Liquipedia – Volunteer-run wiki for eSPorts

4 min


Liquipedia

The motto of Liquipedia is made by the eSports community for the eSports community. It is a volunteer-run wiki website covering various eSports. Liquipedia began with StarCraft: Brood War. Now, they cover more than 40 titles.

There are many contributors with different personalities, but that is what makes a wiki resource good.

Who owns the website?

Liquipedia website is owned by Team Liquid, a multi-regional professional eSports organization based in the Netherlands. Team Liquid was founded in 2000. When the game StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty was released, Team Liquid signed their first professional players.

And in 2012, the gaming team acquired a North American Dota 2 team, making their first venture into multi-genre management.

They merged with Team Curse in January 2015, under the Liquid banner. They brought player Steve Arhancet, his supporting staff, and the former League of Legends, Street Fighter, and Super Smash Bros. teams.

In 2017, Team Liquid won the International thanks to their European Dota 2 team. So far, their League of Legends team has won four LCS titles.

Besides Liquipedia, Team Liquid owns two more main websites. Their official Team Liquid website focuses on the team and their eSports coverage. And the TLnet, originally branded as Team Liquid, now tl.net focuses primarily on strategy games like StarCraft II coverage and StarCraft Brood War, Heroes of the Storm, Super Smash Brothers Melee, and more.

Since the launch of StarCraft II, TLnet has grown into the largest StarCraft community on the internet. The gaming website statistics show it has more than 220,000 active gamers and more than 20 millions posts. The website has a four-person full-time staff located in an office in New York City. And of course, many volunteer contributors.

How to Create an Article?

Now let’s get back to Liquipedia, the free wiki website. If you want to create an article or page on the website, you have to check if it does not already exist. Use the search function to check if the page is not already there on the wiki. Warning: it might have a different name than the one you are looking for. So, try synonyms, full names, and acronyms, and search thoroughly.

Now, not everyone and everything can have its page. You have to check the Notability Guidelines. They define what may or may not have an article on the platform. Check with the notability criteria before you decide to create a page. If the criteria are not met, your page will be moved to your userspace, and visitors will see it is not a page curated by Liquipedia team.

The concept behind a wiki is that any user can edit or create pages on it. But sources are what make it trustworthy and reliable. Make sure to provide a reliable link and great resource so that readers can consult if they want to check the game information. Yes, not everything can be sourced, but for anything that can have one, a link to a trustworthy source is very much needed.

Think of wiki as a community of fans, not just an encyclopedia. If you do not know how to do something, you can check the feedback thread or Liquipedia discord to ask other people and gamers for help.

Different ways to create a page

Now let’s talk about some of the different ways you as a user can create an article or page on the Liquipedia website.

Wikilinks

Using Wikilinks is the simplest and easiest way to do it. MediaWiki makes it easy to link wiki pages using the standard syntax.

If you create a link to an article that doesn’t exist yet, the link will be colored red. Clicking the red link will take you to a page where you can edit the new article. Type the text, click save, and the new page will be created.

Once the page has been created, the color will change from red to blue, and purple for pages you have visited.

This is usually the best way to create a page because it will be linked from the start to at least one other place on the wiki.

Using the URL

Another good idea to create an article is using the wiki’s URL and creating a new page. This might sound complex, but it is quite simple.

Here is what an URL to an article looks like: https://liquipedia.net/starcraft/ARTICLE. Now, all you have to do is replace Article with the name of the page you want to create. Once you do that, you will be taken to a blank page, indicating that no article of that name exists yet. Click the Edit page tap at the top of the page, and you can edit your new article.

Sometimes, the URL can also look like this: https://liquipedia.net/starcraft/index.php/ARTICLE. It is the same procedure, just replace Article with something new.

From the search page

Use the search function. If you search for a page that doesn’t exist, you will get a link to create that new page. But you have to use the search box and the Go button on the left of the page for this method to work.

Using the search button will not work.

What are the popular games?

As we said before, Liquipedia has more than 40 titles. Many of them are popular games that you have probably played at least once.

For example, here is a list of all the games, content, and game information you can find on the eSports website.

  • Mobile legends
  • Dota 2
  • Counter-Strike
  • Rocket League
  • Apex legends
  • Valorant
  • League of Legends
  • Rainbow Six
  • Overwatch
  • PUBG and PUBG Mobile
  • StarCraft II
  • StarCraft Brood War
  • Age of Empires
  • Hearthstone

As you can see, some of the games are relatively new, but there are also games dating back to the 2000s and 1990s. For example, Brood War was released in 1998 and the first Age of Empires was released in 1997. These games have stood the test of time because of their quality.

Hearthstone

Browsing the website

Now, what is the best way to browse the platform? How can you find what you want? Well, the moment you get to the main page, you can click on trending. This will show results of the most popular latest posts.

Clicking on tournaments will get you to the ongoing tournaments. There are always a couple of eSports tournaments you can follow.

And of course, you can edit/create an article, help portal, chat with people from the website, or check the feedback thread.

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