Jita Park Speakers Corner

*sniffle* he didn't respond to my post either *sniffle*

I read it, and didn't quite understand the full implications. To me, if a group of players overvote and the candidate they get is elected, than for each of those players, the outcome they desired is achieved. They vote for a person, they win. Sounds good. I didn't quite see how that constituted disenfranchisement. But many players since than have explained how its unfair for some votes to get transferred, and others don't get transferred, and I absolutely agree with that. Especially since those transferred votes could end up ousting someone who DID get top votes if they overvotes are re-allocated or applied in some form. Its unjust, and I see that now.

If we had had a lengthy debate about this before the post went public I probably would have understood it than, and had something to say. But we agreed not to discuss it any further and to just post it and let the players take the reigns. Like I said, I'm not an expert at this stuff and that's why you never would have heard me propose anything specific in the first place. I'm not even all that troubled by the fact that Trebor used the term "CSM" because I'm quite capable of explaining myself regardless of whether players want to try to tie me to the proposal as if it were my own personal advice to the public or CCP. I can't do anything about it if people want to assume I'm just lying to cover up my evil plot to destroy the Goons. v0v

I agree. But we tend to agree on many things. Which is why I'm still glad my votes were not wasted on you. You've made a couple gaffes here and there, but nothing major. You try hard and work hard. And I have a feeling FW will come out of all this a-okay this winter.

But you do have a small track record of missing the obvious, until it's been pointed out to you. Which isn't too bad a fault, since you do rely on a lot of feedback from the playerbase.

I hope so.


You're his colleague. You can easily counter any stupid ideas he might have. Trebor's opinions should be important to everyone else, because it determines his biases. And it would seem he has an honest bias towards large groups of organized players. And even in the face of much good reasoning against biasing a voting system towards large motivated groups of voters, he still persists with his opinion. I would hope that this is remembered come CSM8 and that Trebor does not get re-elected (it turns out Trebor has every intention to run again.)

LOL. Remember when I said this: "There isn't some politician rebutting every idea with some long-winded, self serving argument that essentially calls the player ignorant."

Thanks for providing the perfect illustration.

What you're describing is a focus group. Focus groups go beyond the standard gathering of opinions/responses and provide much more in depth feedback. They're flawed in a number of ways though, and, as you can see in the wiki article, the father of interaction design says they shouldn't be relied upon in software design. The way that this particular focus group is selected guarantees that it will be biased in certain directions, which is appropriate and natural for an election but grossly distorts the feedback process.

I guess what I'd like to hear from the CSM is how their process is better than CCP going direclty to the playerbase using industry standard methods for gathering that sort of data. The only thing I can think of is that they can serve to filter out a lot of nonsense, but since there is no established method for actually doing that other than what an individual rep feels is nonsense, I don't see how it adds any value. Furthermore, those reps aren't required to do anything, often don't, and, if their lives are anything like mine, they have little time to do so.

I'm not particularly concerned about whether or not the CSM is elected this way or that way or another way. The more I think about the more it seems clear that CCP has opted to bypass the CSM in favor of direct feedback. It also appears that they aren't going to let themselves be ruled by feedback alone. In some cases, they're going to do what they're going to do whether any of us wants it or not. If DUST really does bring in lots of new subscribers, there will be even less of a reason for them to feel beholden to the old guys and their hardened positions.

p.s.-- this isn't in any way personal, you got 2 of my 8 votes in the last election. like i said, i think there is a lot of good you guys can do and have done, but the system is flawed overall.

First off - thank you for your votes, and don't worry, I don't take any of this personally. I'm certainly capable of discerning when someone wants to have a genuine conversation and when someone just wants to be a ****.

I don't think I was really trying to describe a focus group, if I was it was unintentional. Let's examine for a moment the qualities of arguably one of the most effective and influential CSM members to date - who by and large is considered "the gold standard" for other CSM representatives to live up to. That's right, I'm talking about The Mittani. The reason Alex was so good at his job was because he understood two things really well (Ok, a lot more than just two, but you get my point).

The first was he understood how to use the media as a leveraging tool. He was unafraid to go to them and use his connections there to put pressure on CCP when they weren't living up to their commitment to their players. The fact that Incarna was a flop and that players were pissed became so widely known and understood CCP didn't really have a choice but to respond or continue to be buried in bad press. Thankfully, things haven't been that bad recently that this type of leverage hasn't been necessary during CSM7's term.

The other thing Alex knew how to use was personal power. One of the things he loved to say was that a good idea whispered into the ear of the right developer during a night of heavy drinking can sometimes accomplish more than the biggest of threadnoughts. Obviously that doesn't mean everything we whisper while drunk will get made, but its a testament to the fact that CCP is composed of human beings, and human nature being what it is the best way to have an influence on a person is to be their friend, more than being their enemy.

Either of these methodologies, in my opinion, fall well outside the realm of a typical focus group. They're not reactionary, they're something different - and based on unique relationships. Undoubtedly, CCP will still come to us and ask for advice for things they are working on. This is great, in my opinion. I think most have agreed its been valuable for someone with my experience to be on board during the year they're covering FW across two expansions. I'm simply pointing out that the true power of the CSM lies beyond its ability to serve as a focus group, and that if that's all that was needed they could certainly to a lot to restructure how it gets input from players, just as you are saying. For example - you could shorten the CSM's term to 6 months. That might work well under the focus group model, as you could select new representatives for each expansion based on the issues. What would be lost however, is the chance to build more intimate relationships that enable leaders like The Mittani to do their best work. Relationships just take time to build.

