[PiG]

Hi forum,

So I've been thinking recently about how sometimes tournaments seem to randomly get way less competitors and viewers then is expected and how it can be very hard to predict numbers for a tournament due to these circumstances.

I feel like the problem lies the lack of networking across various online media and the disconnectedness of various parts of the community. Now when I say community I actually mean anyone that plays starcraft II, not just those who post on sites like sc2sea. I feel like many of these players have no idea when starcraft II tournaments are on or even that they exist at the smaller level such as BSG or local community opens etc. Essentially not everyone that plays the game uses the same online networks. Alot of us assume that everyone that plays the game just reads the same stuff we do, or we just straightup have no clue what sites others' frequent and what they're reading about!

I am often asked by people looking to start tournaments how many people I think would join/show up and I usually have very little solid answer to give as I'm not sure how many people will see the posts or even hear that the tournament is on!

So at the moment I'm starting a small project to catalogue all the SCII related sites whether they be big sites like TL or clan sites like the TA site. This will be aimed only at SEA ofc as a global one would take a ridiculously long time. Also I want to come up with suggestions of other advertising outlets for SCII tournaments. Once the data is looking quite comprehensive I will also wanting to rate the sites in terms of activeness/roughly how many regular posters/viewers wil be reached.

Ok so without further ado. here's my the beginnings of my list (PLEASE POST ADDITIONAL SITES ETC BELOW TO HELP ME OUT!):

Suggestions for alternative advertising:

• The first thing people new to starcraft II see every time they login to b.net is the 'News' features which on SEA are usually months old peices about blizzcon or some very basic news about season dates. In the days of WC3 when Blizzard held regular tournaments online there was news here advertising them and so everyone, even new players, knew about them. I am hoping that Blizzard will realise there isn't much money to be made by monopolizing this space. And so would be willing to advertise the more prestigous SEA tournaments and big events in this space to help grow SEA eSPORTS.
• ERASMUS (LEGEND): My first thought with this is that tournament organisers could start a facebook page for their tournament (e.g. GPD) then just each week create an event a few days ahead and invite all the subscribers to it, so they get notified that way about upcoming tourneys.
• "The BSG crowd aren't likely to play them seriously, they're less likely to plan ahead for one or even take note of the date/time. Need to get in front of them, and the best way I can think of to do that is to Tweet and be Retweeted." (Highlander) Tweet-focused advertising for BSG tournaments.
• STEAM GROUPS: There are actually many sc2-related steam groups with hundreds and even thousands of members!
  

Clan sites:
http://www.clan-ta.com
aLt: http://www.sc2sea.com/view_clanalthome.htm
nGen:
SPR: www.team-spr.net
http://www.sc2sea.com/forumdisplay.php?f=80 (is there a non-sc2sea site?)
Clan Fade: http://fadegaming.enjin.com/
ToR: http://www.timeofrising.webs.com/
TCP:
LoS:
Infi:
MiTH:
crux
HT (H): http://www.teamht.net
Nerve Gaming nRv:http://nerve-gaming.enjin.com/home
Sequential Gaming:www.sql-gaming.com




Community sites:

http://sea.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/
http://pracbudsc2.com/
www.sc2sea.com
www.teamliquid.net
www.reddit.com/r/starcraft
http://www.cybergamer.com.au/pc/sc/
www.wellplayed.org
http://www.gpforums.co.nz/forum/starcraft-ii/?


Other SCII related sites:


University societies (Mailing lists, admins emails etc would be appreciated if there is nothing like a facebook group etc.):

UNSW and USYD starsoc: http://www.facebook.com/groups/sydney.starcraft/
University of Queensland: https://www.facebook.com/groups/uqstarcraftsociety/
UTS: https://www.facebook.com/groups/107898089291821/
MACQ UNI :https://www.facebook.com/groups/107898089291821/



I have to run right now but hopefully you guys can help me complete this list by posting below! Even and ESPECIALLY small sites are what I want to find out about so please any help is appreciated. ATM I'm just posting this on cybergamer and sc2sea and once I have the time to make the list a bit more comprehensive I'll start posting on other forums to further add to the list.

