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Backpack.tf Articles


Xergoyf

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I have always felt theres been a large lack of TF2 trading content out there, and outside of TheVirturalEconomist or the occasion PyroJoe video there is pretty much nothing out there. The small amount of content that there is out there is in video form and given how long quality videos take to make, most good topics never get out to the community. The solution to this is most simply, articles. However, there is no site that TF2 articles are written on, and I figured Backpack.tf, being the epicenter of trading in TF2 would be a great fit for an articles page. I know myself alone would have enough articles ideas for a many years without running out.

 

The articles wouldn't have to be on strictly trading advice, they could range from Price Suggestion tutorials, to how to set up and use Marketplace.tf and much more. It also would be a great place to merge the new update news that appears on the forums currently, as well as the announcements and bp.tf updates that appear on the bp.tf steam group. Articles could even potentially have a free side and premium side, as another great premium perk. Here is a good example of what I am thinking with the 2 sides: http://www.starcitygames.com

 

I think now is a great time to implement something like this with Geel's purchase of bp.tf, as something like this is possible to do. I think with a good group of article writers ranging from successful traders to popular community figures, articles could be very successful, and could largely increase premium subscriptions if the premium articles are of the highest quality.

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I really like this idea and would definitely be interested in being a writer. I am wondering more about the type of content, if there would be opinion articles and/or news articles, since only having tutorials would exhaust the well of potential ideas pretty quickly.

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snip

 

I like the idea. +1 from me.

 

I would be open to writing articles and I think its a great way to get things started 

Also to add, it maybe would be nice to insert a motive for people to write articles. Sometimes people are busy with real life so a small incentive would be nice. Maybe +1 backpack.tf listing :^)

Maybe to start off it could be a little subsection in the forums and it could gradually grow from there.

I'd also be interested in writing a sample article to see what kind of feedback I'd be getting from it.

 

 

also you pointing out starcitygames shows us that you might be a magic player too lol :^)

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I'd pay to subscribe...i wish my irl friends...or family were into tf2 but no i scroll through threads looking for interesting stuff to read... oh yeah, and I work a bunch so something readable would be great

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I mean this is a written version of the podcast, which everybody loved the idea of but nobody wanted to do any work for. If people want to get together and write articles, the mods would be happy to review them I'm sure. But users would need to do the work here.

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I mean this is a written version of the podcast, which everybody loved the idea of but nobody wanted to do any work for. If people want to get together and write articles, the mods would be happy to review them I'm sure. But users would need to do the work here.

Articles are much easier to do than making a podcast - I dont think I was here when that was proposed so I cant really comment on that went tho. Just from this thread and others I have talked to I am sure there would be people who would want to write articles, and Mods could write if they wanted to as well. I like Lila's idea to start in the forums, and if its popular enough the devs can work on adding its own page on the likes of backpack.tf/articles or such. 

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I mean this is a written version of the podcast, which everybody loved the idea of but nobody wanted to do any work for. If people want to get together and write articles, the mods would be happy to review them I'm sure. But users would need to do the work here.

 

Articles are much easier to do than making a podcast - I dont think I was here when that was proposed so I cant really comment on that went tho. Just from this thread and others I have talked to I am sure there would be people who would want to write articles, and Mods could write if they wanted to as well. I like Lila's idea to start in the forums, and if its popular enough the devs can work on adding its own page on the likes of backpack.tf/articles or such. 

 

I'm not a backpack.tf dev, but implementing an articles page seems pretty easy. You could link them on the front page like this, and could use the exact same comment system as is on price suggestions. 

 

Mockup: http://imgur.com/a/ZFLN1

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I'm not a backpack.tf dev, but implementing an articles page seems pretty easy. You could link them on the front page like this, and could use the exact same comment system as is on price suggestions. 

 

Mockup: http://imgur.com/a/ZFLN1

"Best trading memes of the year - by Terror-Watt Executioner."

 

N1

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I mean this is a written version of the podcast, which everybody loved the idea of but nobody wanted to do any work for. If people want to get together and write articles, the mods would be happy to review them I'm sure. But users would need to do the work here.

 

On the contrary, as the person who was temporarily lead of the podcast project, plenty of people were willing to put the work in - just the problem arose that backpack.tf is such an international community of people, and of those people it is (rightly so) not their top priority, getting 3 or 4 people together to record was almost an impossibility.

 

Articles, however, don't require that immediate co-operation. I think they'd be a lot more successful for that reason alone - though the moderation in place would have to be fairly rigorous if this content is going to officially represent backpack.tf.

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I enjoyed doing the newsletter and the podcast, which this is kind of similar to. I would be interested in helping write if there was some direction (because I'm totally out of the loop so it would be like "Angel, write about this").

 

The reason the newsletter and podcast died was because there wasn't enough support, finding people who want to dedicate time and have the skill level to make consumable content is difficult. 

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The reason the newsletter and podcast died was because there wasn't enough support, finding people who want to dedicate time and have the skill level to make consumable content is difficult. 

 

I don't see that being too different here, and I don't think any of the mods have the time currently to organise or push people. If people want to get together and organise this themselves, as I said, we would be happy to review content produced and consider asking devs to implement something if it was high quality.

