Good post.
It’s something many many people miss.
Stop cherry picking my comments and acting like a petulant child…
I qualified my statement.
You’re mostly proactive and Steve is mostly reactive and that’s fine, at least you both make an effort. Which is more than can be said for the rest.
Those who barely turn up at your weekly conferences (yes I know they’re not compulsory) and who rarely if ever turn up on these OFFICIAL forums made it to Reykjavik though…
As for Reddit you’re having a laugh, anyone who comes up with a sensible idea on there gets downvoted into oblivion.
For me, I go where people already are. Because I figure they’re not going to move.
The CSM rarely start a discussion, just watch them and interact with them. When I do start one, I do it both on the forums, and in Reddit (cross linking them)
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Just to be clear about what these are: They’re a catchup between us and CCP Guard. They rarely last particularly long, as we also talk on hipchat regularly. (there’s just some things which are easier to cover in person.)
It’s why pretty much all of us say that attendance isn’t that important.
Quite frankly, no. The forums are important, for sure, but they’re also not a good place to productively criticise or discuss CCP in depth. Hell, one of the best examples of that, Kug-tsumen is also the name of an old forum that used to be the centre of meta activity.
The EVE-O forums have their place, but even beyond my own concerns of censorship, if the community chooses to not overly use it, and that’s not harming the game, I don’t think it’s our role to try and change that.
I’ll respond to both your replies together.
4500 votes out of 31274 and the 4500 decided the election. Look at the numbers, 4500 players voted for specific candidates (as instructed) this leaves 31274 votes going to random candidates (many of which go to bloc members because the ballot is so full of them). Any smart government body knows you stuff a ballot with, 1st, those you want to win, 2nd, fillers who would represent the same lobby group if they won but aren’t necessary to the party 3rd, just enough “independents” to be seen as holding a valid election.
The majority of the CSM is and has been for a few years selected and controlled by the Blocs.
The fact so many non bloc members vote for bloc candidates tells me there is something fundamentally wrong with the voting system. Bloc members (all self interest groups) should be limited on how many candidates they can have on the ballot. Until that happens the CSM will be nothing more than a nulbloc interest group - Not representative of the player base, therefore not valid when it comes to recommending anything to CCP when it comes to “game design” outside nulsec.
True most of them don’t know what the CSM is or what it does - Nobody (except possibly CSM members) really does.
As far as many players are concerned - The CSM is a small self interest group of Bloc members which is controlled by CCP.
As for finding out what the CSM is and does - Not that easy, unless you know where to look for the very limited available information - Join a bloc, which will give you all the information you require/ask for as long as it aids their objectives. Years ago I genuinely believed (was told) the CSM was there to help nulsec - Now i know better but my opinion, now based on what information is made available and seeing game changes - Still remains the same - The CSM is there to better the lot for nul blocs.
NB; Wading through the crap in the specific CSM section of the forums - Isn’t going to help anyone find out what the CSM is or does - It won’t even help you find out who they are, which is pretty irrelevant anyway as many of them don’t won’t respond to or even acknowledge messages from players. Unless of course you happen to be a twitterer or have been fortunate enough to know which discord or other communication app the csm use. You can google minutes etc and wade through pages of nonsense which will tell you - “I can’t say anything due to NDA’s”
From experience, sending a message to every CSM member will see 2 or 3 acknowledge that they saw it / read it and 1 (if you’re lucky) actually respond to you. I proposed changes to fatigue several years ago (when CCP asked for feedback and suggestions) to ALL the then CSM, One (was nice enough) replied to me to tell me they probably wouldn’t be considered but that he thought it was interesting (funnily enough not a bloc csm) - In less than two weeks the gist of the changes I suggested (a couple of years ago), goes live on TQ.
I’m not saying every CSM should respond to every message they receive BUT when they don’t bother, players lose faith in the CSM.
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There is a small myth being perpetuated here I would lie to address. ‘Majority of csm are bloc members’. Majority means nothing in the CSM. Each person has a voice and votes within the CSM are a rarity.
At least that was true when I was there, Jin> Steve? still true?
m
Since Iceland is in Schengen area, is passport still a requirement for EU citizens?
uhhhh, what?
decided the election as in ‘got 2 people elected’?
Do you even know how the voting system works?
Still true.
We’ve never voted on anything. You may have noticed “unanimously” thrown around a couple of times, but that’s purely to show there was no dissent. Not that we voted on anything.
(Now, we did rank some stuff, for changes we’d like to see. That was the thing with the post-it notes. Yep, full of bloc benefits there. They’re just so impacted by FW and wardecs. 
)
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It only means something when it comes to any other part of the game outside nulsec.
In the case of the CSM the “majority” represents a subsection of the game. Whether they vote internally or not is completely irrelevant - It is how they interact with the governing body (CCP Developers).
If I wanted to find out if the world was flat by asking people I could go about it in 2 ways. Ask people who may know, a focused group of specialists. Or I could walk down the street and ask random people.
As far as getting a relevant outcome, which group do you think would be more valid?
The majority of the CSM is there only to represent their own interest groups and as the majority of CSM belong to nul blocs it is more than possible their focus will be on what is best for them not the game.
Or that people who vote read the CSM minutes and recognize that maybe the people who know what they’re talking about aren’t interested in making a game that sucks for absolutely everyone but their group, because if they did, there’d be nobody else in the game to shoot/sell to/buy from/recruit?