POST ANY ADDITIONS BELOW!

Quick Comments

	Dox:	LEGEND <3
	neon:	Great initiative, can really see people getting behind this with some great idea's!
	Mayo:	Good stuff!
	TCPLemminks:	<3
	dippa:	i approve of your masterful ordering of the clan websites. well played sir.
	Reere:
	DtorR:
	aLtShortizz:	Thats initiative right there.
	nirvAnA:

[|Erasmus|]

My first thought with this is that tournament organisers could start a facebook page for their tournament (e.g. GPD) then just each week create an event a few days ahead and invite all the subscribers to it, so they get notified that way about upcoming tourneys...

Still need to spread the word about the facebook page though, but it's a way to encourage repeat attendances by getting people to join the group once.

I know it's not directly what you're trying to do, but just on the topic of networking and encouraging repeat attendances to avoid the massive fluctuations in attendances.

Quick Comments

PiG:

that is actually an epic suggestion! Thanks man.

[[TA]LoSt]

Clan TA website is http://www.clan-ta.com, you've linked the wrong TA! It's also teamliquid.net not .com ^_^

Goodluck dude!

[Stallion]

crux http://crux.sc2sea.com
gl PiG

[Dox]

I've actually been thinking about creating a general SEA tournaments Facebook page to track everything that's going on. Might do it this week.

[|Erasmus|]

Originally Posted by Dox

I've actually been thinking about creating a general SEA tournaments Facebook page to track everything that's going on. Might do it this week.

Despite suggesting that, I'm not a big facebook user. I'd probably get very frustrated and leave the group if I'm getting several invites to BSG/Masters only, etc. tournament events every few days.

But this is the sort of thing I think facebook should be used for, rather than status updates.

[ToR.Arnor]

Originally Posted by Dox

I've actually been thinking about creating a general SEA tournaments Facebook page to track everything that's going on. Might do it this week.

Id suggest making a "Group" Page rather than a "Fan page" as the Group Page comes with a chat group feature for online members, In saying that based on alot of experience on managing a facebook for this sort of stuff (I manage our companies page) it is super difficult to build up and maintain etc, Im more than happy to help you with this project buddy

[Apth]

I think the problem PiG is describing would be best solved by an SC2 tournaments site, dedicated to tracking SC2 tournaments and nothing else.

Instead of dispersing tournament information across dozens of sites, put all the information in one place that everyone knows how to get to.

TL/SC2SEA do well at tracking tournaments, but for people who are just looking for tournaments, the information isn't prominent enough. This is a limitation that would be hard to get around because of all the other content that has to be displayed on the site.

A dedicated tournament site could be expanded later on to include embedded brackets, embedded restreams, email notifications, all sorts of crap.

Bottom line - people are fuckin lazy. If it takes them too long to find something, they'll give up. If all people need to do is type in a URL to find information, rather than click through layers of website hierarchy, tournaments will get more participants, and more viewers.

./2c

Quick Comments

PiG:

Great Idea!

[Highlander]

In the unlikely event I get a tweet on these things in time, I'll retweeted to my small list of friends if I get them in time (alas I usually check only Twitter daily).

Perhaps post a day before and again 20 minutes before?

The BSG crowd aren't likely to play them seriously, they're less likely to plan ahead for one or even take note of the date/time. Need to get in front of them, and the best way I can think of to do that is to Tweet and be Retweeted.

For scheduled events, it wouldn't be hard to schedule these in advance with Tweetdeck.

Just my humble thoughts.

[PiG]

@Apth

Great Idea for making it accessible for those looking for tournaments! (added to OP) However I still want to keep collecting data from all these various sites though so that SCII can keep advertising to those players who don't even know they want to join tournaments (Often BSGers or really busy higher level players!).

[neon]

I think the website idea would be cool and if you could create say an RSS feed that those affiliated SC2 sites might be able to somehow use to update something (such as a sidebar) with what's on or a brief list ?

Not sure how feasible that is but it could be slightly more automated, key in something so people can reply or get directly linked to the relevant location for signups/detailed information/streams and it creates a bit more streamline.

I'm no webguy so this could just all be impossible, but the internet does some crazy wonderful things.

[Intoccabile19]

Hey PiG,

This sounds great. I am one of the people you are talking about! I would love to enter a few tournaments but have had a hard time finding any that are at my level. I have just started looking into the BSG but would love to know what else I can enter.

Also one of the community sites you missed.

www.wellplayed.org

I find it quite a good alternate to TL some times.

Quick Comments

PiG:

This is the sort of stuff I'm looking for thankyou :)

[Mayo]

Good stuff PiG, I agree with your motives.
I was personally dissapointed in only getting 20 players in the Tt eSPORTS charity challenge, I was really expecting 48+

[brijan]

Awesome idea.

Quick Comments

PiG:

Get on here more often <3 Brian!

[Dox]

Originally Posted by |Erasmus|

I'd probably get very frustrated and leave the group if I'm getting several invites to BSG/Masters only, etc. tournament events every few days.

That wouldn't happen. It's just a page you can subscribe to for information, popping up in your feed each time an event is announced. I used to do it via Twitter for 6 months or so, but the character limit actually made it quite challenging.

[|Erasmus|]

Originally Posted by neon

I think the website idea would be cool and if you could create say an RSS feed that those affiliated SC2 sites might be able to somehow use to update something (such as a sidebar) with what's on or a brief list ?

Not sure how feasible that is but it could be slightly more automated, key in something so people can reply or get directly linked to the relevant location for signups/detailed information/streams and it creates a bit more streamline.

I'm no webguy so this could just all be impossible, but the internet does some crazy wonderful things.

You could use the google calendar API pretty easily and just have a website where:
1) Tournament Organisers can create events.
2) People can subscribe to them with an email adress and have it added to their calendar, with reminders and stuff.

Or I guess I could go back to what I originally thought and have a website where people sign up and subscribe to certain types of tournaments (BSG, GPD, Masters+, Open, etc.) and when an event is created that matches their chosen criteria they are notified and given a signup link.

I might even adopt this as a pet project in a few months when I'm not insanely busy. It doesn't even need to be SEA specific. Can easily set up region as a qualifier for event notifications.

Quick Comments

	neon:	Nice
	Apth:	Do it.

[Satu]

Originally Posted by PiG

SPR: http://www.sc2sea.com/forumdisplay.php?f=80 (is there a non-sc2sea site?)

www.team-spr.net

You're welcome ^_^

[Intoccabile19]

Hey guys,

After having a quick look into creating a tournament management site I have found that with Joomla and a few plugins it would be quite easy to create a really good looking site. I can do this up (or a test version) very quickly.

I was wondering what kind of involvement sc2sea would want with this site? Thinking about it off the top of my head.....

-shared user logins would be good for the sake of a single login.
-pulling the information from the tournament site to the upcoming section on sc2sea
-maybe integrating some form of announcement system?

I am curious to see how many people would be interested in this and would want to be involved?

[zeffrin]

I'm sure if anyone can make this work it's going to be you but some challenges you're going to face...

The reason people aren't finding the BSG tourneys are because they aren't really looking for them I would think. I know for me at least I'd been watching Day9 for ages before I started looking for active community.

Setting up a new website is a fine idea but truth be told... all the websites which exist now probably started on dreams of publishing all the best info and being one place for everyone to go for news but the reality is that this is much harder to achieve than just design and build of the site itself.

I'd propose a section for this site to advertise and manage the tourneys, as well as maintain a seed kind of like GSL between tourneys. Something kind of like what Dox used at WCG Bris etc, how cool would that be.

