Relaunching

Hey, I made it back onto the CSM, to the surprise of exactly no one. At this point I don’t really have a whole lot else to say on it until that results blog comes out, aside from ‘if you supported me, thank you!’

One common theme I’ve heard throughout the election season (and then more at Fanfest) was “you should write more”. Well… okay, we’ll give that a shot. I was thinking about this the other day and I think that at least one of the things that held me back quite a bit was a compulsive need to write and re-write and re-write sections of whatever I might be writing at the time. Time consuming, and usually led to frustration and garbage-binned posts. So instead, I’ll just toss them off with minimal revision, and hopefully it goes well.

Ironically, re-wrote that section just before hitting publish. Not a good start.

As I’d originally planned when I started this blog, I’ll write about whatever I want. Why else would you start a blog? If there’s something you’re just burning for my thoughts on, though, drop me an evemail (just don’t forget the third ‘n’, else you’ll not likely get a reply!) On top of that, as already noted by Jester (thanks for that…) I’m going to try to do my own weekly CSM updates as well, on the principle of ‘more the merrier’.

So on that CSM Note..

Still no results yet, but we’re not without some minor bit of news. As anyone reading this no doubt has already heard elsewhere many times, we’ve elected to do away with the traditional positions. There will be no Chairperson, nor Secretary, nor the Vices. In CSM8 people picked up tasks as needed, regardless of who was supposedly in charge of what and I’ve got every confidence that’ll happen with this council, as well. Humorously enough, TMC commentator Arrendis points out that we’re not even straying from the CSM White Paper. That document specifies officers be selected within seven days of the close of the election, not – as CCP Dolan had laid forth when the election opened – at the first Summit.

Note to self, prod CCP Dolan and CCP Leeloo to update that document.

How about a few common criticisms? We’ll just grab these out of the thread,

This is just the vets railroading over the newcomers!

Actually, the idea was initially proposed by Sugar Kyle and enthusiastically embraced by several of the other new members, though incumbents weren’t far behind.

Without specified roles isn’t there a chance certain things might slip through the cracks?

Sure is. Having officers doesn’t inherently prevent that. Frankly, I feel that even with officers everyone on the council needs to stay on top of things, which requires communicating amongst ourselves. The only real difference here is that failure to do so means it’s probably collectively our fault, and there’s no one to scapegoat.

So what about the permanent positions?

Those require a longer answer, I’ll come back to them.

There’s value in a bully pulpiteer and/or a “Decider”.

Anyone with a good enough point and/or the sheer force of will can play bully pulpiteer just fine, with or without a title. Does anyone really believe that The Mittani wouldn’t have been as effective as he was in his time without “Chairman” as a title? As to a “Decider”, why? I suppose past CSMs voted on everything and a tiebreaker was occasionally needed, but we didn’t operate that way on CSM8 and sure don’t plan to on CSM9. What we did do was debate (or argue or, let’s be honest, occasionally bicker like children) amongst ourselves and argue our respective points. If we came to consensus, awesome. If not, well, I can’t really think of anything that came up over the past year that would have been better served by only presenting the majority side, and odds are a dissenting argument that’s persisted through a debate is worth passing on.

So about those permanent seats…

The council exists to represent the interests of the players, and I daresay that the combo of permanent attendees and attendees picked by CCP & CSM collaboration does that far better than a pure electoral based (as in years past) or purely CCP selected (as in… well, never, really) set of summit attendees would. The permanent slots give direct voice to the players by means of their votes. They also ensure there are people present at the summits chosen by and beholden to the community and the community alone – not CCP.

The remaining five are selected by CCP in collaboration with the CSM, with “how well are they performing” being the foremost criteria, followed at some distance by “how well does their expertise apply to the topics of discussion.” The purpose is to help ensure the summits are as productive as possible, and it goes without saying that attendees picked based on the election results fall well short of that goal. One notion I saw floating around was to hold additional mini-elections in the run-up to the Summits and pick attendees that way. Personally, though, I’d prefer to get actual work done rather than be stuck campaigning throughout the term, and I say that as someone whose bloc support would assure me attendance every time.

This is just the cartels tightening their grip on the game by sweeping away what little autonomy the CSM had left!

Wait, so the cartels run the game and dominate the CSM but the officer elections were somehow autonomous?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s all, for now! With any luck repeated prodding is successful and we get things rolling this week, otherwise the upcoming CSM Update will be awfully sparse. Until then, have some work-in-progress Lego.