The conversation has begun anew, now that the CSM8 campaign season is underway, and after the release of the Winter Summit transcripts (which included a stunted session on voting.)
I wrote about the issue last September. The last paragraph of the post details a short description of what might be easily done by CCP to help rectify the situation, give more awareness of the elections to the playerbase at-large.
I wonder, though, about the number of candidates fielded every year. Last election, CSM7, there were forty candidates. If some in-game interface presented a player with that many candidates (and a paragraph or two about their beliefs and platform), would that not turn voters off? "OMG! So many words! Abstain! Abstain! Abstain!"
Should we, somehow, limit the number of candidates? Perhaps to thirty? Maybe as low as twenty-five.
If it is agreed that this is an idea worth pursuing, how might the candidate list be limited?
Becoming a candidate for CSM7 required 100 likes on their campaign forum post. That turned out to be fairly trivial. And the process was mocked by the players as being a pointless exercise.
What if the forum likes system was used as a form of pre-voting? A primary, so to speak. The thirty most-liked campaign posts become official candidates. It stands to some reason that if you cannot garner enough likes to be in the top thirty, your chances of winning a seat are going to be reasonably slim. There doesn't seem to be any benefit to loading down the campaign roster with forty, fifty, or sixty people. If our aim is to promote voting, then overloading those who would normally ignore CSM elections would likely cause them to continue to ignore the process. Should it not be the aim to make the election process as accessible as possible?
I want to read your thoughts, as always.
WTS Likes, 1b per 1000 likes.
ReplyDeleteYou have 1000 alts?
DeleteShow me the money first, then we'll discuss details ^^
DeleteThe problem that I see with that is that there's no concrete reason why people would vote for the people they "liked." There's also the issue of being able to like as many posts as you want.
ReplyDeleteSay I wanted to ensure some candidate didn't make it into the top 30. All I'd have to do is get some number of friends to vote for everyone *but* the candidate(s) I want out of the running.
There's nothing conceptually wrong with having a primary process, but the forum "like" mechanic is not a good base to rest it on.
But still, most people aren't going to "like" every candidate, and only going to apply "likes" to the ones they feel should have a shot at a CSM position. The worthy still rise to the top in the case.
DeleteAs for your plan to hire friends to shut down candidates. If the candidate you're trying to shut-down is popular enough, you're little trickery will have no effect. If you're trying to shutdown unpopular candidates, then the system is working as intended.
Some well run, organised, love-to-troll coalition will set up 30 candidates and using their membership numbers each of their 30 candidate will get 10,000+ likes.
DeleteEach member (and each alt of each member) can like each candidate. They will click like on each of the 30 candidates. Before you can say "Crap Idea", there will be forum posts up with links directly to the voting threads.
10,000+ players all liking on all 30 candidates, and their competition is disorganised and only liking the ones that have a shot. The competition is reading the threads and choosing where to put their likes.
Some of larger alliances might even work together and like each others candidates as well, doubling the imbalance.
I think the reverse would happen.
DeleteI think someone like Mynnna, who knows he is going to be on the council, and likely the chair, is not concerned about competition, because he has no competition. I believe he would prefer to work with strong and capable candidates. If anything, Goonswarm would be directed to upvote candidates from all areas of space that he'd like to work with, to get a strong group of candidates together, rather than a weak group. The strong group does not affect his election chances.
Having multiple elections could filter out the least popular candidates rather well. 42 candidates standing? Take the 10 least voted for away and have 32 for the next vote, then another 10 until a number that falls inbetween a predetermined range are left. The main election could then start and people would be able to read a lot about the final candidates who are left. My ideal vision would be to have everything happen in game, no forum likes or other outside processes.
ReplyDeleteThat's exactly the sort of information and voting overload that I'm hoping to avoid. I think that sort of overload turns potential voters away from the process, rather than engage them as intended.
DeleteLarge Alliance fields 14 candidates, and upvotes them plenty.
ReplyDeleteThey then upvote the 16 *worst* candidates, and make sure they have more likes than anyo other candidate.
Result: 14 members of Large Alliance, and 16 Xenurias.
Certainly possible.
DeleteConsidering the large coalitions realize that running more than one or two candidates is pointless, I'm not sure this would actually happen.
That is a valid point.
DeleteLarge coalitions will get together and decide who they would like on the council. Obviously themselves, their friends, other people who they get along with, maybe a token highsec guy that seems intelligent. Whatever. Maybe you right and 30 guys from their own coalition isn't a great idea.
Once the leaders have decided who will be liked, they post the "Click LIKE on all these threads" post into their forums and it is done.
Note: Given some alliances love of a good troll, they might select 30 Xenurias
The alliances who have leadership who would try to screw the candidate list, aren't large alliances. The HBC nor the CFC would try to game the system to stick 30 Xenurias on to the ballet.
DeleteThis one I will admit I have thought about for a good deal of time. To be honest I can see no way around it other than to let all those that qualify run.
ReplyDeleteThe likes system was frankly a joke but it did actually get rid of a couple of dead runners.
I did like the idea of number of forum posts but EvE-O is so stuffed a lot of people avoid it.
All I can think of is some areas like Wormhole candidates may want to hold their own primaries by them selves so that they can get better representation, the same could be done for Industry reps. This will at least show what candidates feel their egos are more important than the good of the areas they claim to be representing (An idea of Two Steps and a good one)
And to those of us who believe that the EVE-O forums are a rotting cesspool of derp and whine? Why should players who engage with other contingents of the community be automatically be locked out of the running?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteI think the sooner the rest of the world wakes up and uses Australian system of distributing preferences for any election the better. Removes the spoiler effect, the wasted votes feeling, lets you effectively vote for "anyone but that %^#$" the only issue is that each voter needs to determine their preferences, although I think the Australian system has something in place to deal with that.
ReplyDeleteAlthough a brief wikipedia search reveals it isn't only the Australians that use it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting