Jita Park Speakers Corner

Being as the CSM 7 decided to mess around with the entire CSM candidacy for the next council, I took another look at the CSM minutes just to refresh myself as to what was going on in that room when they were discussing how they were going to go over the next election process.

Lot of talk about CSM members who aren't communicative and aren't productive; why they shouldn't be in the CSM and could (potentially) be removed.

First of all, what constitutes as "productive/performance" and who decides what constitutes as productive/performance? If it's necessary for the Council to be productive, it shouldn't be just a: "well he decided to show up and shat out words once or twice". It should actually be some effort outside of throwing out one's own opinions. A representative represents the people, not their own ideals. Currently the only thing the CSM has ever been good for was throwing out ideas that somehow benefitted their own opinions and/or their friends, so setting up an entirely new system to make the CSM more like Eve Online by including cloak-and-dagger "you aren't doing what I want you to do" is just silly and goes to show some ulterior motives behind the curtains.

So how do you solve that issue without some sort of imbalance? Approval ratings and surveys. They do it for everything else in the world, business have QA departments and methods of consumers providing feedback, so why shouldn't the CSM? Just as well, it shouldn't be restricted to a developer/CSM stand-point. They shouldn't be the only ones allowed to classify another member as being non-productive or underperforming solely because they felt so as it inspires nothing but bias. In fact, the CSM shouldn't even be worried about what another CSM member is doing in the first place - they should be worried about fulfilling the tasks that the community voted them in for. While CCP and the CSM should have their own separate approval ratings and surveys (being as the fact that they're going to be on a face-to-face basis) the ENTIRE COMMUNITY should have access to those as well.

Some of you may be asking why. It's simple, I vote for this guy and he's not doing what I voted him in for (or outright stated that he was going to) than I should be able to voice that in a format that will actually matter than a ranting forum post (which I have done and wholeheartedly admit to). CSM Awareness is one thing but if I only have one vote per account for a representative, and that representative winds up being a bloody tosser, what difference did it honestly make? This should not be confused with being "productive", if he's actively going in and "performing" by mouthing words but those ideals aren't what he was voted in for - why should he still be able to be on the CSM if he's not doing what he claimed to do? There's no consequence for having a silver tongue just to get elected and frankly approval ratings and surveys might help to quash some of that. You are messing with the game that pay monthly for, after all.

As far as deciding who should go to the summits on a purely "he's more productive" standpoint, it's just a systematic method of punishing CSM members who aren't rubbing their noses in the CSM/CCP's affair. The smell of **** is foul and if you say it smells lovely solely to go to more summits, it's entirely defeating the purpose. So what REALLY NEEDS TO BE IMPLEMENTED is a system that will define what is considered productive among the CSM, how to attain it and what can be done if you're classified as "under performing". Just as well, it should be revealed to the community so that we -ALL- know what the CSM is supposed to be doing. Why? Because it's what every workplace has done since the dawn of capitalism to ensure efficiency.

From what I have personally seen, the CSM just throws out opinions (or in one member's case quite literally shifts their position to the majority whenever confrontation comes about) and talks interpersonally remotely. That's well and good when discussing things that are under the NDA, but when it comes to things like: "How should we fix the economy?" or "How should we tweak this playstyle?" there has to be some way for the community to actually be a part of that - otherwise we'll get what always happens: CSM members only listening to their friends - or more loosely speaking, their alliances - essentially representing who they choose to, rather than the group (for example, pirates) in the playstyle they adhere to (low-sec).

Sure, you have the Feedback/Ideas Discussion and the Assembly Hall subforums, but no-one pays attention to anything going on in there besides the people that post in those forums, and that much was already acknowledged as factual by The Mittani who hit it right on the head in stating that -they are essentially the exact same thing-. Either way, you never see CSM posting in there unless it's something they starkly disagree with or if it was something comical (like putting clothing on corpses) and you SURELY don't see CCP posting in there (in retrospect, CCP Fozzie is pretty cool about this). These aren't effective means of communicating ideas and it sure as hell isn't a great way to get something pushed up as far as the CSM.

Then you have "specializations" where CSM Members state that they specialize in a certain field because they've been doing it for 'x' amount of time or whatever reason. That's fine, I encourage that and fully agree that specializations should be allowed if not outright advocated - but it shouldn't be a one person basis. One person who advocates a particular element of gameplay is great and all but it's not nearly as effective unless you have some sort of adversity to speak up when something comes along that the other half potentially doesn't agree with, or if the idea is genuinely good, be able to voice advocacy of the idea and further empower it's implementation and KNOW (THROUGH EXPERIENCE) why it's either good or bad implementation.

It sounds like you want the right to second guess CSMs the whole way through. Representation doesn't really work that way. The only way you're going to get what you want is to run for csm yourself.

