Von Keigai has left a new comment on your post "You Just Don't Seem To Care":I think that increasing the voter pool with "unmotivated and uninformed voters" is indeed a bad idea. CCP's goal should be increasing the voter pool with motivated and informed voters.
You seem to be assuming that "turnout" is good, no matter what. Yet CSM is an advisory council, not a legislature. As such, there is no need for it to be "broad based", or anything like it. It does not need "the will of the people" or any other such mystical justification. Its purpose is to advise CCP. As such, it does not benefit from politicians so much as smart, hardworking, and knowledgeable players. CCP presumably knows this, and perhaps they even know that adding noise to the election (which is what the "will of the people" is in practice) will result in a worse CSM.
So why is high turnout worth having? Is not a low turnout of only the most motivated and informed voters better for this purpose -- electing an advisory committee -- better than a high turnout of unmotivated and uninformed voters?
The reason I think that they should strive to do this above and beyond what they have done is because right now the voting pool is dominated by null sec pilots. This in of itself is not necessarily a bad thing except the game demographics is not quite as dominated by such players. Since the council is more than just an advisory board, in fact it is a stakeholder in the development process which has significantly more impact in the outcome of development, it behooves CCP to try its damnedest to make sure that the CSM represents as many styles of play as possible. Which requires expanding the pool of motivated and informed players, and CCP is best positioned of all involved parties in the elections and game to do so. They just need to be motivated to do it.
Besides which, the idea that only "motivated and informed" posters participate is belied by the sheer number of identical bloc votes.
ReplyDeleteThe motivated and uninformed are far more useful to the politically ambitious.
Actually, if the objective is to get a number of players with experience in a variety of playstyles, the last thing CCP should do is have the players elect those people. CCP should look at emulating Turbine and how it runs its Player Council on LOTRO. They ask for interested players to put in applications, and they accept them or turn them down based on the experience of the player.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly enough, that's how CCP hires volunteer ISDs and employed GMs.
DeleteIt would be interesting to see what would happen if the CSM was representative of demographics and had the appropiate mix of 3 nullseccers, 1 wormholer, 2 lowseccers and 9 hiseccers... I guess that then the Goons would try and disguise their candidates as "hiseccers" and CCP would "accidentally" fall for it...
@ Heretic Caldari.
ReplyDeleteWhile what you suggest is excellent in theory, it won't ever be used by CCP. Because when they form a CSM that has the same null sec cartel bias as the current ones do today, CCP's true colours would be exposed, once and for all.
As it stands, they can hide behind "but..but, you guys elected them!"
I have seen this idea more than once, that to increase "good" voting you need to increase the pool of motivated and informed voters. And I would support it in the abstract.
ReplyDeleteBut educating people is very hard, especially when they are not your employees, and even more so when they are your customers. "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain." And even more so motivating people. People's motives tend to be very hard to change. People who don't care about pixel politics are very unlikely to change their mind because "you ought to vote; this is important".
My take on CSM is that "positive" means like educating and inspiring voters are hard. Whereas "negative" means -- discouraging the least informed and motivated people from voting -- are relatively easy. That's why I proposed a voting tax. But softer measures work, too, like for example just not publicizing the CSM election. To be clear, I strongly doubt that ignorant voter suppression is the reason for CCP's lack of push-the-vote this year. They've totally drunk the democratic kool-aid. But I do think that their lackluster effort this year is in their interest. (See Heretic's comment above for how a company not enamored with democracy would act.)
As for "stakeholders", um, yeah. Go read that page you linked. "Examples of project stakeholders include the customer, the user group..." So you are right!
I know it sounds nice: "stakeholder". Like you own "stock", or something. But really it is just modern bullshit, which means no more than what I said: adviser. Don't let them baffle you with their bullshit. Hey, I am not a "capsuleer". I am a "spaceship occupancy reversal technician"!
Well said... I don't think voting should be mandatory, but the CSM is very heavily null based, and I'm not convinced it's good for the game. Obviously null sec space needs *and* deserves development and resources. But it's not the only space that matters.
ReplyDelete