Jita Park Speakers Corner

I would like to see voting reforms in place before next years CSM as well as removal of all personal details of CSM members from the public display and a stronger rules governing the CSM's public behavior

I would like to recommend the following change

With Voting

• Characters to be 90 Active for voting or 120 days active for buddy accounts, character age immaterial
• Candidates limited to 1 per alliance, this is meant to be a representative body of all player
• During campaigning no offensive material, this should be more about issues and vision for the game. (As to what is offensive that probably needs looking into as what is offensive in one part of the world is not in others)

The election will allways be about a popularity contest but it should be about ideas as well.

With Safety Issues it has been made very clear that the real names of the candidates should be kept out of the public eye. Also I believe sex, religion and race should be left out all together. They make for good political stunts but they are not really helpful as to the idea of who is best suited to representing us.
I am not sure however on the persons geographical location. People do like to vote for people from there own country and with no other real data on the person I believe that makes it unlikely to be a safety threat and as we have several non-english speaking countries playing in their native language it would actually be an unfair advantage as we can not expect that all these forums can be monitored.

Also I believe we need a more comprehensive document covering what is and is not acceptable behavior for members of the CSM or for that matter anyone attending an event in front of camera's. I don't mean become teetotalers if their is no ability for bad press get hammered. Also a list of punishments covering the level of the behavior like a scale 1 to 10. Hopefully this will never need to be used but it would be helpful just in case. Also it would have a set punishment for a set type of offense

As this game and DUST 514 as well as any other games CCP develops to release down the track, the game, its players and the CSM will come under more media scrutiny and as we have just seen, they love a story they can beat to death for ratings

I have probably missed a lot here, that is why I put it here so people can debate it as well as some will call me a nutter but at the end of the day if the CSM voting is a better system, the candidates are safer and the game is shielded as much as possible from bad publicity. Well then I'm happy with that.

1) Perhaps. Most players have alts they use and have used for years, so this will not really solve any long term multi-voting problem - if there is a problem at all (but thats another debate)

2) No. For a start, larger alliances may well have several brilliant candidates due to the sheer number of players they have - why artificially limit which one can stand? Plus this would be incredibly easy to bypass, they would just need to move to a holding alliance for the duration of the campaign, so this isnt really practical, and it makes a farce of the whole democratic system if you impose such arbitary restrictions on who can stand.

3) By offensive material, do you mean stuff which breaks the EULA and/or TOS? Because CSM members are already not allowed to post that kind of stuff, just like the rest of us. And if you want to impose more artificial restrictions on what can and cannot be said, then HTFU is the standard response, I believe. The CSM is meant to represent Eve players, so they should abide by Eve rules, and no more.

You seem to have a hugely inflated idea of what the CSM actually does. A candidate should not be elected based upon his or her personal ideas for the game - the CSM does not decide what CCP implements. The CSM is used as a middle man between CCP and the playerbase, they discuss the changes CCP proposes with CCP employees to ensure they are acceptable, and the CSM can suggest alterations to the ideas that might fix any potential problems.

What the CSM does not do is dictate CCP policy. I could run for election on the basis that if elected, I would have all drake models replaced with a hairy phallus, and it wouldnt mean jack - because even if elected, my personal ideas matter not. This is not like a government, where each party releases a manifesto of ideas that it would implement if elected. What we need in a CSM are players who know how to work with game developers, and who can shoot down ridiculous ideas, and who can help CCP refine ideas and proposals they have. What we do not need is a bunch of idea men promising the gulliable playerbase that they will have certain ideas implemented - because they wont, and the CSM candidate will have lied to his 'constrituents'.

The CSM is not actually that important a part of Eve, and as such does not need a new set of rules and punishments that apply only to 14 players - what a waste of GM man-hours. That is why there is that blanket clause about "appropriate behaviour", to allow CCP to use their discretion when dealing with the CSM, and also to stop the hoardes of forum warriors with a personal agenda quoting CSM specific 'rules' to have particular members impeached - that power resides soley in the hands of CCP, not the community.

tl;dr: The CSM is not important to warrant CSM-specific rules, the CSM does not actually have any power, so the whole concept of campaigning on a set of ideas is horsecrap, and your proposed voting restrictions dont really solve any problem, and instead impose arbitary restrictions on the player base. So thanks but no thanks.

in response
2) I believe that any alliance large or small should be able to pick the best person that they believe is most suited for running for the CSM. Yes this would be fairly easy to bypass if people wanted to go to that much trouble. but as it stands what is to prevent a large alliance from running 100 candidates to make a mockery of the elections.
I am aware the CSM is only an advisory body primarily used for a sounding board by CCP and they don't have powers to create things them selves but yes their ideas do matter and should matter to us. As to making a farce by having rules of who can stand, a lot of people are in alliances much like political parties they should choose the best person to put forward. I think having 100's of candidates from any one alliance as is now possible is a mockery of democracy.

3) On offensive material if you dont believe restrictions need to be added about what kind of things should not be said by candidates or what kind of propaganda posters should not be allowed, well hell I think you are insane. The only thing that would happen if this current crap was repeated would probably be the dismantling of the CSM. If you dont agree that is your right.

Also I don't believe I said anything about an age restriction.

deleted till I have more time for a better response

That is an interesting point.

During this last election, I believe at least two candidates posted comments so bad that the moderators needed to delete the posts. I won't name names and keep this meta which hopefully steer clear of this post being deleted.

I understood that the posts were worthy of deleting, but was concerned that it effectively whitewashed the candidates, as most forum readers would never know what the unfiltered candidate was like.

Perhaps a higher standard would hold these candidates as ineligible? Not sure a zero tolerance would be a good idea either though.

Worthy of further discussion I think.