Assembly Hall

Is the goal a stealth election? The election isn't so much as mentioned on the Community Page, the Vote link is not even promoted as a main item on the CSM page of the EVE Online site itself (its a minor link halfway down the sidebar) -- nor is the fact of a CSM election happening even MENTIONED on that page .

Because this is an EVE board, and tearing into particular employees is verboten, I am attempting to moderate my tone.

However, this -- combined with:

- The promise of a fireworks of impressive promotion for the CSM8 election which never came
- The minutes delay due to extended time required for review by CCP (and it was clearly pointed to a particular employee being the bottleneck)*
- The lack of even a nominal, common sense level of promotion for this CSM9 election
- The announcement of candidates etc, and winter release of the minutes barely in front of voting start...

All lead me to question what CCP Dolan's other responsibilities are as a community manager are that so dwarf this that it is seemingly no problem to consistently over-promise and under-deliver on a variety of fronts related to this and not get called on it?

I'm hoping I am misreading and the issue isn't (a) an extremely lackadaisical approach to one's job, (b) being woefully over their head in their job or (c) CCP signaling that it really couldn't care less about the CSM as a body despite paying lip service. If it is (c) please just come out and say so. If none of the above explanations apply, then what is it?

It also seems odd that literally, except for a single commenter on the quickie devblog announcing the election (which has few comments and is buried among many), and Xander Phoena over at Crossing Zebras, there seems no one who has a problem with this. And Xander is restricted from calling out specific people because he is running for CSM and may have to work with them later. I'm not running for CSM.

Hopefully, CCP can take constructive -- if harsh -- criticism and not give me a problem for this post.

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*P.S. Regarding the minutes: I appreciate the "buck stops here" by people like Ali and Ripard taking their share of responsibilty for the minutes delay in that they didn't "poke" or "push" Dolan hard enough or often enough. But ultimately, you shouldn't have to arm twist and needle someone that hard to do their job. The devs working on the game have an excuse to not give it their full attention -- but isn't communicating with the players the CORE of his job? It speaks well of them that as unpaid volunteers they seem to be more invested in the game's success (and by extension CCPs success as EVE is their sole commercial hit thus far) than a paid community manager whose livelihood theoretically depends on it. Or perhaps it is him telling us that its not felt his job doing this kind of community (aka "customer") outreach is an important ingredient in EVE/CCPs success. In that case, what is the purpose of his position?

Yep. The way CCP and the CSM and elements of ex-CCP employees now turned players and players now turned employees and beer drinking nights with devs go i don't think we or anyone can really trust CCP doing the right thing by its subscribers.

The scam that is the CSM, a body put together to represent all players, but who represent only a few, can simply be ignored by most players.

Someone at CCP who has some authority really needs to step and put a stop to this whole Dev / snowflake player BS because were tired of sneaky multi 100 billion isk drops to PL (ex-dev leader)' events that feed newbs to null sec gatecamps and devs getting pissed with special players.

Where is the professional integrity? Not at CCP apparently.

Where I come from we have a saying which goes "you don't **** where you sleep". What is occurring, devs sitting back watching terrible mechanics hand Goons the I Win button to EvE is doing just that. Stop pandering to your friends and start doing your jobs.