In DoTA, skill level generally increases with the amount of time you
have spent playing the game. If you consistantly play with other
players who are of a higher skill level, or players that are going to
constantly challenge you, you will get better at the game. This isn't
really groundbreaking news, but it is something that we all should
consider as we continue to develop this community.

As new players come into our games, we need to remember that although
we identify ourselves as noobs, we are on a fairly sophisticated level
of play as compared to the general low and sometimes mid tier players.
The realization of how far I have progressed personally was made
obvious to me last night when I grouped up with four other doobs and
played some matchmaking. Our level of play wasn't really even
challenged too much and we were able to basically stomp the three
games I played in.

This may all be obvious, but I just want to remind everyone that we
are a community based around two things, improving our level of play
as well as helping and mentoring those who are not on our level.
During our in-houses we must remember not to get frustrated with those
who are playing with us due to their lack of experience. This can be
amazingly difficult, but we all must remember how we felt when we
first started and help out new people as much as possible so that we
can build a strong community.

Our increase in skill also brings about the dire need for new members.
In order to be welcoming to noobs, we have to be able to host games
where all players or at least 6-8 out of 10 are on the same skill
level, as people are generally most comfortable in an environment of
peers rather than an environment of teachers. Even if we are
incredibly helpful, it is frustrating to play in a game and get killed
every time you try to do something, or know that you are hindering
your team. If one new player is playing against 9 other more seasoned
players they are likely to feel left out.

So, do whatever you can to put our name out there! If you play an MM
game and you enjoyed playing with some of the people, try sending them
a message to join the community. If you find someone in chat
somewhere that is looking for in-house games, invite them to join
ours. It probably won't work most of the time, but it will work some
of the time, and the community will grow.

We are going to be looking at trying to contact key people in the DoTA
community to see if we can get a shout-out, but we shouldn't count on
that for our only source of players, as it may not work out.

I agree with everything you said.
I have improved immensely over the weeks ive played in these IHs, and nobody raged at me for being shit in the beginning.

I am really happy this community existed when i started playing dota 2, matchmaking wasnt really doing it for me in the start

We definitely can do a LOT to put our name out there that we haven't really touched on yet. We're really growing quickly as a community and there is a lot of work (at least I feel like) that we need to put into the site before we're going to attract a lot of members that stay. I'm actively working on getting a Guide system set up, and we've been talking a lot about the Dota University thing, we are definitely going to do something to this effect.