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[Dex_Kivuli]

I'm of the "CSM is a privilege not a right" school of thought. Therefore I really don't subscribe to the argument that some people make that CCP are obligated to give us more information (that hasn't been said here, but it has come up elsewhere).

That said, the CSM is an exercise in PR. And if CCP want good PR they probably should give us some information. Personally, if I was CCP, I'd have a meeting with the remaining CSM, give them the reasons, and let it roll from there. Admittedly, it's still very early days.

I think a big part of the response we're seeing here is the typical CCP moaning from a subset of the player base. The "them and us" attitude that seems to permeate Eve. My take on this is that CCP are a business, they want to make money, and they are not out to piss us off.

Minor aside:
People repeatedly complain that CCP aren't listening to their customers by introducing new shinies before fixing lag etc. This is the common argument made on SHC and co: we are the players, we know all, listen to us, fix lag first. Eve is a pvp game they say.

Well... erm... not necessarily. Eve is a service sold to customers. If there is evidence that 1337 pvpers make up the majority of customers, then I'll eat my hat. I think CCP have their priorities just right: most players are probably carebears or casual pvpers who barely log on.

[Vikarion]

I don't think anyone is arguing that any of us has a right to anything from CCP. I'm personally speaking from the standpoint of what is good PR, not just efficient action.

The more you inform and involve your customers, however, the more comfortable they are in buying your product.

[Casiella]

I agree with Vik here. Clearly, CCP has no obligation to tell us anything more than they have. That said, I would believe that they would do themselves a PR favor by adding a small amount of detail. Ankh is an individual with a point of view and a voice, albeit controversial, and if she uses those in the near future to tell her side of the story and dispute the sparse facts in CCP's announcement, that will work against them.

Given that we don't know at this time the nature of the actual incident, though, we don't know what other exacerbating circumstances prevent them from commenting. Perhaps they will take legal action, or perhaps the incident has to do with internal personnel issues. I don't want to speculate here, just to point out that they really could have legitimate reasons not to comment further publicly. I want to believe that this is the reason they are saying so much less right now than they did in Larkonis' case.

[Lillith Blackheart]

That said, I would believe that they would do themselves a PR favor by adding a small amount of detail.

Therein lies the problems with speculation. You don't know what it is, so you make the assumption that it is better that we know. Whereas that could be the furthest thing from the truth, be it CCP or Ankh (or her employer) that gets screwed by it.

Your belief has no foundation, other than the rather longstanding misconception that John Q. Public has that "open transparency" is a good thing all the time.

[Vikarion]

Actually, the belief that CCP could stand to be a bit more transparent in these matters largely arises from some very notable occasions when they have not been - and should have been - more transparent, as they have admitted. Therefore, our statements are based on logical extrapolation of CCP's typical mode of operation: it is possible that they are better off in this case by keeping it as quiet as possible, but unlikely.

[Lillith Blackheart]

Hindsight is 20/20.

[Graelyn]

On one hand, I want to give CCP the benefit of the doubt. They've come a long way on fairness and transparency in the last few years, and I salute them for that.

On the other, I have personally witnessed some pretty shady shit at CCP from behind the NDA curtain and the resulting cover-ups. I can't just forget that. It leaves me feeling conflicted.

So I guess I'll wait and see if any hard facts come out.  

[Kaleigh Doyle]

Damned if they do, damned if they don't. Either way, cranky people will find a reason to bitch.

[Seriphyn]

For some reason or other, I don't really care that much.

[Lillith Blackheart]

For some reason or other, I don't really care that much.

I find it hard to care because I realize that CSM is a joke and can't really be taken seriously. Perhaps if they went the way SOE and other companies do and actually hand-picked the representatives as compared to a silly popularity contest. . .

Even then it would be tough to take it seriously, but I'd take it more seriously than I do now.

[Mithfindel]

We have had CCP hand-picked representatives before. I believe it was called MSN Messenger. Also, any idea that it works in the EVE of today is ridiculous. With the amount of metagaming and the afterglow of some actual shady stuff still present, people would be making threadnoughts titled T20 (despite that he's currently an APB dev, no longer at CCP).

