Dev Blog: Call for CSM 13 Candidates!

EVE Information Portal Dev Blogs
22

Look, no company in the world would let non-employees in on business information and give them more freedom than their own staff to talk publicly about it. It’s just not how the world works.

If the CSM wasn’t under NDA they wouldn’t hear about future stuff at all.

With the current system, we do get expert player feedback on features early and we can bounce ideas off them fairly easily and have quick access to a discussion when we need it. The CSM also has the same access to us for any questions or concerns they might have. We’re all better off for it.

6 Likes
23

The NDA is an enabler. It allows CCP employees to disseminate information to more people than would be possible without it.

1 Like
24

a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority

In terms of blocs influencing the vote, this is true but not because they outnumber everybody else. Rather the opposite is true, high sec and non bloc voters are several times the size of bloc voters. Steve is probably the only independent CSM that could get elected without ANY help from null blocs.

Trying to make him smell your farts isn’t going to win people over to your argument. The only election “fixing” is where null ballots are formed and all the people in highsec just sit on their hands. If the fix is in, it’s name is Apathy. It’s people getting a woe is me attitude and convincing themselves their votes won’t matter that allows null blocs to put people on with minimal difficulty. The fault is not within people like me or Steve, it’s not with CCP or with the system itself, it’s with people like you.

Every single eligible person who sits in jita or dodixie and concludes that voting is a waste of their time, they are the problem.

4 Likes
25

Running for CSM is something I have considered to help give a voice to the little guys more then the big blobs of corporations, are there and CSM members here that are able to talk to me to explain what its like as CSM and the full responsibilities involved in it?

1 Like
26

The responsibilities:

  • To talk with CCP when they have something they want to discuss. This can be by text chat, email, at the summit, or by conferencing software. (Right now they use Hipchat and Skype for Business. There have been some smaller meetings via http://appear.in, mostly because it’s a lot faster and easier to set up)
  • To attend the summits. This can be remote, but as anyone who has done remote meetings can tell you, it’s never as good as in person attendance.
  • To bring community sentiment to CCP. This can be from ‘little’ things (blueprint locking in stations), to big things (Jump Fatigue.)

I’d recommend that if you’re going for the CSM, you’re at least fluent in English. It’s the language that’s used for pretty much all communications. And that’s the job of the CSM. You also have to be willing to speak. Someone who’s quiet and doesn’t share their opinions is a lot less useful. CCPs pretty good at giving people the weight they should have. (I talk about nullsec stuff. But it’s given less weight than people who live out there. Not ignored, but weighted appropriately)

The summits are very important. Attendance at the summits isn’t mandatory, but if you know you can’t make them, I’d suggest not running as you’re going to be a lot less effective. Be aware that while CCP pays for the flights, hotels, breakfast and lunch (and up to 3 dinners), there can still be a pretty substantial outlay. It’s far from unusual for the CSM to go out for lunch (which we then pay for) so we can talk away from CCP. And Iceland isn’t a cheap country. You can get by without spending a lot. But it’s unusual. Expect to spend at least a couple of hundred per summit. (I think I was up to around £400 last time) This does depend on the composition of the CSM. If it’s entirely students, expect to spend less. And remember, you’re going to be burning at least a couple of weeks of holiday on this. (more if you’re Australian)

Expect more abuse from players than thanks. People who are unhappy are more likely to contact you than people who are happy. Most are civil. Some aren’t. (This isn’t me complaining about it. Just a warning for people coming into it.)

Do not expect your pet project to get any attention. When running, stick to your opinions, rather than “I will have CCP Fix X.” “I think X should be dealt with.” is far more honest. Ideally with some thoughts around what could be done to it.

(Fun fact: Little and big things often have differences in how long they take to do. The jump fatigue change, I suspect, took a lot less time to do than the blueprint locking. It takes a while to get a handle on what’s big and what’s small from a code perspective. Mostly by exasperated devs correcting you on how long something would take.)

4 Likes
27

Greetings,
Interpretation of democracy as “government by the people; especially : rule of the majority” is too much simplified and misleading. Potentially also very dangerous if people accept it… such description would also fit to very oppressive regimes. In contrary to the oppressive regime the democracy will respect will of the minorities. This important sentence shall be added.

