Jita Park Speakers Corner

I know a lot of people just want to see the CSM die, and with good reason. But I think there is a far easier plan that CCP can implement in order to know what is on the players' minds.

Remember a few months back when CCP had its crowdsourcing poll? Several of my friends and I were upset that the voting lasted only a few days. Many felt it would have been a great opportunity to weigh in with CCP to counter the pet issues of certain CSM members.

So I thought, why not just have an ongoing crowdsourcing poll? Just set up a part of the forum (or another part of the EVE website) where players log in and prioritise issues by assigning them ranks. Whenever we feel a problem has been addressed, we can go back into our crowdsourcing and change our opinions.

The one flaw with ongoing crowdsourcing is what to do about players who put in their opinion and then never show up again. It should be relatively easy to formulate an algorithm where the strength of a player's opinion diminishes for each month he does not sign onto the ongoing crowdsourcing page, or where the weight of his rankings drops to 1% of full value when the account goes inactive.

CSM members would have the right to propose new additions to the ongoing poll. I imagine that we would see the number of priorities balloon to 500 or more, and CCP might need to dedicate one part-time employee to keeping the system functional. However, having ongoing crowdsourcing would eventually cut down on the number of petitions and would give CCP a valuable tool for information on the player base that will always be available at any given moment. And when a member of the CSM tells you guys at CCP that they have an issue that players are concerned about, all you need to do is look at the ongoing crowdsourcing poll to call bullshit on them.

Please consider the idea. The CSM as it stands today is an irrelevant dinosaur with little connection to the majority of players. It's enough to inspire apathy in a new player. Ongoing crowdsourcing would motivate many of us to participate in sharing our opinions on improving the game.
-JM

I'm sorry but isn't it Trebor doing the crowdsourcing ?? as far as I know CCP has nothing to do with that ?

There just isn't any filter big enough for you though.

Goons like to destroy things for attention like misbehaving five year old children. Does calls for removing the CSM completely make Mittens happy?

Because "docking games" are clearly the most important thing the players are worried about...

I think this will just have to be my stock reply for the now-daily idiotic threads from miners who mistakenly blame the CSM for their dead Mackinaws:

If you don't mind, I'd like your input on the actual point of this thread, which has nothing to do with petty in-game power squabbles and more to do with the disconnection between CSM members and the community of players as a whole. In sad fact, your reply only reinforces that point.

While time dilation might be a good temporary solution, implants will be showing up on podkills, and there's a hybrid rebalance coming, the crowdsourcing poll from July shows that there were far more pressing issues on the minds of the players than these three niche issues which are primarily the worries of 0.0 PVPers. None of the three examples to which you point even made the top ten on the master list. Of your three examples, the highest priority among them ranked 19th on the master list. Then again, most of us didn't have enough time to vote and voice our opinion. Furthermore, the CSM hasn't really been pushing for those top 10 issues to be addressed, though I'm sure some at CCP have been a bit wiser and at least looked at how to implement them, if not actually started the work.

While some of your pet issues may have been worked on, the vast majority of players are not being heard by CCP. My proposal for ongoing crowdsourcing would enable them to be heard with minimal effort on CCPs part. Basically, it would streamline CCPs system of petitions and moderators. Whether you like it or not, things are headed in that direction, whether from Hilmar's intentions or the alienation felt by the majority of players or the general popular uprisings around planet Earth in recent months. So are you for it or will you stand in its way?
-JM

It is my belief that the reason why so few people voted for the last CSM was that previous CSMs have been relatively ineffective. The fact of the matter, however, is that the current CSM has been extremely effective. The fact that it's been extremely effective under the leadership of The Mittani, who is also the driving force behind all sorts of griefplay, conflates two entirely separate issues. Even so, the rage of hisec players destroyed by goons generates a feeling of disconnection from the various nullsec-sponsored CSM members.

The CSM has clearly demonstrated itself as an effective force. So long as CCP doesn't do anything stupid, like disband or ignore it, I believe that it will remain so, and that future CSM elections will have a much higher turnout, as people realize that the voting process is actually an important one, which will shape the future course of their game. Not even much of a prophecy, really... provided the CSM is not outright disbanded, with all the attention it's been getting, anyone can clearly tell that the next CSM election will be much more highly publicized and far more strongly contested. Indeed, I would not be at all surprised if the next election had double the proportion of voters as did the last.

Say what you will about his politics or the way he chooses to play the game, but you cannot deny that The Mittani has been the man behind the CSM's effectiveness. He is, almost certainly, the reason why we're getting an awesome expansion this winter instead of more frivolous work towards some badly implemented and boring establishment, with extra monocles on the side.

How? I've already pointed to the clear demonstrations to the contrary. Not my own opinions, mind you, but the data that backs up my premise. So where is the data that backs up your premise?



This thread was not made to argue about the Mitanni and his politics. I was proposing a far more effective method of gauging player input on problems in the game. As much as I would like to take the Mittani seriously, he - and every Goon posting here - have yet to weigh in on the proposal's viability.



Nope, not at all. That is why I proposed ongoing crowdsourcing. If more of us players had the opportunity to respond, there would have been stronger data indicating players' thoughts on how to improve the game. Even a crowdsourcing poll lasting 2 weeks instead of 2 days would be better than nothing. You have no idea how many in-game buddies said "Really? That's what it was about? Gosh, I wish I'd known because I would have liked to weigh in." I'm not so narrow-minded as to think that only my in-game circles of friends cared about weighing in.

As for EVE-U "gaming the system" - which is just mob democracy in action, no different from how CSM members are elected - you will notice in the link I posted above (http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/July_2011_Prioritization_Crowdsourcing) there is an entire section where the EVE-U results are taken out so people like you and me in debates like this can see what EVE players thought without the interference from the EVE-U voting bloc. On that list, the Mitanni's three concerns above come in no greater than rank 14. Apparently my point about the CSM being disconnected from players still stands.

Here's the TL/DR: ongoing crowdsourcing = more data on what players want to see.

As for "crowdsourcing" being "a made-up word", so is "playerbase", "online", and "university". If you have a better word than "crowdsourcing" that you'd like to use, stop wasting our time and suggest it. I'd be happy to consider it. Do you want to whine about Webster or can we stick to the actual point of the thread?



Fair's fair. I would be happy to answer once you give me an answer to this:

With only 10% as much turnout of the CSM elections, the results were pretty much meaningless. Great, we agree.

Now that's out of the way, my point is that the results would be more meaningful if it could be expanded to include more players. How to do this? Simple. Let the poll be initiated again with no deadline for voting and so that players can change their votes at any time.

Given time, we would see more and more players voice their opinion, thus rendering... wait for it... MEANINGFUL RESULTS. What part of meaningful results is so scary to the Goons that you're wasting your time hijacking the thread?

On a side note, if the CSM elections were announced one day and ended 3 days later, turnout would probably have been just as low as it was for crowdsourcing.
-JM