For the last few years, since Noobman was last on the CSM, wormholers have had trouble rallying behind a candidate. There have been a variety of problems that have lead to that; some candidates couldn’t garner support from certain groups, some candidates just had no name and no real proponents, and there was no attempt to unify anyone through any common channels.
The lack of a good CSM that is primarily focussed on wormholes has caused a lot of ■■■■ over the years. We’ve had knock-on effects from unrelated changes that have caused some extremely noticeable issues with wormhole living – for example, a recent update (which changed exactly nothing with wormholes) somehow doubled static wormhole spawn times, which took a couple of weeks to fix. We’ve had wormholes despawning effectively but not visually – leading to un-jumpable wormholes. Astrahus Drifter farming is still a thing, one of the stupidest mechanics in the game, and sometimes we have really weird things – not so long ago a system I have eyes in had a 92 hour duration wandering high-sec connection (from first scanned to when it finally despawned) which, while not something I’d normally complain about, is not something that should be happening.
This year, that all changed. The mods, with a little persuasion from some of the active members on the Praise Bob Discord (where many wormholers hang out) decided to set up a ballot for everyone involved in the discord. People interested could nominate themselves onto the ballot, after a couple votes the options would be whittled down to a couple of nominees who would then be considered the choices for the Praise Bob ballot. We ended up with probably 7 or 8 candidates. Two of those candidates stood out in popularity.
One was Exooki. A lot of you will know him, he’s pretty outgoing, CEO of TDSIN and has a name for himself. The second one was a guy called Mortarian Decala. Mort is a director of VI.TA, the main corp in Wormhole Society. He’s not as well known, and he hasn’t played as long. However, I’ve worked with Mort for a while at a leadership level and been on good terms with him since, and I pushed him to run for CSM. He’s thorough, communicative and willing to consider other peoples’ points of view – exactly what wormholers need from a CSM. He’s also far too civil to consider writing an entire thread about this problem, too, but frankly this is absolute ■■■■■■■■ and I sure as hell don’t think he should accept this lying down. Personally, I feel it’s necessary to make sure something like this is information available to everyone who plays, and everyone who has or will consider running for CSM.
So, what’s the problem? Well, Mort went on vacation shortly before applications finished up. I knew this, and so I bugged him incessantly to ensure everything was done and dusted before he left – all completed on the 7th of May (5 days before the deadline).
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He met all the requirements comfortably.
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He had his forum thread up: https://forums.eveonline.com/t/mortarian-decala-wormhole-unity-for-csm-14/157725/4
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He completed his CSM application as the instructions required (and I have asked him a number of times how sure he was, he’s confident that he got a confirmation screen).
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He sent his passport as ID confirmation and has triple checked that it actually sent.
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He posted his candidacy on the Praise Bob discord, actively answered questions and was generally active in the discord.
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He went on TIS with Exooki and Compayn, and had a 1 on 1 interview with Karate Magic.
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He told me about 5 times before he left that yes, he was sure he’d got everything done, and was certain he hadn’t missed anything.
In the case of all the above, where’s his candidacy, then? Well, while for obvious reasons he won’t share the details of his CCP communication with me, it seems that for whatever reason, CCP’s form never properly submitted, but didn’t show any problems – all he can tell me is that the person he discussed it with said there was unfortunately no course of action for him this year.
So, there’s nothing CCP can do, right? It’s not like they wrote the entire registration system or anything, they surely can’t add someone in manually…
Sounds like crap to me. Now, I’m not pointing fingers at the particular person Mort communicated with (and I am absolutely certain that the communication was completely civil and pleasant) – I don’t even know who it is, but even if I did I don’t know if he/she wrote the back-end of this registration system or if they know how to manage it. But someone there does know what’s happened here, and someone there can’t be assed helping someone who wants to go out of their way to help the game they love get the chance to do exactly that, specifically the overlooked and neglected aspects of wormhole space.
There are other candidates. Some of them are even good and I think would do a fine job. But in my opinion, and apparently a general majority of active members of the Praise Bob community, seeing as he was neck and neck with Exooki in the polls, Mort is the ideal candidate. He managed to poll similarly to someone who has spent a decade as a known name in Wormhole Space, simply through his outgoing nature – even though most wormholers hadn’t even heard of him until earlier this year.
Whoever at CCP manages this should feel ashamed that they’d act so nonchalantly about something they’re apparently so passionate about (because why else would they keep running the CSM). Maybe they should take the time to see if maybe they could find a way to fix their problem. Without this, we’re going to get either a candidate who doesn’t represent all of us, or yet again another year of wormholes being overlooked and forgotten by the Nullsec Council (and to be clear, I have no problem with the CSM being made up primarily of Nullsec members – we just want a voice that represents wormhole players’ interests).
Despite none of this being his fault - I have the utmost confidence that he did what he said he did; he’s always been thorough and careful - and despite the fact that he is way too nice to make a post like this - he feels like he’s let everyone who supported him down because of something completely out of his control. He was extremely passionate, deeply involved from the moment he decided to run, and all that has gone to waste because of a technical error.
Imagine if this was a candidate who has a big group backing them. If the first Goonswarm ballot candidate got overlooked like this. It wouldn’t be a small deal that got one guy running for CSM down and the small group that stood behind him. It’d be a massive deal, there’d be posts all over reddit and the forums calling people out. Yet realistically, how should this be any different? Simply put; a pooch has been screwed and responsibility should be taken. If it doesn’t, the same thing will likely happen next year to someone else.
TL;DR: CCP’s CSM registration system screws up royally, doesn’t display a form submission error when it evidently occurs. Mort, who would be great for wormholes and generally as a CSM, as he is an enthusiastic, open-minded, communicative candidate, has now been thrown under the bus because of this. CCP take no responsibility and no action to rectify the problem.