But anyway, which ever way you decide to go I'm a web developer, strong on many languages and platforms so if you need a hand let me know

[crAzerk]

Offering to help out in whatever way, just let me know. Im quite active on Twitter so I can help run a Twitter account if that comes up in the future. In fact, why don't we have a SC2SEA Twitter account? Imma go set one up now lol

EDIT: Oh ok there IS an sc2sea twitter account! lol

And regarding the tournament webpage, I think if it happens we should try to branch out using sc2sea.com's domain name if possible (e.g. www.sc2sea.com/tournaments)
Not quite sure how this will work, need to discuss this with nirvana!

Just to rephrase what I understand is the main gripe - the current tournament system isn't intuitive enough to use and lacks functionality ? (i.e. notifications, etc)

[Meatex]

Something with a prominent calendar and as much automation as possible.
Some european tournament sites lets players in a tournament upload replays which are then parsed and checked so don't have pm admins and admins are free to do other things. I think this kind of feature would be a big selling point.
I think i saw something on TL about a guy who made an open source php or java replay parser...

While I think some people don't like having to signup for sites it would be the best way to do it. It wouldn't be too hard to have users check certain flags and set a time to be notified of any tournaments matching their criteria (from prize money to league to time of day)
Allow anyone to add tournaments without the excessive oversight thats needed on TL calendar (until server load becomes a problem)

Featured tournaments as well would be cool.
Integration with streams and even allow people to register as streamers/casters so tournament admins could invite casters...

User stats would also be a BIG draw point. Things like win rates for maps, matchups, tournaments entered, highest placements etc. Same for casters, have tournaments casted and people able to upvote casters

I have been thinking about the stats idea with Clan FaDe's internal league but alas i'm still just learning C++

Speaking of leagues you should also be able to host them quite easily with the above features

Quick Comments

	nard:
	zeffrin:	Good ideas, love the idea of a replay parser... I believe there's already API doing all the hard work anyway :)

[|Erasmus|]

Originally Posted by Intoccabile19

Hey guys,

After having a quick look into creating a tournament management site I have found that with Joomla and a few plugins it would be quite easy to create a really good looking site. I can do this up (or a test version) very quickly.

I was wondering what kind of involvement sc2sea would want with this site? Thinking about it off the top of my head.....

-shared user logins would be good for the sake of a single login.
-pulling the information from the tournament site to the upcoming section on sc2sea
-maybe integrating some form of announcement system?

I am curious to see how many people would be interested in this and would want to be involved?

Setting up an API where people can grab all the tournaments offered to a particular region/league, etc. with JSON formatted time/date, organiser, region, leagues, prizes, signup link to any other tournament organising site would be fairly simple.

It would be useful (imo) for users to be able to sign up with an email address and be able to set up an account and have a bunch of criteria for tournaments they want to be notified about. e.g. League, region, days they are available to play, only wanting tournaments with prizes, no entry fees, etc.

This would integrate well with an announcement system. Send something to the supplied email address when tournaments they are interested in are listed on the site. Could also set this up with google calendar or something similar.

@zeffrin: I would not want to do this as yet another site to manage tournaments. There's enough of those already.

What I -would- also think about is adding tags for large tournaments (e.g. NASL, GSL, IPL, MLG, Assembly, etc.). Even if the event creators for those don't use the site, someone can always add them, and if we also list stream information, people can also subscribe to this one site to be notified when any of the events are about to start. Just as another way of getting people onto such a site.

But really just keep it as simple and basic as possible:

• List tournaments.
• Notify users when a tournament they are interested in is created (i.e. tournaments for bronzies, tournaments on SEA, tournaments with prizes, etc.)
• Notify people following a tournament (one they want to play in -or- watch) is going to start in 1 hour (or something).
• Search tournaments by league/region/etc.
• Let other websites farm all this information to encourage people creating events on this site.

As far as i know, there isn't any website that does this (although some other sites like team liquid have their own event system, this only displays on their site when they are happening).

[rezyn8]

I'd definitely be happy to help out with this project - I am a web dev/designer/online strategy & marketing manager IRL.

One thing that strikes me when visiting SC2SEA is that it is very complex in its layout - I would prefer to see something that is a little more organised with a homepage sectioned out into the areas you want to promote eg /community /tournaments /news /tgm /blogs etc. I know it is currently as it is because it completely forum driven. But I do think that having a dedicated homepage would be quite beneficial.

