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Winter Summit Minutes Remix

This is a CSM post. A long one. Also Sion. Enter at your own risk. The Dev blog with the Winter Summit minutes and CSMX candidacy application information can be found here.


Forward by Sion Kumitomo:
Since I'm not a blogger, and I never will be, Sugar Kyle has graciously offered to let me post some of my musings here. 
Before it recedes too far into the past, I had a couple of notes from the summit that I wanted to get down. Particularly, sessions. Though all of the summit sessions were engaging and interesting in their own way, there were a couple standout sessions that surprised me. 
What is this that I am letting Sion's word enter my blog? I'm sure someone is horrified. Welp it went like this...

About halfway through the Winter Summit Sion, Corbexx, and I were sitting around a table and Sion lamented the fact that he did not have a personal platform to write his thoughts down at. He could open up a blog but he didn't have that many things that he wouldn't write on TMC. But, TMC is not for everything that he wrote and feeling warm and full of good soup I told him, "I'll host it for you."

It wasn't just the soup talking. Sion and I have an odd relationship. We argue a lot. We disagree on things that we agree with. We'll never agree on much about Eve except that we both are pretty passionate about the game. This is one of those times when the CSM me and the personal me have to sit down with each other, hide the multi-personality disorder side of things, and decide how to use my blog for the greater good. I also have a no trolling policy. I'm not interested in politics and drama. I am not here for that. But I am here to make the CSM as transparent as I can as an individual.

There has been a lot of discussion about how do you tell who is doing what with the CSM. Not everyone is a blogger, a journalist, or a media personality. There are forums but chasing down forum stuff is hard.  While I may snap the proverbial communication whip at Steve and Corbexx I only do so because they have blogs. Sion was in a weird position where he had normal things that he wanted to say and no place to put them. While he is more often a troll then I might like and a sensational personality he is also a member of the CSM. I believe people should see what he has to say. This is where my, "If it needs to be done step up and do it," life rule comes into play.

Plus, I need to do a walk through of the winter minutes for myself. It was easy enough to piggy back his thoughts. These are some light thoughts and points about the sessions. If you want in depth stuff, go and read them.

Day One

Roadmap - This set the stage for the day. We had a lot of serious discussion about communication, confluence, and the way that CCP had started to work. We discussed what felt like a communication lapse with the CSM and CCP. We discussed Eve's future and that things are still moving forward as well as what CCP Seagull is now doing.

New Player Experience - What should Eve be to a new player. This is such an ambiguous session but I think its going well. It will be a whole new approach to things but one that can be expanded upon better than traditional tutorials.

Web Team - They've been making strides and what I like is that they are keeping in touch with us about what they are doing and how they want to do it. Instead of just making a EveOnline.Com website that looks good to a design or marketing function they are also incorporating what the players need. A small point is that they have added in more obvious download Eve Online links. Before, when I needed to re-install the client the easiest way to find the client was to go to google. Now its on the front page. In this session we still are discussing Eve Gate and the Evelopedia. The website needs to be a bigger, better resource. I also want bigger images for ships and modules. If you follow twitter CCP Avalon is quite active there and you will see the changes and tweaks happening as they go through things.

Team Size Matters - These guys are the monetization team. They also had the dude who keeps watch over PLEX. I had some discussions with Dirk MacGirk the day before via twitter about PLEX questions and asked them as I could. I don't follow the PLEX market. I don't use it and I don't trade in it. These guys are also part of our assault on clothing since they are the ones that will be selling it. If you are interested in Eve's monetization future, PLEX's future, ship skins and such spend some time with this session.

Corporations and Alliances - This is moving along nicely. We're focused now on fine details. Divisions, access, communication, socialize tools and access, Granularity is a favored buzz word. How the interface will look and should look. Usability. We've had discussions in Skype and there was much hand waving and bitching about the current system. You'll see that several members of CSM9 are on the social club bandwagon, myself included. We started this push last year and it is bearing fruit. The idea is to give people a broader social network to fall back on and to make it easier for people to find and play the game with each other.