I had to write this and I will also write to this linked dictionary later, because this particular topic triggers me due to my IRL experience.

Back to the topic. I would like to ask how do I take part in voting of CSM members? Why the negative reactions here to the voting system? Where is the problem? CSM is very useful from what I can see and read so far.

Cheers
BB

1 Like
28

Dates for voting are still to be announced. Late April, early May is most likely.

When you vote, you get to rank 10 candidates in the order you’d like to see them elected.

Voting runs in rounds, where if someone gets more votes than required, a fraction of the votes is passed down to the next person on each ballot. If the first person has double the votes required, half a vote is passed to the next person on each ballot. The votes required is number of votes/number of candidates +1.

If that’s not enough to elect 10 people, the person with the lowest number is eliminated from all ballots, and the election is rerun. (if you voted for them in the top slot, all your vote passes to your second choice)

This repeats until either 10 people get more than the quota, or there are only 10 people left.

It’s the Wright Single Transferable Vote system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_system

5 Likes
29

Thank you for the explanation.

1 Like
30

time differential can be a killer in that one. I was up all night attending sessions.

m

1 Like
31

Look, about the voting blocs.

Yes, large organized groups manage to parley their unification into votes that assure their guy the win. But not 10 wins. All the independents never manage to get on but neither is it all nullsec blocs.

I have been following the CSM and elections since I started playing (almost 10 years ago) and the same complaints have always been here

a) they don’t do anything
b) They do everything for the null masters
c) the are pipelines of info for the nullsec cartels
d) can you help me make a tinfoil hat?

(a) and (b) are kind of contradictory and yes, I have seen them in the same post. I would lean towards a mid ground on that one. DO anything? No, CSM cannot force, cannot demand, cannot DO. They advise, suggest, argue or agree. The good CSM’s manage this with tact and persuasive abilities. With knowledge and background. They argue from experience and do try to see the whole game. I have seen Goon reps tell CCP that if ‘x’ change is made Goons will exploit it easily and swiftly and then detail how.

©? I wouldn’t know. The paranoid in me says maybe. The optimist in me says I hope not.

(d) Yes, I am quite adept at that. One of my hats was on a shelf of the 07 show for quite a while.

Apathy is the leading thing that the null bloc encourage. They want you to think that your vote will not make a difference because each highsec player, each independent miner, each wh resident who does not vote is allowing the null blocs more power. Allowing THEM to choose who is elected. Now why do you think they work so hard to organize if it does nothing? Why do they try to convince you that you don’t count if they don’t care who wins?

They care

so should you

m

6 Likes
32

Going to the actual Dev Blog post and bypassing the usual tinfoil hattery dominating the thread so far, the application period for candidates, listed as March 19 - 23, seems kind of short. Last year they ran for two weeks, February 3 – 17. Why the clamp down on the actual application window? I thought the idea was a shorter voting period and a longer campaign time.

1 Like
33

I’m guessing the application period is when you submit your application. We are warned now, so we can start to work on an application now, then March 19-23 submit applications, candidates are announced at Fanfest (mid-April) then candidates can campaign until the vote which is written as taking place late April/May, so at least 2 weeks of campaigning. Of course one can start telling people they will apply as soon as they decide they will, which is kind of early campaigning.

Does one really need more than 4 days to figure out how to submit an application?

1 Like
34

Thanks for asking. The logic is that the most important bit of extra time for applications is the lead time. In case people need to apply for a passport which can take a bit of time. Submitting the actual application is not so time consuming so we feel a week is enough. Overall we’re trying to tighten up the election process so it doesn’t sprawl over a longer period than is needed, without taking away from the important bits like the campaign period.

1 Like
35

Okay, I guess I can see that though, if we’re going to measure from announcement of the schedule of events to the closing off of accepting applications, last year people had 40 days while this year it is just 24. Hrmm…

I know, I know, but this wouldn’t be EVE Online if somebody wasn’t nit picking every number you publish.

1 Like
36

Yes indeed - Only difference here is that the “Majority” is the leaders of a few blobs and an army of F1 monkeys.

Steve is probably the only independent CSM that could get elected without ANY help from null blocs.

There is a HUGE difference between “could” and “would” so in the context you’ve used it, I’m calling bullshite
He may well get voted in on his own merits - If none of the blocs had a vote.

