I suggest something like a word of mouth campaign, or invite event. If you invite a certain number of people, you get a prize? It would just be nice to see the competitive Team Fortress scene get some attention.

We could do some sort of purely promotional event but remember that we are just now wrapping up one tourney and another is about to start. Those two events provide us with a lot of traffic and keep the staff busy (100 teams in the first event and we're shooting for 64 in the Zalman event). Any sort of promo event could be tied into the Zalman event or could be run by a member of the site, like yourself.

Definitely a good idea and I'm all ears.

We could do some sort of purely promotional event but remember that we are just now wrapping up one tourney and another is about to start. Those two events provide us with a lot of traffic and keep the staff busy (100 teams in the first event and we're shooting for 64 in the Zalman event). Any sort of promo event could be tied into the Zalman event or could be run by a member of the site, like yourself.

Definitely a good idea and I'm all ears.

Well, we could have a item lottery, and you can only enter by registering? I think that would bring in new players.

whatever gets traffic. daily written news articles usually gets a lot of traffic. vanilla tf2 style. but it would require volunteers to get the stories.

whatever gets traffic. daily written news articles usually gets a lot of traffic. vanilla tf2 style. but it would require volunteers to get the stories.


I could write about my journey from open to IM in the same season.

I don't know, how much TF2 news is there? I feel like we need more people on the forums. We have about 10-15 people on at a time but most of them are guests. make the forums register view only??

We need more pageviews and clickthroughs, not more members. We need more content. Cash, you promised me articles >:(

WRITE MAN WRITE

To be honest, if quantity overwhelms quality, that's just as bad. We definitely need more community contributors, but it we need clear communication between CommFT "staffers" (for lack of better term) and contributors as to what will and will not work, and what our minimum level of quality maintains.

I've seen posts on the front page that were absolute messes--grammar, spelling, font, format, everything was whacked. At times, even the content is nonsensical, poorly thought out, or simply redundant. Each of those incidents requires a CommFT staffer to stop what they're doing, clean up the post (which, in some cases, can take up to an hour or more), and smooth it over. Then we have to track that contributor down, explain what went wrong and how it was fixed, and hope it won't happen again.

So, some system by which contributors work with and through staffers would be most welcome. The writer's forum is a great place for that -- funnel all new contributors there, have them post drafts of their upcoming post, and respond to critiques from established staffers such as Shdw and I. All it's lacking at present is some minimal walkthrough on the use of the site's upload screen which, oddly enough, can be tricky to navigate.

I agree with you free. Quality > quantity. However, we have enough people in this community so that we can have both. All I'm saying is, 1 NEW ARTICLE per day. If cash50 wants to write his life story that's fine, but make it a separate thing.

Let's brainstorm here. What news types of things do people want to be reading?

More interviews with teams that aren't necessarily top of invite/IM/Open?

Interviews get really stale really fast. Also, I would put them in the same category as Cash50's life stories.

check out vanillatf2.org.

i like how they have this sort of "match of the week" type thing, plus some other stories...

I think it'd be cool to have some higher level players come in and talk about their respective classes and their opinions on how they "should" be played.
(Or something along those lines)

Free, that is what I am trying to do with my staff writers forum...

I think my current trainee Gaamoo only has the ability to save articles, not publish them, I like that system. He writes it up, posts it on forum, we talk about it, he puts it in article form, I publish and somehow invariably fuck up the formatting because.... well I dont actually know why that happens but it does.

I would like it if that system is used more often to keep the quality high. Because if quality > quantity, what happens when we add the two? (sorry free, I know you are an english major, but sometimes we need math :P)

Interviews get really stale really fast. Also, I would put them in the same category as Cash50's life stories.

check out vanillatf2.org.

i like how they have this sort of "match of the week" type thing, plus some other stories...

Fan art/videos, in depth update reviews, mod spotlight (I mean game mods like Vs. Saxton Hale or Prop hunt), community news, class spotlight.

Community Fortress has always been Competitive focused, that being said, reviews of a lot of different mods would not be within the targeted market, not saying we wouldn't accept those submitted stories and post them, but it's not really what the aim of the site was originally intended.

Update reviews can be a bit more, but there hasn't been a whole lot to discuss in most update, the major item adding udpated do get a fairly in-depth write-up regarding the weapons but those are month in between to match valve's cycle.

FanArt/Videos would be a lot more fun to post here and there, after this season I was hoping to put together the season highlight reels they release and post them, but I would not want the front page to become an art show by the raw numbers game.

I think a written up match of the week for each division would be a good thing from the league coverage side. That way the broadcasting side could reap some benefits. (Unless of course the Relays are broken).

The biggest single issue we have right now is consistency in coverage, typically we get writers in, they post 2-3 articles early on and then disappear. This is what harms the site better then most, I'd like to see people wrtie league coverage stick with it for a full season and give us some solid consistency in the coverage.

Oh god please don't put fan art on CommFT.

Clip of the week, Fan art, and re-run match of the week.