It doesn't exist, it doesn't exist !

We're all bad people for not forgetting the facts once they became inconvenient for Hans. Uh, I mean that never occurred, he'd never support ripping us off, ... though he did, but that never happened.

You also said, in that post:
- Goons shouldn't take it personally even though it was literally aimed at them.

- That somehow 17% of the vote gaining 20% of the representation is such a massive problem that it needs a systemic fix, even though it's a ridiculous hypothetical. It's even funnier when it comes from someone that has 4% of the vote and 7% of the representation! You've almost got double what you earned!

- That you weren't even sure why multiple seats are needed, when the answer to that question could be as simple as asking the two PL members on your council instead of asking Goons in a supremely half-hearted attempt to change the subject

When you defend concepts, it's generally a sign of approval, or at the very least, not disapproval. You also ignored the whole "you lied like a ***** about saying you didn't understand the proposal" part, which is really the more damning point.



If you didn't understand why people were upset by that point, you have the critical thinking skills of a 3rd grader. You're not that stupid though, you're just lying, much like you lied about claiming to not understand the proposal.



You had no problem with the concept and yet you defended it. You also lied about even understanding it in the first place. Forgive me for saying that your words at this point are about as worthless as...well, CSM 7!

Rollin with dem punches. Saving dance puppets dance for tomorrow?

So I thought Hans was staying quiet on this, at least that's what he said a page back. I even tossed out some suggestions but they seem to have fallen to the wayside. You'd I have liked the CSM to be involved in this, sure but I think we can agree whether intended or not the CSM is tainted on this issue. To maintain transparency, fairness and do no further harm to the reputation of the CSM as in institution, I think from here on out we should just have people outlining actual plans.

So how would you change or improve how elections work? What kind of voting system would you propose? What would you do to increase voter education and turn out? What parts of elections fall upon the shoulders of players, and what parts fall on the shoulders of CCP. Now without flaming up the rest of this thread, discuss:

If you manage to fix voter turnout substantially I'd suggest you keep the info to yourself and sell it to the highest bidding political party. For the record though what works in real life is convince. I know it sounds lazy but the only thing that increased voter turnout in the UK was postal voting (though we haven't tried internet voting yet).



I'm going to cheat and compare scenarios using the wikipedia page you listed, but say we are electing 2 out of 5 candidates:

Schluze method:

5 ACBED (meaning, 5 voters have order of preference: A > C > B > E > D)
5 ADECB
8 BEDAC
3 CABED
7 CAEBD
2 CBADE
7 DCEBA
8 EBADC

Outcome: E > A > C > B > D meaning E and A are elected. (The maths are on the wikipedia page as to why, I'm not going to go through it here as it's complicated.

First Past the Post

If we assume everyone's first preference is their preferred candidate this is how a "normal" election under First Past the Post works:

A: 10
B: 8
C: 12
D: 7
E: 8

Outcome: C and A elected

STV system

5 ACBED (meaning, 5 voters have order of preference: A > C > B > E > D)
5 ADECB
8 BEDAC
3 CABED
7 CAEBD
2 CBADE
7 DCEBA
8 EBADC

The number of votes needed to win is: (valid votes cast/seats to fill+1)+1.

So this is (45/3)+1 = 16

Round 1:

A: 10
B: 8
C: 12
D: 7 (D eliminated)
E: 8

Round 2:

A: 10
B: 8
C: 19
E: 8

C is elected, but as we need to transfer anything over 16 to the next candidate we'll assume it's proportional.

A: 12
B: 9 (B Eliminated)
C: 16 (C elected)

Round 3:

A: 20 (A elected)
B: 9

No need to transfer votes as we've filled all the seats.

So the result is C & A elected.



So here we have 3 different systems but only 2 different results.

Firstly the Schluze method is so complicated most people wont get WHY someone has one. STV is complicated enough, nevermind some bizarre preferential system. If people don't understand something you might as well make it random, thats my opinion. If people cast their votes and don't understand why their candidates did/didn't win you might as well make it a lottery.

Secondly as you can see A makes it into a position in all 3 elections, C makes it in using the other two and the only time E wins is using the Schluze method. What you'll end up with is having the top elected person simply being the guy everyone hates the least. Whereas A & C are actually most people's top two preferences E struggles to get above third.

Do you really want to use a system where nearly everyone's lower choice gets elected?

Finally the problem with STV and the Schluze method is the following:


Hi alliance buddies,

Please vote for the following list in the up coming election:

[List goes here]

TIA



Since in either one of these my vote is counted multiple times (to avoid wasted votes) it allows a large enough singular group to elect ALL the positions rather then just one. As someone who knows first hand the impact of democratically electing a group of like-minded people with no different opinions or thoughts for years at a time trust me it's not good.



Depends how you see things.

Should you be concerned that Alliance X can ALWAYS get someone elected? No. No democracy doesn't have parties that are basically guaranteed seats, could you imagine the chaos otherwise?

Should you be worried if you change the voting system to the extent where one large group can vote in all 14 candidates of their choosing rather then just one? Yes. However much I like my own alliance if you got 14 of us to run the CSM on our own then you'd never get a conflicting opinion (well, not fundamentally conflicting) and that just means certain issues wouldnt be addressed.

If you want variety (which is your logic for changing the electoral system) in terms of representing the voters well, don't pick systems that are notoriously easy for block voting to manipulate. You will get 0 variety.

You may want to consider this system as a compromise. Possible to manipulate but risky.



Too right. Also easily abusable and not necessarily representative (e.g. high sec gankers wont represent high sec miners well)