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Add me or drop me a comment on Steam if anyone wants support regarding this topic. I won't lead the project, but I'd be more than happy to help and/or contribute.

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If nobody else volunteers to lead this project in a couple days then I'll gladly take a stab at it. Start collating authors and proof-readers, get a list of "in-progress" topics from authors to prevent significant overlap, get a style guide up, maybe look into getting a specific thread and a bit of promotion for finished products. Not too complicated stuff but it's stuff that needs doing and I'm happy to do it.

 

Honestly I'd start today if it wasn't for:
1) I'm moving house tomorrow and currently swamped in boxes, and
2) I wanna see if there's any significant resistance to me heading this, in which case I'll step back.

 

 Let's get some names, yo.

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Happy to input on topics and edit/proof read for y'all if you get yourselves organised. :)

 

If there are several people interested I can make a discord channel for you to discuss in.

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17 hours ago, SpotlightR said:

Add me or drop me a comment on Steam if anyone wants support regarding this topic. I won't lead the project, but I'd be more than happy to help and/or contribute.

Added you.

16 hours ago, Gent♥ said:

If nobody else volunteers to lead this project in a couple days then I'll gladly take a stab at it. Start collating authors and proof-readers, get a list of "in-progress" topics from authors to prevent significant overlap, get a style guide up, maybe look into getting a specific thread and a bit of promotion for finished products. Not too complicated stuff but it's stuff that needs doing and I'm happy to do it.

 

Honestly I'd start today if it wasn't for:
1) I'm moving house tomorrow and currently swamped in boxes, and
2) I wanna see if there's any significant resistance to me heading this, in which case I'll step back.

 

 Let's get some names, yo.

Im cool with being one of the leads on this, I think it would be better as a group effort anyways. Id be happy to work with you :P

 

16 hours ago, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

Happy to input on topics and edit/proof read for y'all if you get yourselves organised. :)

 

If there are several people interested I can make a discord channel for you to discuss in.

A discord channel would be great! If this goes through can an articles thread be made on the forum to post articles on?

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i'm interested, certainly would love to help out with this

 

lets do it?

 

@Teeny Tiny Cat discord channel would be lit

 

 

5 hours ago, Xergoyf said:

A discord channel would be great! If this goes through can an articles thread be made on the forum to post articles on?

ips comes with an Article feature already built in that just needs to be enabled (as far as IPS4.1 is concerned, may have changed in the upgrade to 4.2 but I doubt it)

that means that it will show up here: 61e334db2859f01626d953a71c876f9b.png

 

it opens into its own forum-theme styled category where articles are stored

 

(Looks like this)

95ba4457db6b3e19b338fea76079b124.png

1ea7f5a1958fb41884e2bac639b2136f.png

 

A simple system involving those who are "article" submitters having additional privileges via user groups to post in this section

can be added to main site via rss feeds (i think) pretty easily as IPS gives you the code for it

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Once you've organised a group can the leader please PM me with a list of discord usernames (name#xxxx) of members and I'll set up a channel for ya

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I would be happy to be a member of a team, but I don't really have the time or motivation to be a team leader. I tried to make something very very similar to this in early 2016 after my newsletter died, and i couldn't find any good people who would do it. My newsletter was going to have a dota 2, csgo, and tf2 side with a new editorial every week and backpack.tf related news. I found writers for each but the content turned out was meh or the writers simply didn't come through.

 

If you want to contact me, add me on steam. I'm not on the forums as much as I used to be.

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Xergoyf#3792

Kazooie (Gent)#6555
sean kiesler#3913
Lila#3712
bigbrotha#1386
Spotlight#6151
TheVirtualEconomist#4188

λngelღмander#5028
 

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I'd more than happy to help out with this project.

 

Only issue, in August I'm doing a 3 week trip in the USA and in July I'll be going on a heavy diet and going to the gym everday, but after all said, I can put in a couple of hours a day into this.

 

I can do a ton of research, I know my sources after all :P

 

But I'll be happy to help.

 

I can be a leader, I've done such things before in other projects, so if nobody takes the spot for that, I'll gladly take that.

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IPS 4.2 pages looks really nice, as said above. Here's an example of it: https://forums.backpack.tf/index.php?/test_name/

This even allows us to have a separate premium articles category, or a separate premium database if there's going to be that many.

We can also added this to the homepage just like "Latest Forum Threads" if we decide to.

 

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55 minutes ago, TheProcave said:

I'd more than happy to help out with this project.

 

Only issue, in August I'm doing a 3 week trip in the USA and in July I'll be going on a heavy diet and going to the gym everday, but after all said, I can put in a couple of hours a day into this.

 

I can do a ton of research, I know my sources after all :P

 

But I'll be happy to help.

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

I can be a leader, I've done such things before in other projects, so if nobody takes the spot for that, I'll gladly take that.

 

Added you to talk about it.

37 minutes ago, Jessecar said:

IPS 4.2 pages looks really nice, as said above. Here's an example of it: https://forums.backpack.tf/index.php?/test_name/

This even allows us to have a separate premium articles category, or a separate premium database if there's going to be that many.

We can also added this to the homepage just like "Latest Forum Threads" if we decide to.

 

Sounds great! Thanks for the support!

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