Vote Xenuria for CSM 14

[Xenuria]

Hi, I am Xenuria!
If you are reading this it means you are using the EvE online forums, tarvu help you. I am running for re-election to the CSM, last time I was on the CSM I did some really cool stuff. You can read about this cool stuff here and here.

Realistically this election cycle is probably going to be inundated with candidates who randomly stumbled into the application process on their way to gamestop to pick up fortnite gift cards. Voter turnout has been on a steady decline resulting in null sec leadership figures winning almost every single seat. If elected I am going to try my best to change this by advocating for more transparency and player engagement as it relates to the CSM as an institution.
Every year a bunch of loud yet otherwise apathetic people get up on a soap box to tell everybody that they don’t feel the CSM represents them or that their votes don’t count.
Every year this proves to be a lie told be people who can’t do math or don’t understand the definition of democracy. I wrote a small article on this subject including some hard to swallow numbers.

For reference here is a picture of me.
Picture
ENFJ-T
Sources and Citations
Talking In Stations Podcast
Contact
Reddit
Twitter
Discord Xenuria #0752

Endorsements & Testimonials
MinerBumping

“I’ll never forget standing in the Harpa lobby, wind and snow and sleet outside, and there’s Xenuria walking in wearing jeans and a tank top” - Manic Velocity

“I have never walked away from a conversation with Xenuria without being both impressed and confused…” - Ashterothi

“I stand with xenuria” - Jeronica

Horse Trades
If you are voting for me please put Manic Velocity as your second choice after me. Wherever I appear on a ballot you cast, make sure his name is right after mine. Manic Velocity is going to do the same for me with his voters.

VOTE HERE

[Xenuria]

Reserved

[Solecist_Project]

YOU are my second vote after Mike.

[Xuxe_Xu]

seconded
gl Xenuria

[Scipio_Artelius]

You were unexpectedly good on the CSM.

+1 vote from me (and my alts too)

[Black_Pedro]

@Xenuria

Every year a bunch of loud yet otherwise apathetic people get up on a soap box to tell everybody that they don’t feel the CSM represents them or that their votes don’t count.
Every year this proves to be a lie told be people who can’t do math or don’t understand the definition of democracy.

How can you claim these people are lying when a CSM looks like this:

Objectively, that council doesn’t represent everyone who plays Eve, just like any council of 10 people isn’t going to represent the diversity of the player base. There are people who earnestly voted for their represented only to have their representative fail to make it and have zero representation on the council.

Yes, that is “democracy” but let’s drop the charade that the CSM is a “democracy”, or that pure democracy is actually a workable system. No functional government in the world functions on pure mob rule where he who get 50%+1 has all the power. There are complicated power sharing systems, checks and balances, and alternate representatives to protect minorities from the horrors of pure democracy.

And further, democracy is ‘one person, one vote’. In Eve, the CSM is elected by accounts, not players, and not even all accounts at that. There are a whole class of disenfranchised players (alpha clones) whose votes literally don’t count at all. And then, there are a whole class of invested veteran players who have parleyed their in-game success (or sometimes, their real-world wealth) into armies of alternate accounts which means their vote counts more. My opinion of who sits on the CSM is literally worth 10 times that of the newly subscribed player because I have multiple omega accounts. Is that fair?

Maybe, I don’t know. It’s clear why we vote per account and alphas have no say, but to say that is “democratic” is the falsehood. Maybe such rule-by-the-elite is better as the most invested have a greater say, but somehow, given the problems people say are the biggest ones facing Eve today, I kinda doubt it.

You want the answer to making the CSM more representative? The only one I can come up with is extending the size of the council back to 14, 16 or even more to provide more diversity. You know, like the size it was when a non-bloc candidate like you could actually get elected? But CCP doesn’t want that for logistical or cost reasons likely so we are stuck the relatively unrepresentative council dominated by the representatives of the largest in-game groups that we have got ever since they shrunk the council to 10.

That’s fine - the CSM is just a space council with no real power. But stop misrepresenting the legitimacy or reality of the CSM or how it is formed. People don’t have to buy into the CSM or the people who get elected just because you or CCP says so. There are players who legitimately aren’t represented by anyone they voted for, as there always will be. Perhaps your energy should be spent convincing them that the CSM works for all players, or you as a CSM member would represent them ably (see: Brisc, pre-burnout Jin’taan), rather than trying to convince them that the CSM has some divine-given legitimacy that flows directly from the will of the players - because democracy! - and they should just get on board.

EDIT: My apologies, I just challenged you on a statement and did not ask you a question about your campaign. Let’s go with: Like Mike Azariah, you too have served on the CSM in the past. From that experience, what changes do you think are feasible for CCP to make to the day-to-day running of the CSM to increase transparency? Without breaking your NDA, is there anything you can say about the restrictions CCP imposed on you that you felt was unnecessary or overly onerous and you would want changed?