The only problem with the system is that the voting percentage as a whole needs to go up before "democracy" works, as currently the amount of votes required to get through is about the size of a common alliance plus alts, should someone get serious about it. The perceived lack of power in the CSM does likely stop this at an alliance scale, though power blocks still have enough numbers to have "their" candidates thru even with ridiculously low voting activity. (I assume that the most visible clue of organized voting would be the high voting activity in Serbia - most of which would likely be from Vuk Lau's corp and/or immediate Serbian community close to it. Of course, this is just a guess)

The problems are thus about the same as in "real" politics. You get the career politicians and the celebrity candidates as well as people who just don't have a clue. Of these, the career politicians (powerblock-backed candidates) and some celebrities (if Chribba was a candidate, what would happen?) get thru.

Edit: Oh, hi:

"During this time, the media company Submarine took an interest in EVE Online for the documentary they were making, "Another Perfect World". They approached me, and accompanied me to Iceland. Later on, I assisted Submarine with the development of their documentary, providing them with valuable footage"

Quoting from her Portfolio Website, during her time as previous CSM candidate

Source: http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1349635&page=10#295
Quite unlikely to be the reason, though, but depending on circumstances (whether CCP was involved from the start or not), may set a precedent.

[Lillith Blackheart]

The problems are thus about the same as in "real" politics. You get the career politicians and the celebrity candidates as well as people who just don't have a clue. Of these, the career politicians (powerblock-backed candidates) and some celebrities (if Chribba was a candidate, what would happen?) get thru

I'm not exactly a democratic-oriented individual, so I would suggest this is why it's bad. The people who want to get elected are the ones who are the least capable of doing the job properly, those who could do it properly either don't want to get involved, or haven't got a shot in hell.

So as long as it remains a popularity contest, it will be utterly powerless and pointless, because CCP -- RIGHTFULLY -- will disregard the vast majority of what it says because it is bullshit that has no understanding of how all of the systems actually work, and not even from the coding level. Not many nullseccers have the slightest fucking idea how things feel balance-wise or fun-wise for a highsec player, carebear or not, and highsec players don't often have the slightest idea how things feel balance-wise or fun-wise for someone in nullsec.

And thusly any suggestions they have would only take into account half the player base at any given time.

Yay for popularity contests not electing people with any understanding of game design.

[Tomahawk Bliss]

Having made it a popularity contest is the real source of the issue.

Welcome to why unmitigated democracy fails!

Also that I have more than 1 vote and yet am one person is also fail.

Oh and CSM have no actual capacity other than the basic to effect anything other than simple capacity everyone has to make suggestions and requests to CCP.  As with many choices CCP makes I feel it’s a monumental waste of time and effort that should be spent fixing the mechanics of the game.  Lots of work to do, why dick around with CSM.

Anyway Anhk failing miserably was previously called on pretty much every EVE related forum I browse. 

I voted all my accounts for the one person who was closest to my views, and by closest I mean was 54% and that is pretty pathetic that 54% was the closest.  It was not Anhk, though the trash talking made me consider throws a couple of my vote to the Anhk button.    But with 54% being the best match, well clearly I’m an odd ball or something compared to those who feel the need to campaign for CSM.  Maybe I’m at odds with the general game populace too.  >_<
   

[Aria Jenneth]

Oh and CSM have no actual capacity other than the basic to effect anything other than simple capacity everyone has to make suggestions and requests to CCP.  As with many choices CCP makes I feel it’s a monumental waste of time and effort that should be spent fixing the mechanics of the game.  Lots of work to do, why dick around with CSM.

Two quibbles:

1. Just because it's a public relations stunt doesn't make it unimportant. The CSM was conceived in the midst of massive scandal and widespread distrust; its existence provides the players someone who can at least exercise a wee bit of oversight-- even if it's mostly illusory.

The real importance of it is that providing players the impression that they have people pulling for them and keeping an eye on CCP to prevent game-manipulating shenanigans, so as to prevent player dissatisfaction from turning into player revolt (otherwise known as canceling subscriptions and stomping off to play Star Trek Online).

2. Fixing mechanics is not an "if you're doing anything else, you're not doing this" sort of problem. Nor is it the sort of thing you can handle just by assigning your whole damn staff to it (this results in "fixers" tripping over each others' feet; too many cooks in the kitchen).

That said, it does seem like CCP could stand to dedicate a team to stuff like, oh, say, fixing rockets. I don't grok how they managed to leave that problem in place for so long, but I'm pretty sure the people they would have used weren't assigned to do the CSM stuff (more likely they were assigned to planetary interaction).

Or did they fix those when I wasn't looking?

[Lillith Blackheart]

No, Rockets still suck ass.

But with 54% being the best match, well clearly I’m an odd ball or something compared to those who feel the need to campaign for CSM.

Your oddity notwithstanding, I didn't like any of the candidates.