The facebook group/events idea is excellent as is utilising other avenues such as twitter for important announcements and tournaments.

TeamLiquid already have a great tournament tracker in place so there is no need to re-invent this for SEA. I would suggest trying to get a feed from TL for SEA tournaments on the tracker and using this to display upcoming tournaments.

http://www.teamliquid.net/tournaments/submit.php
http://www.teamliquid.net/tournaments/

[Reere]

Please include Nerve Gaming in the Clan sites:

nRv: http://nerve-gaming.enjin.com/home

Thanks

Quick Comments

PiG:

thankyou for the reminder :)

[|Erasmus|]

Only problem with the TL system is that it doesn't let you 'follow' a tournament. It won't notify BSG players when someone creates a tournament for them, so they still need to go looking for it, which is the problem. It also won't remind you when a tournament is going to start.

[rezyn8]

I guess in that case its a matter of actually building something that can tie into a calendar system (here perhaps) that can give a popup or a reminder when you visit the site or email you a day before the tourney starts.

TL and WP events/tournament submission are a good place to start though. We could base it off those and work it into our own purposes.

[Apth]

@PiG - My random idea appears to have hijacked your thread. My apologies.

@Erasmus and everyone else who's running with it - You guys kick ass. Let me know if you want a hand.

[Dox]

http://www.facebook.com/DoxSC2

Just a little example, more to come.

[crAzerk]

Man that looks great Dox! I believe sc2sea.com has a FB page too doesn't it?

I'm also currently discussing w nirvana abt letting me take over the @sc2sea Twitter, it can be our official site Twitter, I'll elaborate more in a news post if that actually happens (I'm a Twitter-addict )

[ToRDjvillian]

Since you have included ToR in your list i though i should give you the link. Though the site is constantly dead and you will mainly see posts about my drop bear obsession.

http://www.timeofrising.webs.com/

[rezyn8]

My Silicon Sports FB page is an example of what can be done with twitter integrated: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Silico...30502477011816

Like it please!

[crAzerk]

My Silicon Sports FB page is an example of what can be done with twitter integrated:

The existing FB page of this site is also tied to Twitter
https://www.facebook.com/sc2sea

[zeffrin]

Love the idea of replay parsing if we did do a tourney organiser.

I agree maybe that's not what we need, and it's always good to let someone else manage so long as there's options for us we can use.

Notifications for tournaments wherever they want to host them is good idea, though would need the members here to remember to add tournaments they hear of to the list, or hope the tourney organisers do so.

Now allowing anyone to enter information which ultimately leads to mass mailing is a bad idea, therefore entering tourneys would have to be overseen by a moderator if not outright handled entirely by admin.

Still need the site owners to weigh in with their thought to the direction of this site before anyone gets too excited anyway. Maybe PiGs post gets stickied at the very least if he's kind enough to maintain it for us.

[Dox]

Just with regards to Replay parsing, this has been a milestone project of mine for a LONG time.

+ [HUGE PICTURE] +

&

http://www.sea-play.com

Just gotta find the time...

Quick Comments

neon:

Replay idea looks redballer.

[Meatex]

and have it integrate with user names and tournaments/brackets and then mega win

[Delraich]

Back in the day when I used to play WoW, our guild had a raid sign up system which was really easy to use. You could check on it and easily see who signed up and when. Maybe something like that could work. I randomly googled to see if I could find something and hit this. I'm sure you could find something suitable if this is the kind of thing that might work. http://raidbuilder.com/

[nirvAnA]

yea dox's replay project sounds so sick

Anyway heres my thoughts. I feel that the community is already here, making any more new sites just for some new functionality is going to split it up instead of grow it and I will be more than glad to integrate new ideas or widgets / customization coding on sc2sea that can help facilitate ease of use. I am extremely flexible and will add anything I feel will enhance the viewers experience or if its just something people want. And with this new functionality hopefully it will attract lurkers to post more or some of the SEA/ANZ reddit/tl community who are active there but not here to start getting involved.