[Xenuria]

@Black_Pedro

@Xenuria

Every year a bunch of loud yet otherwise apathetic people get up on a soap box to tell everybody that they don’t feel the CSM represents them or that their votes don’t count.
Every year this proves to be a lie told be people who can’t do math or don’t understand the definition of democracy.

How can you claim these people are lying when a CSM looks like this:

Objectively, that council doesn’t represent everyone who plays Eve,

EDIT: My apologies, I just challenged you on a statement and did not ask you a question about your campaign. Let’s go with: Like Mike Azariah, you too have served on the CSM in the past. From that experience, what changes do you think are feasible for CCP to make to the day-to-day running of the CSM to increase transparency? Without breaking your NDA, is there anything you can say about the restrictions CCP imposed on you that you felt was unnecessary or overly onerous and you would want changed?

I am not going to retort line by line because many of these questions/concerns are answered in official devblogs and in the explanation of how the STV vote system works.

I will say that the CSM does NOT represent ALL of EvE Online.
The CSM Represents ALL of EvE Online that turned out to Vote.

If you look at the publicly released STV numbers you will see that this is the case.

In terms of changes I would say that one of the only things you can be sure that the CSM will be able to influence or change is the perception of themselves and the institution. You can run on a platform for some mechanic or change only to have it be a fruitless endeavor and a waste of time because that thing you care about isn’t being iterated on. I personally didn’t find the NDA restrictive simply because my area of focus was so general and structural that I could find ways to discuss it without leaking. I think the website used for CSM information and voting needs to go, it’s out of date and clunky on the best of days but this isn’t a sentiment unique to me. Pretty much everybody agrees on the current vote platform and the website used to be a problem. My dream feature is an in-client voting system, if the voting system happens inside the game client than even the laziest of high sec publords will be able to cast their vote with minimal effort.

[Black_Pedro]

@Xenuria

I will say that the CSM does NOT represent ALL of EvE Online.
The CSM Represents ALL of EvE Online that turned out to Vote.

No it doesn’t. The CSM represents those voters whose candidates got the most votes as most popularity-based electoral systems do. It also doesn’t represent alpha clones who aren’t allowed to vote at all, and over-represents those players that have multiple accounts and get more votes. There are plenty of voting Eve Online minorities whose representatives of choice are not on the council despite their best efforts because they are outnumbered minorities and there is a limited space on the council.

But this is bordering on semantics and thus isn’t especially interesting, plus this is your campaign thread so I will stop discussing the point.

@Xenuria

In terms of changes I would say that one of the only things you can be sure that the CSM will be able to influence or change is the perception of themselves and the institution.

Sure. Let me rephrase the question then to perhaps get more at the ‘value proposition’ of voting for Xenuria. Specifically, if elected what will you do to increase “transparency” of the CSM with the greater player base? And if I may expand a little, how will you engage with and represent the concerns, interests and views of all Eve players, some of whom are either unable to vote, or whose first choice in representative did not have sufficient votes to make it on the council and thus they have no direct representative?

Do you think the forums, various Discords, and dedicated Townhalls run by some CSM members are sufficient communication tools for to represent all Eve players effectively, or is more needed?

[Xenuria]

I am not trying to be combative Pedro but what you are saying is reductive at best and at worst flat out dishonest. I can’t be sure if your intention is to troll or if you genuinely don’t understand how STV works as a system. The reason Null gets so many of their people onto the CSM is because the STV system can’t hamstring their efforts if there are no other viable candidates. Having a whose who of who contest between 40 or more people that have no contact info, no campaign thread, no established reputation and no demonstrable capacity to be a CSM is why Null wins. Let me talk about this a different way.

Let’s say hypothetically I want only Goons or only Null leadership on the CSM. If that was the case I would want as many random candidates in the official running as possible. The more the better, do you know why? Because the STV vote system is impacted by the number of seats and the number of candidates. It would not surprise me in the slightest if certain null blocs told their membership to run on alt accounts just to make that number larger. The average non bloc voter is going to be confused and disillusioned either wasting their vote on a decoy candidate or not voting at all. I talk about this in my thread Bitter Pills, you should give it a read as it addresses the questions you have been asking in this campaign thread.

Now as it relates to alpha accounts voting…
Only CCP has metrics on how many alpha accounts exist. It’s not possible to let those accounts vote without opening the entire process to exploitation.

[Black_Pedro]

@Xenuria

I am not trying to be combative Pedro but what you are saying is reductive at best and at worst flat out dishonest. I can’t be sure if your intention is to troll or if you genuinely don’t understand how STV works as a system. The reason Null gets so many of their people onto the CSM is because the STV system can’t hamstring their efforts if there are no other viable candidates. Having a whose who of who contest between 40 or more people that have no contact info, no campaign thread, no established reputation and no demonstrable capacity to be a CSM is why Null wins. Let me talk about this a different way.