Team Homegrown - This is a new team! Hi! This is the first time we've met. They are working on retention which separates and focuses on it. We discussed a lot of conceptual aspects of Eve. What catches people, what does not. I had stories from newbies that I have kept and newbies that I have lost. We discussed ways to make it easier for people to connect with those they brought into the game. They showed us charts and graphs and we agreed and disagreed and shared how we view Eve. This view is not a heavily PR/Advertisement focus but instead a solid effort to understand what is sticky in Eve and how to make that better. For anyone wondering if CCP is taking retention seriously the answer is yes.

Team Security - These guys are fascinating. They are super punctual and they ooze efficiency. They also brought us candy and then proceeded to show us that they had listened to everything we went over in the Summer and how they handled it. It is frustrating that so much of the session was NDA but they want to do their own release at Fanfest. I could only assure people that they are meticulous and detailed. They do not take what they do casually or in a flippant way.

Sion on Team Security - The first was the Team Security session. As, last time, they showed up for their session to the minute.  And they brought us chocolate, which unless you're an unwashed heathen like Corbexx, is about the most amazing thing. Not that bringing the CSM things is common, it isn't. Team Security was the only team to do so. In addition to that, they showed us reams of data and actively sought our input on a variety of issues. They are quickly becoming one of my favorite teams to work with, and not just because of the chocolate either. Efficient, no-nonsense, and clearly good at what they do.

Day Two

Wormholes - This was Corbexx's time to shine. He and I sat down the week before and created an outline of questions with sub-questions. A lot of what he needed mirrored what I needed. Statistics. How was wormhole space doing? We have complaints but we cannot address them one way or another without numbers.

Team Space Glitter - I'm shocked CCP Affinity doesn't run away from me these days. I was thrilled when they were able to tell us that they had gotten their AI work together and improved tools for making NPCs. This is what we have been waiting to develop. Now the push is to get content in and what happens to old content. Flipping Eve all at once to a new type of PvE would rock the game and not in a good way. Also, redoing all of the missions will be a huge task. Instead, CCP will use this going forward and slowly phase through the older content as they decide how they want to upgrade it. I suggested things like environmental NPCs and just more world actions. I also got into a discussion about the Sisters of Eve Epic Arc and how our current mission system doesn't reward the player for grouping up. That is a topic that goes into Team BananaStands work from the summer summit. But in general this is good news!


UI Modernization Project - I had such a list for them and found myself leaning forward ready to pounce on poor CCP Arrow. I started with colors and buttons and sizes and the need for more customization. This is an area that we disagree with CCP some because they seek to keep Eve looking like Eve no matter where you see it. We want to customize our experience and if that means magenta orange pineapple grapefruit color then that is what we want. We expanded into things like a potential HUD redo and in general making things more visually obvious and flexible to handle the sheer number of windows that we need to function to gather the basic information to be successful in the environment that is Eve. I also had a keyboard shortcut question that I picked up recently. I'm not overly happy with the answer that I got. The idea is to have a different button to turn something off. So F1 to shoot F2 to turn off if that is what you want. I think its simple but valuable flexibility and its on my list of things to write in confluence about.

Team Pirate Unicorns - Just in case you don't think enough is being done about new player retention. This is the third meeting with a heavy focus on new player retention. This team handles the NPE stuff as well as other things like tooltips. That gave me the chance to point out missing tooltips and things like having tooltips tell how much things repair and rep and stuff. I also started crosslinking ideas such as informational value to new players for buying stuff like PLEX so they don't go and RMT from habit. But we also discussed the map and Eve voice and notifications because they are doing that stuff too. In my opinion Eve needs a functional map in game. There is no reason that a game going to its twelfth year does not have a decent map. Places like dotlan will always have fine detail. CCP is not going to list the contents of moons and all those fine details dotlan has. But it is not stupid for a game to have a map in the actual game.

Cinematic Team - We got to find out how they work, how long things take, and brainstorm for potential new ideas. This is a small team of guys and they make all of the trailers. We discussed the ones we liked such as Butterfly Effect and Origins and the ones that made you roll your eyes like the Retribution one. They come up with the whole story and flow. We discussed lore and story trailers vs real game trailers. They both have value but some speak to some groups more than others. I think its important that we don't ruin peoples expectations before we even get them in the game with unrealistic trailers.

