaWiki it’s something possible. We can’t promise anything though.

LiquidDota’s calendar fills this function pretty well, we don’t feel like we could improve upon it too much so we're not making it a priority.

Who is the most handsome member of the staff/team(s)?

Clubfan.

lol

Is there something that you wan't to add but either can't or won't add to the site ?

There’s a lot of things we want to add. The problem is finding time to do everything we want to do. We want people to add more text. Liquipedia is the place for more than just results, it is a constantly updated history book. The bracket of a tournament tells such a small part of the storyline, and there are so many tidbits of information that Liquipedia is the perfect place for.

A retrospective WC3 wiki would be awesome. But it’s probably too late for that.

There are a few things we can’t add, that’s mostly features to make the experience more data-rich, we can’t be a database like TLPD, Aligulac, or Datdota.

Favourite Smash moment?

Also thank you for taking our suggestions from a while back to make Liquidpedia more user-friendly! You guys rock!

pPingu:

Hard to think about a specific game, there are so many good ones but I have to link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD_imYhNoQ4. One game that always pops into my mind is ken vs fly amanita https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5osZLUUWu0 sick comeback, even watching it again I can’t believe he won that. Otherwise any final that armada wins, I love watching him, such a great player.

FO-nTTaX:

Karissa the Destroyer, because it was just hilarious =)

Clubfan:

I second FO-nTTaX, it was really funny.

Is making content for wiki-based site a good business ?

How many people work exclusively for Liquipedia full time ?

LOL No and no one.

If you’re willing to pay us money we might consider taking you up on the offer but for now this is a passion project.

Also stop killing kittens. There’s only one D in liquipedia.

Do you guys make a lot of money? Where from?

As you and other Liquipedia visitors and contributors have likely seen (assuming folks aren’t using ad-blockers) we largely depend on advertising to keep the site up and running smoothly. Nonetheless, this advertising does not influence the neutral tone and style to which we adhere. As noted earlier (point to previous “paid employees question”), contributors and staff are not salaried, and we continue to depend on our reliable contributors to make Liquipedia the pinnacle of esports Wikis.

what do you think about invoker in this patch? what build items i should make? I've played so many games but end up losing

EDIT right answer now:

Invoker isn't as popular in the current patch as he used to be but the items haven't changed much. If you are going to focus on split pushing, you can go QE Invoker and start with Phase/Power Treads (depending on what you prefer), Wand, Blink, and Necro 3, and you can push sidelanes very quickly with double Forge Spirits and Necro minions. If you need to provide teamfight for your team, you can go QW Invoker with Phase, Blink/Force staff, and Euls, and use Tornado + EMP to completely disrupt enemy teamfights. After that Invoker is a very situational hero and it is not really possible to give you a strict build to follow. Items to consider include BKB if against a lot of magical disables/damage, Sheepstick if you need an extra disable, Linkens if against single-target ults such as Doom, Beastmaster, or Bane, Orchids if facing high-mobility heroes such as Anti-Mage, Storm, or QoP, Aghs/Refresher if you want to focus more on chain casting spells. Boots of Travel later are obviously helpful.

Hope that covers it, good luck!

What's the most commonly visited article/page on the site? (after the homepage I suspect)

Yesterday it was Dota 2 Star Ladder Season 11 but it changes from day to day and from hour to hour. And it changes if we talk about a day or a year. For example if we take off all time it's SC2 Zerg Strategy.

Do you watch other people play video games for fun?

1. Yes, we enjoy watching people play video games.
2. Yes, we also enjoy it, if people play “for fun”. Hopefully, most pros play for fun too.
3. Any and all playing of video games should include maximal amounts of fun. Right?

[deleted]

Most information is gathered from interviews, team pages, tournaments, directly from players, etc. If one’s age is revealed somewhere, it’s no longer private. We try to only add information we can verify.

It’s probably not the best idea to become a professional (e)sportman if you want to stay anonymous. We’d need some very good reasons to keep someone’s identity secret after it has already been made public, however if it’s not publicly known then we wouldn’t be able to publicise it in the first place.

What was most difficult thing u had to do on site ?

How many people and Volunteers are working on site ?

What would u add to site and why ?

Yhamm:

most difficult thing was trying to create a bracket template with no clue how css is working x_x but with some perseverance (sp?) I could do it, so can anyone! :P Other than that, it’s probably to keep everything up to date, which is not possible without the help of everyone.

Aesop:

For me it wasn’t a specific edit or template. When we were starting off, it was to keep editing without knowing the project was even going to be published or going to be used by many people. Being persistent with what you want to add and what you want to achieve appears to be one trait commonly found in the most active and influential editors.

Clubfan:

One of the most difficult things for me personally was understanding how Semantic MediaWiki works. But just like everything else, it’s only a matter of time and dedication to learn and apply the knowledge. The most difficult part of that was to store map information of brackets in semantic sub-objects. But it worked and we now have these awesome statistics.

Chapatiyaq:

Find the courage to make propositions for changes in Liquipedia. What mostly helped is becoming staff :) We have hundreds of volunteers, but only a small core of people are regularly editing the site.

salle:

Most difficult is managing six wikis, I never knew we’d grow this much this fast, it’s fun and challenging though. There has been between 400 and 800 active contributors the last 30 days, and over 20 000 since the wiki was founded. I would add more contributors, more games, more easy to use tools so the threshold for people to start to help out was lower, more how-to guides, more information about players, about the games, about great matches during tournaments, more VODs, more newbie guides to the games, more of everything essentially.