Facebook / twitter news updates - Since we already have over 1k followers on our sc2sea FB account which is also automatically linked to our twitter (when a post is made it comes out on twitter too), what I can do is give admin permissions to all trusted tournament organisers, like Eddie, Paroxysm, BakaInu so they can post reminders about their tournaments easily. Already given crazerk admin to post about any misc news content since he wanted to use it more. And perhaps dox can help to post about all the misc tournament happenings like Dox Cup, BSG Charity, Canberra Cup, etc since hes in touch with everything thats going on. Any trusted staff feel free to PM me if you would like to help out here. I feel for this area the infrastructure is already well in place, its just not being used to its full potential.

Clan Sites - I tried to solve this problem already (few people continually visit clan sites cause of static content) by integrating clans with sc2sea. any ideas on how to improve this is appreciated, maybe a Clan Recruitment widget? Hmm thing is sc2sea is already quite cluttered have to keep that in mind. A more drastic suggestion could be to remove all the latest fourm categories posts and replace them all under 1 category "Latest posts" and then give more spot light to Clans, Calenders, Events, Replays, etc.

Tournament Updates - We have a Upcoming SEA Events which is supposed to remind people on the right already but maybe its not prominent enough? For example we should have a "count down timer" starting in xdays xhours/mins for regular events like CO Im sure that work tremendously to encourage participation since pple are never sure what time it starts. I am also thinking of making a custom block which looks something like

PDCL - Results - Table
This weeks games
BSGCL - Results - Table
This weeks games

Basically I think everyone comes to sc2sea daily already, we dont need another site just to remind them thats seems to be the wrong direction because are they gonna check that everyday? What we need is more fb/twitter updates for our subscribers, maybe a opt in tournament reminder mailing system? And a more prominent calender events on the right.

Custom Coding / Databases - I feel there can be more integration if we had good custom coders helping our site. For example, if the results of each CO / masters cup are sent and stored in a table. That could be a script run every hour to query the tournament result table and save information to this new "Leaderboard Table" kinda like the TLPD. And you can click the players name and see all his past results as well as ability for any admins to add non sc2sea tournament results for e.g PiG IEM #1, co12 #2, PiG Co16, #2, co21, #2 lol!!!!! So there will be a SEA Leader board which can be filtered by BSG /GPD/CO/all results. So players are more motivated to climb up the respective leader boards of their league and this can also be used to determine seedings, like top 8 "all" ranked players get seeded/invited for some special event. Yea and as someone said above replays integrating with tournaments. All this will encourage participation and maybe our CO numbers can rise to 128 players weekly, we can get more sponsors, more viewers, etc.

Anyway there is still ALOT of potential on what we can do here, these are big projects and I would be happy to pay coders for their time as well, although if you do it just out of your pure love for our community you will credited appropriately and forever loved . Coders please PM me with what you would like to add to the site, been neglecting new custom adds for a while and any idea would be great just shoot me a PM lets make this happen now! p.s brendan/erasmus you're awesome!

Quick Comments

	PiG:	So wise.
	|Erasmus|:	You're not so bad yourself. And you make some good points too...

[neon]

That replay idea is awesome Dox, reminds me of WCReplays system, and I never once read their forums (ok maybe a few times) but I visited that site every day for over a year just to get the latest reps of my favourite players/tournaments! would love that kind of functioanlity here.

[PiG]

What Nirvana said has been rolling around in the back of my mind since this thread started to get derailed.

The original aim of this thread was to find those players who either don't or rarely participate in online communities aswell as those who are regulars in different more disconnected networks such as steam SCII groups. Also I wanted us to reach towards the uni societies and other facebook groups that are constantly discussing TL and Reddit threads and rarely know about upcoming online events whether hosted by sc2sea or someone else in SEA.

My final hope was to come up with some sort of united aim to advertise eSPORTS to very young players or those new to the game and unaware of the eSPORTS scene.

This is why I wanted help to create a comprehensive list of all of these disparate networks that are estranged from www.sc2sea.com ... the site that I see as central to the SEA SCII scene.