Sion on the Cinematic Team - I've always been a fan of EVE's trailers, so it was great to finally meet the team behind it all. They're great guys, and they put in an insane amount of work into what they do. It was interesting to see the various substantial challenges they face, how they deal with them, and the process of bringing something like This Is EVE to life. They had a lot of really neat backstory about what they do, and were sincerely engaged with our feedback on it all.

Fanfest - This was a pretty cool session. They are moving things around and working at having more access to developers and the community team. We learned a lot about how Fanfest works and how CCP will move forward with it.  A lot of this was about making Fanfest better for people coming to Iceland. If you have not been to Fanfest please understand that the entire city pretty much turns out to invite the flood of Eve players. It is a very cool thing so we discussed information things to help people like me, who may be alone and shy, get around and still enjoy themselves.

Customer Support - I believe the customer support people need to write regular dev blogs. They are such an unknown value yet so many players interact with them. I've been pushing for them to share some of their structure and organizations so that players can stop guessing about how things are done. I also had a long talk with them about suicide assistance for players. People don't know to write a petition for this. I very much want a clear policy page for changes and decisions that have come down as well as major key words such as 'suicide' that will direct people to a page that says to file a ticket with what info you have and they will handle it and that they do handle it. There is a lot of hidden information here and I understand that since it is the GM process but some of it can come to light in a way that will be healthier for the game.

Day Three

Low Sec - This was my jam. I asked for it and I got it. So, I opened the meeting told them why I was there and what I wanted and just burned through my list of questions. Funky and Gorski had a few things as well and Steve also helped me out. I got a lot of good stats. Low sec is doing well. There are some areas that can use more attention and I have to write a formal request for some detailed stats about industry in low sec. In general a lot of my energy went into pushing for work on Faction Warfare. I was also a nervous wreck. I do not want low sec to become a place of thousand man alliances. Just gonna toss that out there. No.

Ship and Module Balance - Let there be war between us and CCP :P. Really this session, just read it. I didn't talk a ton. I had my points and questions, made them, and then we got into all of the big topics of rebalancing stuff and nerfing things and skynet and ishtar and.. and ... and... I think this session needs to be two hours long next time.

Localization - I speak one language and I do that poorly. I am always fascinated by people who speak multiple ones. We learned a lot and I just asked a bunch of questions about how things work and what they can do and are doing. It was a very informative session and left me feeling quite limited with my singular language. An impressive group of ladies who are hip deep with their language communities.

Sion on Localization - Localization was a session that I didn't expect to get much out of personally. I was entirely wrong about that, and it ended up being one of the most interesting sessions of the summit. The challenges they face and the issues they have to deal with aren’t things I'd ever given much thought to at all, and I'm guessing that most of the player base hasn't either. I'm sort of hoping that they'll release some of the stories they told us and make it more clear to players what all goes into localization via devblogs, presentations, or an AMA style thread.

Structures - Session is NDA. I am feeling happy with where they are going with how structures are. There are details to hash out.

Sovereignty and Null Sec - NDA. I'm still working through all this.

Eve Merchandise - More stuff. More. More. More. I want mugs. T-shirts that don't cost 80 bucks. Hoodies. Hair bands. Pens. Spaceships!

Day Four

Jessica Overview - This was a last minute thing but super productive for two reasons. For one it let us see Jessica so that we could explain to people that its not a plug and play hand me out type of program. Two, it seems to have opened a fantastic floodgate that is now the new abilities with Eve Probe. That's another post to write about but more better prettier Eve video making abilities!

Art and Graphics - This is always a pretty session. I asked about asymmetrical things. They just feel the older designs are to crazy and illogical. Now we have subtle asymmetrical things. Sigh. We fought about clothing and color. I asked some questions about avatar desires I've been asked to bring up. From shoes, to shoe-less, to posing, and picture taking and keeping. I hear a lot of eye rolling about it every time it comes up but people get passionate and engaged about their avatars. We are asking for hats and colors and the head of the team seems to take it in stride now. The new lighting stuff will be super cool as well. I also asked about things like the black vindicator and how the nightmare lost its oil sheen. We want that stuff back.