[deleted]

We haven’t named any team except LickyPiddy, an up and coming sc2 team training to play in proleague in 2016. They are on schedule so far.

What do you think would happen to the scene if Liquipedia just went away? Vanished. Would anyone ever be able to fill that gap? How much would the pro scene suffer from lack of information?

Liquipedia isn’t only a current information source. We might have pretty, up-to-date brackets, info on the players competing, current strategies and much more. But Liquipedia is also about documenting the history of the games covered. Our StarCraft II wiki is the prime example, since you can relive its development from the very beginnings. So, whatever Liquipedia is doing right now for you might stay. But a lot of the history might get lost.

What do you think is more exciting to watch, dota or starcraft?

Yes.

Anyway. Dota is a bit like Basketball and Starcraft like Chess. Dota has this point where the game is all but decided, but has to be played out anyway. When a Starcraft game reaches an unwinnable position for someone, it just ends. Dota can drag out towards the end, when a team is trying to land a sucker punch. Starcraft on the other hand seems to be more stereotypical in what happens, so if there’s a bunch of games in a row, it can appear repetitive. Basically you should support both games equally and enjoy them for what they are.

Liquipedia confirmed not to watch Fantasy, MarineKing or Mvp vs Tefel

Don't ruin our oversimplification plz, kkthxbai.

Why is Noam so awesome?

Good question. He probably doesn’t even know himself. Maybe it's his beard?

You guys made a Heroes pro team right out of the blocks. Are you looking at making an Overwatch team right away too (or at all)?

Also, I love that Ken and KoreanDJ were picked up by TL, but they don't seem to be competing at the top level of Smash. Is TL thinking about picking up more players, or growing the Smash team in any other way?

We have no plan yet to start an Overwatch wiki, but we never discussed it either. We have quite a few fans of FPS in general in the staff, so it’s not impossible.

Liquipedia is not TL, we really don’t know who the pro team will pick or not, sorry!

When it comes to being an esports wiki, I believe Liquipedia to be the best there is. However are there any other esports wikis that you guys look at in order to better yourselves?

We look at every wiki, there’s always stuff to learn. We are not afraid of doing things different though, if we believe our idea is better than the one we saw elsewhere.

The appearance of the Hearthstone gamepedia is quite impressive, and there is definitely room for improvement compared to some of the things Curse has done.

Wikia has also some amazing wikis, they have some awesome features which make the contributor discussions much better. And of course wikipedia is starting to move towards WYSIWYG editing and that is something we’d love to have.

Have you ever consider unifying with (or potentially buying) other esports wiki? For example, kniferound.net has CSGO and eSportspedia has LoL and CoD. Those are the ones LP do not have at the moment. It is better than doing everything from scratch. You know that Curse/gamepedia merged with lolpedia a year ago.

Yes.

Have you considered creating separate Liquipedia wikis for popular SC2 mods such as Star Strikers, Starbow or Aeon of Storms?

We created a namespace for Starbow, but the interest wasn’t too big. After this, we haven’t thought about creating anymore like this.

Another question. I noticed that http://wiki.teamliquid.net/lol/ leads to a 403 forbidden rather than a 404 not found page. Is this a clue that you're planning to do a LoL wiki that competes with Leaguepedia?

It’s been like that since 2012… wonder what it could mean…

Who is the guy behind "Liquipedia" and have you been on eSports event?

We are Liquipedia, for we are many. We have our minions at almost all esports events.

Are you ever going to make LP remember my login even after I close my browser?

You can check “keep me log in” and have a 24hours cookie which renew each time you log in. If you’re in private/incognito mode it doesn’t work though. And you will need to log in within 24 hours to keep it logged in.

The 24-hours limitation is quite annoying for me.

If we didn't have it the server would take longer to respond when you save pages, and there'd be a higher risk that it would stop responding from overload. If too many people are logged in at the same time, they use up too much of the server's resources.

http://www.dailydot.com/esports/aldaris-alloy-esports-resign/

http://www.dailydot.com/esports/alloy-esports-aldaris-moore-everclear-gaming/

http://www.dailydot.com/esports/alloy-esports-cube-moore/

What steps is liquipedia taking to make sure that scammers are held accountable? It seems like none based upon the following entry that mentions nothing about what Stephen Moore has done.

http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/User:Alloy_eSports/Alloy_eSports

This page is in the user space, which means we do not approve (or disapprove) of its content as long as it is not defamatory, obscene, or pornographic. That also means that it has no real value since it is not in the Main space and thus not maintained by the Liquipedia community.

If you want to write an article, that is factual, well sourced and explains these issues without bias then we certainly would consider adding it to the main-space as stated by our notability guidelines.

That page looks exactly like any other page on the wiki, the only thing to suggest it isn't is 5 characters in the URL bar (which is hidden on mobile browsers most of the time).

How is the average Internet user supposed to understand that this page is different from other distinguished pages on Liquipedia, when they wouldn't even know what "user space" means?

Feel free to come with a suggestion for how we could differentiate these pages. The users do need a workspace for articles they're building if they want to, to test new ideas etc without interrupting the live pages that visitors can see.

(Edit: Grammar)