I made an effort to connect with the community more this year. It seems like things are working out well.

It is a year of two halves for me. The first half was extremely stressful as I was at the end of my doctoral candidature. I didn’t post for four and a half months, because I was too busy and my health didn’t allow me to do much. I received many supportive messages via different platforms, and it was then I realised I am much more connected with the community than I thought. I made a post explaining everything in April.

I slowly picked up the pace after I came back from the hiatus. Here is a list of things on connecting with the community.

Collaborations

I had several collaborations with other content creators.

Brownbear and I published an article about the WCS system based on our conversation. We started off talking about the TRUE case privately, and we soon expanded our discussion to the general WCS. We finally put things together after we procrastinated for months.

Another article using the same conversation style was published recently with Gemini. It occurred to me that I might be biased regarding the state of TvP when I published two articles about the proxy metagame and the state of the match up. So, I wanted to get the view from Protoss to ensure I get another perspective on the matter. When people asked on reddit for race specific help, TerranCraft and Gemini’s Build of the Week are often mentioned for Terran and Protoss respectively. After Blizzard announced their annual major balance changes (patch 4.7.1), I took the opportunity to have a discussion with Gemini about it.

I also invited bobo38 to write a guest article about quality of life changes. The community was debating about some of the quality of life changes Blizzard made, and we proposed different changes that sort of fall along the same lines. However, I think some are not feasible, and I believe that is down to our lack of understanding on the programming side. bobo38 (PhD) is a computer science expert, and he explained how some changes could be adapted and tested using SC2Mod. It was an eye opener for me.

Oh, I also went on the ESChamp podcast. I took some coffee shots before the podcast (time zone difference), and I could tell I was pretty high when I watch it myself. lol.

Moderation

Not sure if you guys know about this, I am a mod at /r/AllThingsTerran. I was never a mod for anything, but I made a list of things I want to improve for the Terran reddit community.

First, I want to ensure the subreddit is working under the new reddit design. The old reddit design was put up way before I took up the mod role, so I tried to implement some of the key things onto the new design. The new reddit does not fit with the old CSS, and I had to test and manually edit things bit by bit. I had absolutely no idea about CSS, but I did what I can. I even seek Protoss’ help with some CSS stuff.

The second thing on my to-do-list was to rejuvenate the AllThingsTerran discord channel. It was filled with spam and troll. My best decision was to appoint Ryu to oversee the channel. He contributes a lot to the channel.

Third, I want to improve the subreddit to ensure it is clean and fair. Rules were added to address the stream advertising issue. Most importantly, I am conscious about not imposing my ideals on the subreddit, as I believe mods should just moderate based on what the community wants and not what the mods want. The rules were re-evaluated based on the Terran community feedback. I must say the subreddit has less spam now.

It is funny when I looked back at the times when I was trolling and pushing others to be a mod, but I eventually become a mod myself.

Removing ads

Most of you should have noticed that advertisements are removed from the site. This is made possible because I upgraded the website plan with your PayPal and Patreon contributions.

I am going to be honest like I always do. I started with a free account using terrancraft.wordpress.com. WordPress show ads in return for hosting for free, and I don’t get a cent from the ads shown. The ads are tailored to the visitors. I think it is fair to have an ad at the end of each article because I didn’t pay. I, as the signed in owner of the site, don’t see the ads.

However, the ads became more intrusive. More ads are added on the front page between the articles, at the side of the site, and at the end of each article. I didn’t know the ads problem escalated until some pointed that out to me. I also naively thought people use ad blockers, so it should not be an issue. The ads are strong, and I was wrong. I quickly upgrade my website hosting plan to remove all ads. Thanks for the feedback. Hopefully, you guys enjoy this change.

Connecting with the community unexpectedly

I was away from Sydney since August, with most of my time in Singapore with my parents. I asked in the OSC discord channel about the Singapore community before I got on the plane. Justin (Elusory) hit me up and suggested we should meet up when I’m in Singapore. He was a tournament organiser, who has a tournament named after him for his contribution to the community. Fun fact, we literally live 50m from each other. He organised lunch and dinner for me to meet others in the community. Thanks to him, I now know Eliz (Nemesis) and Aiingel (fairy_fragments) in person, and they are all tournament organisers.

I let off an agonising moan when my 2-2 push got swarm as the lag hits. My mum thought I was hurt and rushed in. My father wanted to ban me from playing @Starcraft. Asian parenting doesn't end even when I'm 30+. — Max Yu (@Maxyusc) December 12, 2018

People are translating some of my articles on a few Chinese sites. Their translations are pretty spot on (I learn Mandarin as a third language), as they even have a good grasp of some of my arguments that I did not put out explicitly. Here are some examples: 1, 2, 3.

This is a message to the Chinese translators: Thanks for translating. If you can, please edit this page. I am not AFK. Also, I’d love it if you can translate my convergent point article, as I think it would be helpful for others. 谢谢

Partnerships

I recently partnered with Spawning Tool and AFK Tea. I’m sure you know what they do by now, and we complement each other well. Others had reached out to me for partnerships, but they did not work out for various reasons. To all the potential partners out there, feel free to hit me up.

Last but not least, thank you for your Christmas gift, Bernhard! This is not your first time supporting me, thank you! ;)

I wish everyone a merry Christmas and a wonderful new year!