I think Nirvana is absolutely right. What everyone is getting excited about is simply a tournament reminder system and some other cool features (OK the replay system looks VERY cool) which will could just as easily be combined with sc2sea to strengthen rather then split the community: my original goal.

Often people get so used to things it becomes a static idea in their mind and room for creativity is pushed away. Today I have witnessed the idea of a brand new site suddenly being seen as the locale of all sorts of grand innovations and creativity. However sc2sea was the first innovator that brought community to the social desert that was SEA. An oasis in the far corner of the eSPORTS world. Let us not forget what we have done with sc2sea and let us seek to push further and further the limits of its white frames and anime banners.

Please help me in this endeavour and wrack your brains for other starcraft networks that you or your friends partake in! Also please create a new thread for all these great innovations that we can do to sc2sea.com!

[crAzerk]

I've pitched to nirvAnA about letting me run the Twitter account, because atm it's pretty much dead. Nevertheless, I thought I'll just post here to get some further opinions

At the moment, the Twitter account is only used to 'echo' posts made on Facebook - basically when you make a post on Facebook, an identical post is generated in Twitter, with a link to the post on Facebook in the tweet.

This is essentially pointless if the only content from the Twitter account is what is already available from the FB page. To quote nirvAnA in his post above, Twitter is simply "not being used to its full potential."

My goal is to provide more tweets from the sc2sea account, which will contain info such as but not limited to:
- Tournament reminders (we have more than just the usual staple of CO/Gpd now, on top of these there are BSGCL, PDCl, z33k, etc. so many that it's hard to keep track. Solution? twitter)
- New news posts
- TGM updates
- hot threads in forums
- tournament results (SEA ones, not global)
- live updates of tournaments
- live update of streams

This is distinctly different from the purposes the FB page will serve, which is to provide more details about events, etc which Twitter can't due to character limitations. Twitter, on the other hand, provides the live-update functionality that FB can't (not without appearing spammy, that is)

Do you guys think I should do this? Or will just having FB echo posts on Twitter suffice?

Quick Comments

PiG:

If you can commit to this then I think it will be brilliant.

[crAzerk]

If you can commit to this then I think it will be brilliant.

I'm on Twitter about 10 times a day (at least) so...

[|Erasmus|]

I can see two things that come from the original point PiG made:

• Need to advertgise tournaments to new people (beyond the current scope of sc2sea).
• Need to keep people coming back to the tournaments.

Obviously we've had the numbers to fill these tournaments some weeks, but not others. I started by brainstorming ways we could try and fulfill no. 2. This has sort of been run with a bit.

I see no reason why, with a little tweaking, the current tournament system couldn't let users know about an upcoming tournament for their leagues (Might also want to make this an opt-in or opt-out system too...). Try to keep people with an account here coming back for the tournaments each week without them having to remember to come here and check the site.

[rezyn8]

I agree a new site is not needed and going over what PiG and nirVANA have recently posted I think the following needs to be done:

- Enhancement of the current Tournament Tracker and Calendar to cater for notifications via the site and twitter (automatically) - there is no need to do this manually.
- The upcoming events/calendar need to be more prominent - they really are lost on the right hand side and just looks like more forum topics as seen on the left.

crAzerk - there should be a way for news items to be post to twitter automatically - most cms' allow this; this in turn would have facebook automatically update with twitter posts as well; literally you update/publish to sc2sea and thats it, twitter/facebook then update automatically soon afterwards.

On a side note, I think a home page for sc2sea should be developed to make it more streamlined in displaying the important information the site has to offer - Tournaments, News, Profiles, Forums etc.

[TABjornbrandr]

I ran this briefly past PiG just to see whether it was worth posting it here so this should be half-decent.

Basically, I went back over what I remember about server side coding and I believe I have the basic idea for a system that would notify users of tournaments of interest to them. However, this does require vBulletin to be relatively flexible with what it can do and as I haven't used anything remotely close to it for years, I can't be sure it'd work in the current sc2sea framework.