No Xenuria. Nullsec gets so many candidates on the council because they have and bring the numbers. The STV does not magically provide proportional representation in any real sense - it just allows secondary, tertiary and so forth voting intentions to be reflected in the outcome. If the 10 biggest groups are all in nullsec and organize and deliver the vote, they will will the 10 seats no matter what highsec does. The STV might help a bit get a candidate with broad, yet weak support on paper, but the way the STV kicks out candidates each round still strongly favours candidates with concentrated support, and if there are 10 such groups that rally behind their bloc candidate, there is little-to-no room for an outsider to gather up left over votes and sneak on.

That said, if there is anyone who might do it, it could be you. My reading is that when you were successful, it was by being lower down, but on many ballots. Still, even back then when you did squeak out a win, the bloc candidates secured the top 10 or so seats. So I maintain it is primarily the smaller council size, not apathy or poor organization, that has all but frozen non-nullsec bloc candidates out of the CSM. I therefore think your attempt to galvanize support by declaring that the issue, genuine or not on your part, is doomed to fail.

While I wish you had directly anwered my questions on how you would do outreach differently to the greater Eve community, it is not my intention to derail your campaign thread. I’ll stop now and leave you to it then.

Good luck.

[Beetle]

You know what, for me as someone who never followed CSM past those 1 or 2 campaigns and briefly at that, you have very fascinating links in your opening post. I started with the MinerBumping and lazy whining voters thread ones and that was interesting read that made me wanna see what do you exactly mean by cool stuff you did. And why there are no examples of that cool stuff in the opening post. 1st impression was cool stuff is somewhere in those walls of text not meant to be highlighted but hey there’s Ctrl + F. And gradually from there I could see it’s not just hilarious notes here and there

Jin’taan begged CCP for cat ears in the store, because he needs this in his life.

but again interesting read as a whole. Much respect for the New Player Experience part you had there. This makes me want to read more CSM summits.

At the same time as any candidate for any election you need more details of what you want to push for and one of the “sources and citations” is a porn link. So let’s see if the whole campaign is just a joke.

[Xenuria]

So it is… good catch. I guess mind-clash podcast got sold or something? I had no idea…

[Mossyblog_Barnes]

Q1, What did you do in previous CSM’s that you wouldn’t do again in this CSM (lessons learned)

Q2. What is one thing you felt that previous CSM’s you’ve contributed to that today we see in-game… what is the direct relationship between you being on the CSM and impact.

Q3. What is your position on CCP and Reddit. Do you feel they should continue to endorse forums such as this (by way of using this to interact with players) or do you feel its better served in CCP run forums. If so why…

Q4. What do you think is likely the causation for PLEX prices being so high, and how/what would you advocate for change should it be required.

[Xenuria]

A1. I would wear a suit next time or dress clothes, previously I had worn tanktops and jeans because I didn’t have as good control over my bodyheat as I do now. I spent some time studying Tibetan monks and other systems of self regulation. I can now control my heart-rate to the degree that I can wear a long sleeves without turning red and being soaked with sweat.

A2. It’s kinda hard to give specifics because of NDA but some stuff I can talk about is what is in the mins. I influenced the NPE and the methodology of people like CCP Ghost. He was already on the right track, I just gave him citable research that validated his initial ideas about player behavior. The single most direct impact of me being on the CSM is the rewriting of the white-paper, the changing of the seats and the changing of the CSM coordinators. I wish I could say more than that, but I cannot.

A3. It’s difficult because the player base is spread all over on different platforms and CCP can’t force the players to line up in neat little rows. That isn’t how people work, it’s not how eve online works. I think CCP is striking a difficult balance when it comes to communication and where that communication happens, I don’t have much say in that but I do routinely advocate for single message, wide presentation. Be it a dev blog or statement, it should be echoed on all platforms the same way.

A4. You would have to ask somebody like Aryth about that, math is not my skill set. People are my skillset. If you want the economy of eve to be conducive to a large and active playerbase than you want to vote for people like Aryth. The thing is… he doesn’t need your vote so it’s a moot point.

[Manic_Velocity]

Xenuria has my vote.

[Xenuria]

I also want to point out that I am against bots if that wasn’t already super obvious.

I would very much like to see more charts like this released publicly to the player-base. If elected I would push for a routine hall of shame style release by CCP as it relates to bots.

[Nick_Bison]

Ok, I am NOT a big Xenutia fan at all however, I do believe his stated policies & history of ideas has about won me over.

Bottom line, don’t like him but, he’s getting the vote from all my accounts.

[Daoden]

Just like how every politician says they are going to lower taxes when they are running for office and then never deliver.

[Xenuria]

Except I actually delivered, I ran on a reform platform and I reformed the CSM.

[Daoden]

I must have missed that, have a link for me to read?