Limiting votes to 1 per player “might” go a long way to seeing who worthy candidates are and just who would get elected but as that will never happen…
When one person can have hundreds of votes, democracy is left in the cold.
You can’t have a “democratic election” when a minority group of voters control the ballot and the outcome.

I have over the last 2 days asked 25 people (randomly selected from local) in highsec, lowsec and NPC nul who Steve Ronuken is - 18 said “I have no idea”, 2 (vets) told me “he has that site you can use for Eve stuff”. The rest gave varying responses, that indicated they had no idea who he is but felt they needed to make something up.

Asking those same 25 about the CSM and what it does, who it is -
5 told me, the CSM worked for CCP and played Eve to give CCP feedback. (kool job if you can get it)
3 said they thought the CSM were “sort of like forum moderators”.
The rest gave varying answers based around “I don’t know” but don’t want to admit I don’t in case it makes me look dumb.
6 of the 25 have played Eve for more than 2 years, one has been playing for 5 years, the rest under 2 years.
I started out with 25 people over a 2 day trip through high, low and some NPC nul. 5 have played Eve for less than 6 months so their responses are not included (although some were pretty funny, that wasn’t my aim)

Now tell me again how pure apathy is the reason for the lack of individual voters.

Until CCP fix the CSM to make it more representative of the player base, it really isn’t worth voting unless you are part of one of the blocs and have a vested interest (or just wanna be a part of the flock).
99% of bloc voters (90% of ALL votes cast) are just sheep that vote for who they are told.
Ask many of them what the CSM is and they’ll tell you the CSM gets stuff put in the game for them from CCP. I am not making this up, I actually asked a fairly big group of people during a CSM election several years ago when I was a member of a large (the largest today) nul bloc.

As it is and has been for years, the CSM primarily represents nulsec Blocs - It isn’t apathy that stops people voting - It is knowing from previous experience - your vote is pointless unless it is for a bloc member.

4 Likes
37

I love that kind of survey but I wonder how many names the actual random player does know,

m

38

I am throwing my hat into the ring, I swear to hold the office of carbearism faithfully and to abolish ganking and buff industrial ships, freighters, and mining barges to a minimum of 1,000,000,000 ehp, and to allow assault damage controls to be fitted to frieghters and industrial ships with no down time, this I swear.

2 Likes
39

Even if the CSM elections were entirely decided by blobs (which I’ll note I was not endorsed by in my first run), do you think the CSM is bad, and if so, why?

40

That’s provably false. As you can see in the voting breakdown, roughly 4500 of the 31274 votes cast (roughly 14%) were ballot, bloc votes. It’s just a lot of the OTHER votes also voted for bloc candidates.

I will agree here that CCP could do vastly more to promote voting amongst those non-enfranchised.

All the people you talked to seem to literally not understand what the CSM is, and probably have not voted in it. But the problem is being spurned from previous elections? That seems to be a pretty clear case of privileging the hypothesis.

1 Like
41

Considering what they see that comes from minutes or development in patches, their lack of interest in voting is perfectly understandable.

Just one instance: Null sec people complain about nullification being an issue. However, nullification is the only real way to hurt ingrained and established entities just a little bit after the massive focus on capitals. Nullification is the only way to interfere ever so slightly with entities. In a world that can drop supers and titans like candy is being thrown around during carnival. People on the CSM advocating for limitation or removal of nullification want adverse development to make it harder to even slightly engage and interfere with their operations beyond insignificant solo roams.

Another story is the fake establishment of the dedicated balance team, which got discontinued before it could do some serious work beyond random, incoherent stats changes.

When you see how CCP uses disgraceful huge lag fests for their deceptive advertisement and everyone applauds that, you start scratching your head in disbelief.

When you see what a load of rubbish was delivered with the Agency window, which replaced perfectly fine working tools with inadequate content censorship mechanics, and CSM doesn’t care or their (so it exists) and player feedback was not considered in the development, you can only scratch your head in disbelief.

When Null sec CSM have nothing better to do than to complain about MJD fleets being too effective while the capital blob remains untouched and unengagable by anything else under 9-4 like disasters level scenarios, you wonder what’s going on.

When I see that, voting for CSM candidates becomes a joke if you do not belong to these groups.

5 Likes