This year I am struggling a bit with the pre CSM election process. I still feel that the CSM is an immensely important thing for the eve community. The group of player advocates has in the past done some great things for the game, and its curators. It’s really hard given the NDA nature of the system to judge who was a “successful” CSM member but I do believe that we can see the difference that the council make when they are stoked by good members.
On the flipside however you can also see when the CSM has gotten lost on its way to the goal of improving the game. I feel that last year is certainly one of those years. Don’t get me wrong I think that there are still some great members of CSM IX, but the net effect of the council this last year feels like it has been detrimental to the relationship between the CSM and CCP. Again there are likely unseen corroborating issues behind this, such as the recent shakeups in CCP and the changes of the handlers of the CSM.
But that’s not the main issue which is putting me off this year’s process. No, what’s putting me off is the glut of candidates competing for the spots this year. 77 confirmed candidates is a crazy number of people. Even if we cut off the 26 candidates who didn’t even bother to post their candidacy platform on the forums 41 people still remain. Of those only 36 have done Cap Stable interviews, but that’s 18 hours’ worth of interviews to listen to. As a quick side note serious respect given to all those involved in the CS interviews, you guys are starts for going through all the effort involved in corralling these candidates and producing the interviews!e
It’s just a huge amount of information to process. I struggle to keep up with the real life elections here in the UK with only 3 major parties running and a few additional extras, how on earth am I going to find the 20+ hours needed to sift through the candidates to find the gems among the rough? I think I am going to have to cull the crop through a preliminary judgement based on their candidacy posts rather the diving straight into the interviews like I have in previous years. Ah well.
Fly with a ballot paper,
Hark