Sion on Art and Graphics - Then there was Tri Lambda, the art team. Tri Lambda usually rolls deep for sessions, and it was the case this summit as well. They brought their whole crew, and they showed us a bunch of as usual stunning work. Sugar again brought up hats, and I think she's wearing them down on it. She's definitely a staunch ally of milliners everywhere. It's always interesting to see the clash between what players ask for and the technical hurdles involved, to say nothing of matters of art direction in general. No doubt people will get to see more of Tri Lambda's fine work at Fanfest too.

Wrap Up - Back to all of the bosses. One of the little things that happened this time was that we had one of the producer types (I'm bad at official labels) in every meeting. CCP Seagull was in, CCP Explorer was often in, and so were the other guys. They listened and took notes and helped us figure out what teams might need a question.

Elections, Summits, Communication - Election age decreases. No more names to the public. We nixed fanfest to get more CSM members to each summit in the future. Removing officers permanently from the white paper. And the fact that the CSM needs to be more visible and that the members need to be clearly accountable to their voters. We also discussed removing people and permanent seats. We went way over time on this and are still working on some of it.

Community Team - These guys love Eve. They liaison the CSM, the ISD, and a lot of Eve's face. Tournaments and player meets and things like logos. Yes we discussed logos. We all want logos back in the game. Now. One part is about solved but there are still hurdles.  They've taken over the mystery code.

***

I wrote some day to day stuff but this is just skimming across the topics. I had so much to bring to the table and there is still more to do. I can feel time chasing me with this session being almost done. We as the CSM need to create legacy data. Each year shouldn't be a new discovery of the CSM. We need to note what team or developer owns what feature. This will make life easier for future CSMs. Right now we are dumping the stuff we've worked on in the forums into confluence. Its a pretty big project but several people are working on it and getting the information moved over.

Next year, if I get on, I think I'm going to push for the CSMX.org site (should we hopefully have one and I'm on CSMX) to mirror our blog posts and to become a spot where candidates who don't normally blog can write a blog. That way someone can just go to that one site and read all of the CSM blogs. Hell, I'll copy and paste them all in myself. It's something to think about and hosting Sion's words shows yet another truely glaring need in the CSM communication front and well that would be my job to fix. So, let me get to it.

Comments

  1. They couldn't get you with money.
    They couldn't get you with "everyone is on this bandwagon, jump on it" (I'm talking about the document of shame).
    They couldn't get you with "I rub your back, you rub mine"

    They got you with your kind heart, simply asking for your help. Because Sion is such a poor newbie that he needs your blog to communicate. So now the dirty Goon can spread his demotivating message to keep independent people from voting on the CSM. The less people vote, the more the disciplined block vote of Goons worth.

    Also, remember Mangala in the last election. He lost TWO THIRD of his #1 votes after it became clear that he is a Goon minion. If Sion can make the impression that you are friendly to him, that can cost you thousands of votes.

    In politics it's not enough to be good. You also need to look good. Politicians have a staff to screen everyone around them, to prevent an inappropriate person getting on a photo with him. A careless random handshake photo can seriously damage a politician: http://ktar.com/22/1684090/Sen-John-McCain-compares-ObamaCastro-handshake-to-Hitler

    You do yourself a serious disservice by hanging out with Goons and especially by letting them on your blog. Tell that snake to write to EVE-O or start his own blog or simply go to hell!

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    1. You assume that they don't want Sugar back on the CSM.

      Delete
    2. Hi Gevlon.

      I knew this was coming by the way. So let me tell you something and you can take from it what you wish.

      A bit after I joined the CSM I responded to someones comment on a blog. I had a conversation with them to clarify someone. I was mailed by someone and told that I should not speak to that person. I validated them. That person was everything wrong with the game. I had a responsiblity with my position to cut that person off and make sure no one thought hat supported them or knew them.

      That person was you. You may remember a ranting post I wrote in complete disgust about it. I defended you. I defended my contact with you. I was horrified that someone thought I should not speak to you and that I should cut you off and reject you because they didn't approve of you.