Essentially, if someone was able to create a database that gathers data from user entry and stores it in arbitrary categories based on a tagging system (such as tagging a tournament BSG and Open, or BSG Clan and Open Clan) and then matches new tournaments with previous tournaments that users have entered and sends a notification to each user about the upcoming tournament.
For example:
-I enter a BSG this month (this is tagged and placed in the database)
-A BSG is created 2 months later
-The two BSGs share tagging (both are tagged as a BSG tournament) and I am sent a notification about the new BSG
The major issues would be concerning manually modifying which tags apply to yourself, so that a Masters player who used to be gold x number of months ago doesn't receive notifications for upcoming BSGs.

As to how the user would be notified, whether via pop-up the next time they log on or email, I'm not sure. Given the integration with the website, I can imagine a pop-up would be easier, but may irritate some viewers if it continues to pop up every time they open a new page or the home page after they have already viewed it. I'd assume that a "click this box if you have seen this pop-up" option should suffice here.

Again, I don't know how viable this is given the framework the website uses, but from memory vBulletin and should be able to handle such a database.

[rezyn8]

That 'should be' relatively easy to do by modifying the profile table of the users to include a section that asks them of which tournaments they want to be notified of. This then needs to be tied into the db table for the tournament calendar/upcoming events.

[crAzerk]

@rezyn - Ah I see, that'll be great if it's possible. But still, Twitter can be used waaay more than it is now, and I hope to do so

By the way, everyone who has a great idea and is able to make it happen (i.e. have programming knowledge and willing to help) , please do send a PM to nirvAnA and get in contact with him, don't just post here I'm excited about what you guys have said!

[EscapisT]

The only one I know of not yet listed is a malaysian site.
www.lowyat.net
Forum>Gamers Hideout>Starcraft
http://forum.lowyat.net/StarCraft

Credits to Zeal. =D

[nirvAnA]

Originally Posted by Bjornbrandr

I ran this briefly past PiG just to see whether it was worth posting it here so this should be half-decent.

Basically, I went back over what I remember about server side coding and I believe I have the basic idea for a system that would notify users of tournaments of interest to them. However, this does require vBulletin to be relatively flexible with what it can do and as I haven't used anything remotely close to it for years, I can't be sure it'd work in the current sc2sea framework.

Essentially, if someone was able to create a database that gathers data from user entry and stores it in arbitrary categories based on a tagging system (such as tagging a tournament BSG and Open, or BSG Clan and Open Clan) and then matches new tournaments with previous tournaments that users have entered and sends a notification to each user about the upcoming tournament.
For example:
-I enter a BSG this month (this is tagged and placed in the database)
-A BSG is created 2 months later
-The two BSGs share tagging (both are tagged as a BSG tournament) and I am sent a notification about the new BSG
The major issues would be concerning manually modifying which tags apply to yourself, so that a Masters player who used to be gold x number of months ago doesn't receive notifications for upcoming BSGs.

As to how the user would be notified, whether via pop-up the next time they log on or email, I'm not sure. Given the integration with the website, I can imagine a pop-up would be easier, but may irritate some viewers if it continues to pop up every time they open a new page or the home page after they have already viewed it. I'd assume that a "click this box if you have seen this pop-up" option should suffice here.

Again, I don't know how viable this is given the framework the website uses, but from memory vBulletin and should be able to handle such a database.

Thanks for the feedback, I think an alternative way would be to have a subscriptions tab on the right. This would be relatively easy to implement.

Subscription Notifications
[ ] Signed up for BSG notifications
[ ] Signed up for GPD notifications
[ ] Signed up for CO+ notifications

And maybe on the morning of the tourney it PMs the user. I don't see the point though, I feel a countdown timer would be muchhhhhhh better.

This way users are never "spam reminded" and since most check sc2sea everyday its very unobtrusive and they can just check it out whenever they feel like it. i.e showing the countdown for next 3 days. Or perhaps just send a facebook page message on the day, although that will hit everyone including the non bsgs/gpds.

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