Wednesday, April 3, 2013

My Suggested Ballot for CSM 8

As promised, here is the list of the 14 people I will be voting for in the election this year, in the order I will be voting for them:

James Arget
Cipreh
Nathan Jameson
Chitsa Jason
Ayeson
Trebor Daehdoow
Malcanis
Ripard Teg
Mangala Solaris
Ali Aras
Steve Ronuken
Psychotic Monk
Korvin
mynnna

EDIT: CCP removed the easy way to vote, so you will have to vote by hand

Go to https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/vote/
Log in
Choose your 14 candidates, preferably in the order above
Click Submit(and repeat for all your active EVE accounts)

I would like to explain a little why these 14 candidates, and also why I put them in the order I have above.

First of all, my first 5 candidates are the 5 wormhole candidates. Again, it is CRITICAL for all wormhole residents to do the same. As long as we all list all 5 at the top of our ballots, we will elect as many candidates as we possibly can. Your order may be different from mine, but please remember to include everyone.

Wormhole Candidates

James Arget is my #1 choice for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I think he really understands what is required to be on the CSM, in terms of how things actually get done. Secondly, his views on the priorities for w-space are very similar to my own. He also expresses himself well, though he could be working a little harder on his campaign.

Cipreh is a very close second to James, and in fact I had him at #1 in an earlier version of this post. Cipreh has campaigned a little harder than James. The main reason I have James higher is because James has seen a little more of EVE than Cipreh has. Cipreh has spent nearly his entire EVE career in wormhole space, but CSM talks about a wide variety of topics, and having a little more broad experience would help. Ideally both Cipreh and James will be elected, and we will have the best of both worlds.

Nathan Jameson is campaigning the hardest of any of the wormhole candidates, which I see as a really good sign. CSM is a lot of work, and people that are not willing to put in the work at election time are far less likely to put in time during their terms. My main reservations with Nathan are about the way he plays the game. As he readily admits, he spends much of his time outside of w-space, and he isn't much of a PVPer, partly due to his timezone (he lives in Taiwan). His timezone is also a minor issue, though it can be overcome.

Chitsa Jason could be a very good CSM representative, but I am very worried about his ability to follow through with things that he starts. During the campaign, he started out very strong, but recently has been far less visible. Despite that concern, he does have a lot of wormhole PVP and organizational experience. We certainly don't always agree on anything, but I think he would be able to do a good job on the CSM if he wants to so.

Ayeson has put well below the bare minimum amount of effort into his campaign. He is the only of the 5 wormhole candidates to not come on AHARM's Teamspeak server to talk to us. He is the only one who still doesn't have a sticky campaign thread in Jita Park (at least as of March 30th). He hasn't been posting, he hasn't been tweeting. In talking to him, he seems like he has some good ideas and some good experience to bring to the table, but his complete apathy in campaigning is a very bad sign.

Everyone else

Trebor is my top non-wormhole candidate. He was one of the hardest workers during CSM 7 (and 6, and 5, for that matter), he has a very good understanding of how CCP gets things done, and he and I generally agree on most topics. Don't believe the lies, he isn't out to make all highsec safe from any combat, and he isn't out to get nullsec residents. He also agreed to run for CSM 8, which meant that I was OK with not running myself. :)

Malcanis, well, there is a reason his campaign thread is by far the longest in Jita Park this year. He is an incredibly hard working guy, and he has a very level head on his shoulders.Nobody could ever read all of what he writes, but the parts I have read are very similar to my own views.

Ripard Teg is another really hard worker, and I am hopeful that having him on the CSM will improve the communication between the CSM and the players. I know that those of us on CSM 7 let some folks down, though I think we did improve some things from CSM 6. Ripard writes a fantastic blog, and while I may disagree with some of what he says on that blog, I feel like having him on the CSM would bring a very valuable point of view to the table. Personally, I am also looking forward to having him see how CCP works from the inside.

Mangala Solaris is responsible for running the great RvB organization, and I think he brings some very valuable highsec wardec mechanics understanding to the table. He is also a good communicator, and I agree with most of his platform.

Ali Aras has made a lot of lists by being in touch with the new player experience, and having that sort of understanding is very important on the CSM. She also represents a different side of nullsec than most, and having a wide body of knowledge on the CSM is incredibly important.

Steve Ronuken is on my list because I think CCP needs to continue to pay attention to the 3rd party developers who make EVE the 24/7/365 game that we love. On CSM 7, both Trebor and I have done a lot of API/SDD development, and hopefully CREST will eventually see the light of day, and we need people on the CSM that can communicate with CCP about it.

Psychotic Monk might seem like an odd choice to some, but I think an active highsec scammer/greifer/bad boy would be very valuable to CSM 8. In theory, this role could have been played by Darius III, but he was nearly entirely AFK during his 2 terms, and he wasn't nearly as good at communicating as Mr. Monk (hah!) is.

Korvin was on CSM 5, which was before my time, but from what I have heard, he was active and helpful. In my opinion, the Russian EVE community has been doing themselves a great disservice the last couple years. I love UAxDeath, and he is great at the summit, but most of the rest of the time, he is absent. Greene Lee has some trouble following rapid English conversation, and he was around some of the time, but he was still not participating as much as he could have. Hopefully Korvin gets elected and gives a proper voice to the many, many Russian speaking players of the game.

Some people might be surprised to see mynnna on my list at all. The reason for that is because I have spoken to him fairly extensively in the past few months, and I have been very impressed. I don't think he needs the votes to get elected, but I think he would be a very good choice for one of the two permanent summit seats.