      The same goes here.

      I will lose this race Gevlon, before I become the person I am not. The day that I say that I will not speak to, communicate with, or be a part of something because of political goals and the right decision is the day that I will be glad to no longer be on the CSM and the voters will be right to not vote for me because I am not the person that they want me to be.

      I could go on and on and on about it. My thoughts and opinions and ideas. Why I think you are wrong and I'm wound up enough to do it because I believe in it so passionately.

      If the fact that I dare associate with someone because of my office and not cut them off because you dislike them invalidates my worth to you, I will accept that. And I'll still take my time to pay attention to you. To look at what you say. And to treat you with the respect and dignity that I treat anyone else.

      Delete
    3. I never said you shouldn't talk to Goons.

      I've said you shouldn't let them be on your blog (except comments), making the appearance that you are one of them.

      Sion didn't sent you a question to answer. You SHOULD answer his questions and argue with his ideas (lies).

      He asked you to let him post on YOUR blog. It's a malicious request aimed on losing you votes.

      Delete
    4. This might be an appropriate time to remind people (Gevlon) that Eve is a game we play for enjoyment. Not everything needs to be vivisected searching for diabolical plots.

      Delete
    5. Come off the grass, Gevlon. You have linked to MinerBumping at your site. The unabashed support of the Bonus Room by New Order after the community repudiated this, should make it clear how toxic this entity is. Their leader is the great goon himself or someone making an effort to flatter through plagiarism. Clean your own house first.

      Delete
    6. Yeah, I was totally +1 for Sugar, but now that she's let Sion post on her blog I'm totally -GOOGLEPLEX.

      ...

      Not.

      Delete
  2. Gevlon, wake up.

    Sugar gets along with everyone - hisec, lowsec, null, wormhole, PvE, PvP, newbies, traders, industrialists, and druggies. She doesn't make enemies, she makes friends and builds bridges. That is part of the charm that makes her the Sugar we all love. And one part of what makes her such an incredibly effective CSM rep. Let the vote in a few weeks speak for how well it is working for her.

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    1. Pretty much this.

      I respect Sugar a great deal, even if there isn't much on which we agree. She's the hardest working most dedicated CSM member on our fair council, and has my admiration for her willingness to take personal risks for the greater good.

      Delete
    2. You are obviously self-contradicting (lying).

      - How can you consider her the "hardest working most dedicated CSM member" if you also think (as you wrote it on the dev blog), that CSM is useless. There is no such thing as "hardest working member of a useless group".

      - Taking personal risks for the greater good is the very opposite what Goons do who try to exploit the game for personal real life financial gain. The only way you could admire her if you despise yourself. Do you?

      In reality you are considering her dangerous (exactly because she is hard working for the greater good) and want to damage her by making people believe that "Sugar is the next Ali Aras". I'm surprised you didn't ask her to do guest posts for TMC. Or did you and she was smart enough to reject?

      Delete
  3. Given the kerfuffle Sion recently kicked up its unfortunate he makes no comment on the initial ‘Roadmap’ session as that session directly discussed CCP/CSM communication. I understand he wanted to comment only on ‘standout sessions that surprised’ him which is all well and good but with us now saddled in the current situation Sion helped create, commenting on that topically important session would have been very helpful.

    If I were the type to read into things (I wouldn’t do that would I?), I would conclude that Sion left the ‘Roadmap’ session disappointed since it didn’t make his ‘standout’ list.

    Are you out there Sion? Care to elaborate?

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    1. It is indeed because I wanted to highlight surprising standout sessions as opposed to sessions I generally enjoyed or such. The communication issues that I assume you're referring to I addressed pretty heavily in my capstable interview, but to reiterate I'm quite optimistic about the direction being taken there. For now, I'm content to wait and see how it all works out.

      I'm not however clear on what exactly you mean by "the current situation Sion helped create," so that's more difficult for me to elaborate upon.

