Jita Park Speakers Corner

Taking a page from Poetic, going to repost my blog post here. Original URL - http://twostep4csm.blogspot.com/2013/05/kudos-to-some-calling-out-others.html

So CSM 8 has been in office for 2 weeks, and I wanted to offer some first impressions, from the inside.

Firstly, several CSM 8 members have greatly impressed me. Topping the list is Ali Aras, who has been working extremely hard to get up to speed on what CSM 7 has done, and what is still left to be done. The combined CSM 7, CSM 8 and CCP Skype channel has been full of a lot of topics, and it is great to see folks like mynnna, Sala Cameron, Sort Dragon, Malcanis and Ripard Teg chime in about ship balancing, while Mike Azariah and Ali talked New Player Experience (NPE) with CCP. Some folks have been a little bit quieter in Skype, though they still have spoken up from time to time, including Mangala Solaris, James Arget and Korvin. Trebor, of course, is fairly active as well, but he is an old timer, and doesn't really count. Kesper North was a little late signing his NDA, but doesn't seem to have had much to say after signing it, so far.

I do want to mention that CSM 7 lost access to the internal CSM forum, so my impressions are from Skype only. Hopefully some of the less active Skype people have been making up for it on the forums.

Those of you good at math will note that I have only mentioned 12 of the 14 members of CSM 8. The reason for this is because as of May 17th, 20 days after the election results and 14 days after the start of the term, progodlegend and Chitsa Jason have still not signed their NDAs. This is incredibly disappointing to me, and I would assume to their colleagues as well, but most of all, it is a huge slap in the face to their voters. They were elected by thousands of players to represent their communities, and they have chosen not to do so. Something similar happened during CSM 6, where Promethius Exenthal didn't sign his NDA until 5 months into the term. I don't know the story with progodlegend, but I have heard that Chitsa is on a month long tour of Europe, and won't be available until sometime in June.

Even with the missing two members, CSM 8 is off to a great start, and I personally am looking forward to the wonderful things we all hope they can accomplish this term. CSM 7 is losing access to the NDA'd Skype channel on Tuesday the 21st, and I am looking forward to playing a lot more EVE and doing a lot less CSMing.

If Chitsa is on a month long holiday, why did you lump him in with progod? Do you think it's inappropriate that Chitsa take vacations?

Chitsa's term is not a slap in the face to anybody until we see what he does upon returning from those holidays. He has yet to prove himself a useless lump.

I assume he knew about the vacation before running. It is very poorly timed, as he will have very little chance to talk to CSM 7 members, who are about to not be able to talk as freely, once we stop receiving NDA'd information from CCP, CSM 8 has to watch their words when they ask us questions.

He also has basically no shot at the first summit, since that should be in a month or so.

A month long vacation in the middle of the term, especially during July/August when CCP is basically shut down is not a problem. A month long vacation right at the start doesn't exactly inspire me with confidence.

And I've credited him for doing that. Positively.

But it seems a little snivelling and backhanded to start calling out CSM8 members (in their first week, no less) when he wouldn't/couldn't during his own term.

Why exactly do you or any other "alumni" for lack of a better term still have access to any internal channels at all? Kinda gives the whole thing an "old boys' club" feel.

I thought that's why some of you folks pushed to get Trebor elected.

Shouldn't that be CCP Dolan's job? What exactly does he do? He's supposed to be the CSM liaison, no?

Oh now you are fixated on job titles?

I am sure Dolan is there doing his best as well.

5 months? Wow...

Well, is there a fixed and official deadline for when these NDAs are supposed to be signed? Or is it an informal process and elected CSMs generally sign it at their earliest convenience?