Fun fact: they were never supposed to appear in player-run channels to begin with. What you're seeing now isn't just a response to players complaining about biased moderation, it's CCP actually enforcing its own rules for live event actors properly.
The situation happening now is EXACTLY why rules like that should be enforced. The accusations of favoritism, the appearance of personal slights to the community, etc. are detrimental to live events. No matter what the intention, when the rules do start getting enforced, it leaves bad vibes. Especially when taking away something that people had enjoyed through no fault of their own.
WARNING: PERSONAL ANECDOTE FOLLOWS
Previous to the new live events, I was actually part of one-on-one RP with event actors. Should that have happened? Probably not. It was absolutely awesome, but I never expected that to happen in the first place (and knew at the time that it wasn't the best idea; which is one reason I downplayed the situations).
Was it favoritism? It could certainly look that way. I now regret the interactions because, w hen the interactions stopped, it felt like a personal attack. When the overall RP situation got pissed on by a certain novel, I completely checked out. It took a reevaluation of my goals in EVE, and the re-balance of ships, to come back (and horrible luck with weather that knocked me out of the game, freakin' floods).
Long story short, we really need to look at this objectively. Prior to this series of live events, event actors rarely (if ever) interacted in OOC or The Summit. Rules that should have been enforced are now being enforced, and going back to that situation shouldn't be that big of a problem. I don't think it's being "overdramatic" to react how people have either. That's a really unfair statement. I think that it will take time to adapt, yes, but in the end I see the change as a positive move from CCP. The reactions people are having should not be unexpected.
CCP employees saying this is happening because of our failures is the thing we are uncomfortable with.
Yes, and the wording used was not fitting with the stated goal. It really came off as an attempt to scold the moderation team in public. That, in my mind, is inappropriate.
How should it have been done? Devblog, not mentioning specific channels, and not trying to place blame. "Hey, we're going to be changing how things are done, and here's the channels we will be in."
In my opinion:Awkward policy change is awkward, and CCP needs to put some more rules in place to keep their employees from shitting up their own good intentions.