      Delete
    2. Sion,

      I am indeed behind the times since by “current situation” I meant your “negative review blog”: http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/csm-9-review/

      Your Cab Stable interview (which I hadn’t previously listened to) does a fine job of addressing the matter: http://capstable.net/2015/02/01/sion-kumitomo/

      Delete
  4. That was a pretty nice thing to do, Sugar, giving space to another of the CSM. Even if he is a Goon :) I doubt it will cost you votes; like you said, if you think it's the right thing to do, do it and votes be damned.

    As to what Sion, um, 'said', well...he said lot of nothing. There was nothing in his thoughts other than 'gee, folks at CCP work hard'. Then again, you did say that your post also wasn't going to be in depth, either, so, meh.

    At least now we've heard, well, something, from one of the more active CSM members. I guess that's a plus?

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    1. Because I wrote daily on things and then edited minutes I get lost in how much I have and have not said. Plus some of this stuff has already moved forward.

      In some ways this may be an awkward part as I try something new. We will or we will not gain value from it and I'll do better next (?)time or derp insights? Should the minutes stand on their own or should I dissect every line? Question not shark. I know on the inside that they are often not read but I'm so intertwined in it all.

      Delete
    2. re: something new

      Sugar,

      If I may make a small suggestion, next time italicize *all* of your guest’s contributions. That way there’s less room for lazy readers to lose track of who’s saying what. That small thing said, I look forward to more ‘next times’. Occasional guests are a great way to go about exploring things.

      Delete
    3. I was up in the air about that so good feedback. Thank you, Dire.

      Delete
    4. I understand about how hard it is to remember what was said to whom about what :) Do it all the time, myself.

      I agree with Dire's suggestion re: highlighting guest writer comments.

      As to the value of the exercise, sure, nothing ever turns out perfect the first time. Even comments by readers :)

      I've read the minutes and I've read your posts on the minutes as they were happening. I must say, I prefer your posts to the actual minutes; your posts (and others from other CSM members) gave me the kind of insight I'm looking for/need. The minutes left me feeling very meh. I need more detail, more interpretation. I'm not looking for transcripts, but your personal take on how the session went, how you felt about the topic(s) being discussed, what you think about the implications, did any of the others at the meeting stand out, etc?

      Now you've covered that in your daily posts, so no need to repeat that here.

      I guess what I'm having trouble with, or an issue with, or whatever, is that I didn't really see any content in what Sion wrote here. So, really, I guess it's what Sion didn't say that's making me not love this post. Not that that's a requirement :) It's just after his preamble, I was expecting something of more substance.

      As for what you wrote, since you've already covered your deeper thoughts previously, this is a nice, useful overview of the entire process. Your take on the teams that you met with. Like you said, light thoughts.

      I know I've probably got your hackles raised, because what I've written comes across as an attack. It's not. Or at least it wasn't meant to be. A lot of my comments, like some of your posts, are semi-stream of consciousness, trying to work out what I feel as I write. Sometimes I contradict myself and come to a different point of view by the end.

      Delete
    5. No hackles at all. Trying new things is hit or miss. I went through bold and italics and quotes for the none me stuff. I over thought it into a mess.

      But I think I see a project for CSMX that may help fix many of the complaints listed here as well as maybe encourage more writing and kusing from members. I'm sorta excited.

      Delete
    6. Seconding Dire on making it clear (using font or whatever) when it is Sion speaking and when it is you.

      Delete
    7. Have you toyed with adding some sort of separator before and after Sion's comments? I think bold would be too hard on the eyes, especially with the white on dark format, but the italics seem a bit too muted on their own.

      Another possibility would be to have all of a guest poster's comments be in italics on their own, but that would lose the juxtaposition of having your view and theirs linked in the same place.

      Delete
    8. Check below. I'm trying italics for now. Bold is just odd. Other font is jarring. Its a weird little art puzzle.

      Delete
  5. Updated Sion's stuff in italics per the recommendations from comments.

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  6. Thanks for the feedback. I still find astounding that so many become so passionate, so serious and so efficient about something which should be so... peculiar. A game. What? Honesty in politics, eternal enemies arguing over each other on a public blog, economical analysis, etc. Even fashion sometimes. My god.
    When are we going to get into real planet managerment and actual ISK convertibility for Solar III?
    Let's start by something really serious: whatabout hiring cinematic team for implementing player-written scripts for television? (Von, any fiction proposal?) Do they accept ISK? (Gevlon, always in need of counter-propaganda aren't you? Sion, obviously you should sponsor the new killer TV show to finally control the masses.)