They will, if there’s leadership encouraging it. That’s how people are: they respond to leadership, and until there is some, they’ll sit back and wallow in the same rut they’ve been in for years.
Kugu’s almost more of a cesspit than /r/EVE. Frankly, any set of forums where one poster is allowed to literally quote Goebbels and the people running it just laugh isn’t someplace where serious discussions should be attempted.
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For years I have encouraged other groups to field candidates, run. Even when it meant they were running against me.
The blocs love your line of reasoning, that voting is futile and we might as well let them do what they want. Are you working for them? On purpose?
One voice, that is all it takes, one person who is independent and they will be heard just as well as 9 in lockstep with each other. This is not a guess, this is experience.
Elect a person who is a good communicator, willing to listen to both players and to ccp. One who does know the game or some specific aspect of it relevant to your interests.
Simple as that.
m
edited, I spel bad somtimez
Wow that is just so out-there it really is funny. Or just really naive.
4500 people vote for 5 candidates, that’s 900 votes for each of them - Throw in random votes from those just picking the most popular candidates (most vocal, well publicised, visible) - It wins elections.
Do you understand how the election/voting process works?
NB; I seriously doubt only 4500 votes came from nul members if you include alts/alt corps etc - I know of ONE player who has over 100 votes, which means at best 4,401 genuine player votes from nulsec - Now when you look at how many votes supposedly came from players in nul alliances - Not many actual players vote (it would be a lot less than 1%).
Proving beyond a doubt - The CSM election process is a FARCE.
Obviously, I can’t speak for even all of GSF leadership, or any of ‘the blocs’ (and thank you for spelling that right, btw), as none of us are a ‘groupthink’ collective. Hell, even the voting numbers demonstrate we don’t all vote the ‘official’ slate, we just don’t go talking about ‘I’m gonna give the alliance the finger!’, cuz really, telling all your friends ‘screw you’ isn’t a great way to keep friends.
But the guys I know? By and large, Mike, no, we don’t love that line of reasoning. We don’t particularly care about it, but to what little extent we do… it’s a pretty crappy way for people to look at things. The game is healthiest when all of the game is healthy. We have our best chances to see really awesome stuff happen when there’s more players getting active all over the game, not just in null. Asakai, after all, was low-sec, and directly involved low-sec groups. If High-sec emptied out, events like this weekend would suck.
We want the game healthy. The whole thing. And that means we want people represented who know highsec, who know lowsec. We also want them to know nullsec. A CSM member who’s going to push highsec issues is great. One who’s going to do it without understanding how his/her/CCP’s proposed solutions will impact low and null? Not so great. That produces problems. It produces things like ridiculous mining barge defenses that are just as ridiculous out here where people were running fleets of them that dwarfed the mining fleets of high-sec.
We put people at the top of our ticket that we know are experts in their aspects of the game. They also know how to listen to people who are experts in other aspects of the game. Is Aryth an arrogant prick? Oh hell yes. Is he an arrogant prick who’s going to ignore someone who knows more than he does on a topic? Newp. He didn’t get to be that arrogant by making stupid, unforced errors like that.
People should get involved in the process. They should talk to one another. They should get their friends involved in the process. Because a CSM full of people who know the subject matter—all of it—is much better for everyone.
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Few I’ve spoken to over the years bother reading the CSM minutes (as can also be seen by the number of times each link has been viewed).
And seriously - It isn’t about making a game that sucks for others (that’s goons catch cry - taken from someone else) it is about balance - When you get 2 or more people together with a common goal, they aren’t going to put more effort into something that doesn’t meet their goal designs than they put into their own agenda’s.
Next argument.
That would be DJ, aka ex-CCP Sreegs, yes. He hooked up w/PL two years ago while everyone hailed him as a wonderful person who could never possibly have said the very phrase he coined. Shockingly, it’s no longer 12 years ago. Even Goons grow the hell up and become adults, you know.
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I know exactly how the voting process works. It’s not a first past the post system. It’s a Wright Single Transferable Vote system.
There’s a quota of votes which has to be hit (total votes/total seats +1)
Votes trickle down until exhausted.
https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/resources/auditLog.txt is the audit log from CSM 12’s election.
https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/resources/votes.blt is the votes which were cast.
Arrendis
People should get involved in the process. They should talk to one another. They should get their friends involved in the process. Because a CSM full of people who know the subject matter—all of it—is much better for everyone.
And it would still leave us with pretty much the same as what what have now - More people vote for more candidates the same few win, it just means they win with less votes overall.
Stop “alt voting”, 1 vote per player.
Provide valid information within the game - Not forums or blogs or twitch and the like (you have to know something is about to happen to know to look for them) - so people know what is happening in the game. CSM elections are a mystery to many players.
The pretty little blog 27/2/2018 - Loses most readers in the first 2 paragraphs, those that drive through the first boring part get lost in the “CSM 13 elections – All you need to know!”. NOWHERE in the blog does it tell you what the fukin CSM is or does except for this useless little snippet
The Council of Stellar Management is a proud, old institution with deep roots in the EVE online community. Members are democratically elected once a year in an online election hosted by CCP.
Which just tells you something called CSM has been in Eve for ever.
Your example of the weekends event is PERFECT - I spoke to over 200 people in and around Jita yesterday (while shooting gankers and having fun) most of whom have never heard of “burn jita”. They just new lots of ships were getting killed (mostly by Concord) in an around Jita so came for a look.
CCP has never been good at advertising its own game or events.
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