Well for one thing, you will necessarily be operating from incomplete information.

Say you vote for me and I get elected. How will you judge my performance on NDA'd issues?

A president can only be impeached if he commits a crime, not merely because you don't like how he governs. Telling CCP that your favourite method of making ISK is overpowered and needs to be nerfed isn't a crime, it's a judgement call. If you've elected someone because you think their character and judgement makes them your rep, then you have to live with the consequences of your choice for a year: that's the deal. That's the whole point of representation.

Yes it is "ripe for abuse", because it's based on trust. On the other hand, there are candidates running who have put their philosophy out there in public for a long time before they ever considered running. Maybe you should pick someone with a consistent record of advocating things you agree with.

But no candidate who isn't you is going to agree with you on every issue, and accepting that is part of the whole voting for a representative thing.

If, after a year, it turns out that you made a bad choice, then you don't vote for them again (or anyone they endorse)

My vote doesn't make a difference when there are fourteen candidates and we know that at least one of them has an entire null-sec bloc advocating their election solely because they have their alliance ticker beneath their name.

That issue has been brought up many times and while I feel that people should be able to vote for who they want to, it shouldn't be all-powerful. Once they're in, they're in. Plain and simple. There's no consequence for not attending summits, there's no consequence for not speaking with the community and there's no consequence for preaching ideals that only support one party.

For instance, were I a major null-sec alliance leader with territory that comprised mostly of a particular type of rat - we'll say Guristas for the sake of it - and I said.. Perhaps.. That Guristas shouldn't have ECM jamming anymore because it takes away from the ease of PvE or whatever reason I could throw out that would justify my wanting to make them easier. I could easily say it's what my alliance wanted because I know that my alliance would benefit from it, but who's to stop me from doing so? Who's the person that steps up - if not for another CSM member who is affiliated with me - and says that it would cause imbalance?

I think it's fairly safe to say that there's been more than enough controversy revolving around the CSM on many topics, inactivity isn't the only one; I'm simply stating that perhaps it's time that we implement a formal system to show that a particular CSM member isn't working out for the community as a whole.

How are you going to "block attendence" when all the CSM members are able to attend via video conferencing?

How are you going to quantify "communication"? Number of posts? Number of likes those posts get? Paying an independent assessor to rate the posts each CSM member makes?

What mechanism do you suggest for this "blocking"? If it's vote-based, how will you stop the organised blocs gaming the system to make 100% sure they get CSMs they don't like "blocked"?

Those are only the three most trivially obvious gaping flaws in this amazingly bad idea. I'll list more if you need me to.

Don't get me wrong, I nailed my flag to the mast of better CSM communication to the playerbase, so I agree that it should be a priority. It's just that this bizarre punishment aspect that you're trying to put in is like you're trying to turn the CSM into a Survivor show or something.

Also I feel like you're far to fond of the idea that every CSM candidate only cares about their "free" trip to Iceland to ever let it go. I'll say it again: it's far simpler and far less work to just do some overtime and book a holiday.

People who are obsessed with the idea that all CSM reps are do nothing brown-nosers after a free holiday cling to that belief regardless of the facts they're presented with (and of course they never produce any specific facts or examples themself - it's all "but everybody knows..."). This is just pandering to them. It's a bad idea. Get over it.

If CCP can deny the peoples elected officials the ability to go to Iceland and represent the people, why can't the people deny them as well?

CSM7, in the minutes of the winter summit, TRIED to get a bit of what the OP wanted.

A way to remove deadwood and people who were not doing the job. CCP dragged their heels on it claiming that it could smack of favoritism and/or be gamed to death.

Since you are so concerned on who is doing what and how well I assume that you spent the time to read those minutes and that is where this idea came from. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is the latin origin of this concept so the idea is not new, just damn hard to implement.

Hard does not mean that some mechanism should not be tried, though. But show me one that will work, cannot be gamed by an organized bunch of players to make a CSM member look bad. Show me one with metrics that can be fairly applied objectively. If you say players majority response then you are handing more control back to the unnamed alliance giants to stack or threaten the CSM makeup.

A way to remove deadwood? I am in favor of

The way to identify the deadwood? Have yet to see one that CCP, the CSM, and the players can agree on,

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Because CCP pays for the trip.

Under this plan do people who didn't vote in the CSM elections get a vote when it comes to determining who is awesome and who isn't?

No actually what I have said is that CCP can exclude people from Iceland, if they are not brown nosers by claiming they are not hard working.

And yes CCP can do that any time they want but it would make the usage of the CSM very minor if they came out and said "Sorry we are only accepting those who agree with us"

I will admit I do like the idea of officers of the CSM unable to go go to Iceland if they have not performed to duties of their office as members of CSM 7 have gone on so much about how hard working they are and how other members did not belong in the CSM, while at the same time they were not performing the duties of their offices.