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  7. Those moments where your comment is eaten by the internet. Anyway the idea of my post was I'm glad that Sugar gives both Sion and Gevlon the ability to post. Even if Gevlon foams a bit at the mouth.

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  8. "The idea is to have a different button to turn something off. So F1 to shoot F2 to turn off if that is what you want. I think its simple but valuable flexibility and its on my list of things to write in confluence about."

    At the very least, I'd like a command to turn off all overheating - I don't know how many times I've burned something out simply because I thought I had stopped overheating it, but in the confusion of battle hadn't realized that heat was still on.

    "No more names to the public."

    This was a rather vague comment without much in the way of context. Was this a topic brought up during the meeting? Was it something discussed? Was it a decision reached, or an announcement made? Or was it simply a possibility thrown out for future consideration?

    I hope it actually is an official change to the CSM - I've known several people over the years who would have made wonderful CSM representatives, but who would never consider running simply because of the intrusion into their real life and identity.

    "Next year, if I get on, I think I'm going to push for the CSMX.org site (should we hopefully have one and I'm on CSMX) to mirror our blog posts and to become a spot where candidates who don't normally blog can write a blog."

    CSMWire does a great job of tracking all the various CSM member blogs, as well as dev blogs, in one place. Unfortunately, it does not give a platform for CSM members without their own blogs to post statements.

    As for allowing Sion to post on your blog, I doubt that there is much danger that any of your regular readers or supporters will misinterpret the act as anything more than it was: an attempt to give a fellow CSM rep a chance to speak. However, more casual individuals who don't pay as close of attention to what goes on may very possibly be swayed by such associations; perception and reputation, even if incorrect, can have devastating consequences.

    I'll have to throw my opinion in with those who have observed that Sion's comments really didn't add anything of substance or value to this blog; they were just rather empty observations. Also consider that there is an official forum section for the CSM members to post information, and Sion could have easily posted his thoughts there. Taking all of this into consideration, I'm not so sure that it was necessary for you to include his comments in your blog. It was a nice gesture on your part, and I sincerely hope that it doesn't backfire, but given that Sion easily had other outlets to express his views, I have to wonder what his intentions and motivations were in posting here. Given past experience, I would question his sincerity and consider whether he might have taken advantage of your good nature.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'll grab onto the overheating thing.

      Having personal names exposed to the public of those who run for CSM has been a hot topic for a while. With recent events on the internet it has only become hotter. CCP Leeloo decided to tackle it and had a goal of removing it. The decision was made. Some agree and some do not. It does seem to have had the effect of causing more people to run.

      There are a lot of good sites that keep track of things but there is the need for more officiousness. The forums are a place but they sadly do not reach a large audience although they should. I'm all for as much saturation as we can because I constantly hear 'I didn't know there was X to get this info.'

      I'm not worries about back firing. I know that conspiracy theories and plots and such are important to some. If I have learned anything this year it is that I have to be myself, maintain myself, and do what I would do when I was not on the CSM. Otherwise I will become a shell of myself smiling and nodding to everyone with no personal thoughts in my head. I am not going to become that person. I'm not a career politician. I'm an eve player that likes to write about their game and wants to save the world in the little ways that she can.

      Delete
    2. Regarding the forums, if people won't go to the official source for announcements and the designated place for discussion of CSM related and other topics, then really how much effort should be made to cater to them? The information is there, the opportunity to voice opinions is there, the place to interact with CSM representatives is there. It's all in one place, and if players won't take advantage of that, then they probably aren't interested enough to go looking for this information anywhere else.

      To be fair, the forums could definitely use some further improvements, and some better visibility wouldn't hurt either. But taking all this into account, I think that resources would be better spent improving the existing official forums as an information source rather than creating or promoting additional websites.

      Delete
  9. Sugar is the *ONLY member of the CSM I trust to do what's she believes is best for the game rather than what her and her friends believe is best for them personally.

    ReplyDelete

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