Thank you all

Well, the results are in, and I didn't win a seat on the third Council of Stellar Management. That said, I'd like to thank everyone who voted for me and who helped me out, and I'd like to congratulate the nine winners on their success. I wish them all the best of luck.

Update: Polls are now closed

There's not much time left to vote - polls close at the next downtime. If you haven't voted yet, please do so now. I'd prefer you vote for me, of course, but the process matters too - figure out who will represent you best, and vote for them with all your accounts. I don't want to see voter turnout keep slipping, for fear of CCP writing the CSM off as a failed experiment. Please, vote.

Edit: Seems I was in error about when the polls closed - they actually closed at midnight game time, and thus voting is now over. Thanks to everyone who participated, and I'm looking forward to seeing the results.

New Assembly Hall post

I've been getting especially annoyed at POS mechanics lately, so I posted a thread with a proposal to clean them up a little. Nothing revolutionary, but I think it'd help a lot. Check it out, and if you could give it a thumbs-up that'd be appreciated too.

New speech

Atraxerxes, of the Fly Reckless podcast, asked CSM candidates for speeches, and I figured that I should probably post mine for people who don't listen to his podcast. It's nothing special, but anyone interested can get it off Eve Files here. Hope you enjoy it.

Here's the text:

Hi, I'm Herschel Yamamoto, and I'm running for a seat on the next Council of Stellar Management. My platform is built on three main areas.

Firstly, the user interface is weak, and desperately needs many specific fixes, as well as the more general solution of allowing player mods to allow everyone to play the game with the interface that they like best.

Secondly, the CSM doesn't do a good enough job communicating with players, and I'll work to improve communication as well as streamlining our treatment of smaller issues.

Third, while I have positions on many fields of gameplay, but the two I'm focusing on are making lowsec more valuable and adding more charisma skills, to increase the utility of these underused parts of the game.

I am an experienced candidate, having been a dedicated CSM-watcher since the body was founded, as well as having experience on many similar bodies in real life. I am dedicated to working for you, the player, and will represent you faithfully throughout the term. I have the support of many past CSM members, as well as many other players form a wide variety of professions, and I'd like your support as well. If you'd like to know more, just visit my site at herschelyamamoto.blogspot.com

Thank you.

Voting is open!

CSM 3 voting is officially open. The voting page is here and you can vote for me here. You have until the 26th to vote.

Even if you don't choose to vote for me, please make up your mind about who you feel can represent you best and vote for them. The CSM is a genuinely useful body(if you don't believe me, look at that shiny new skill queue they got us, after years of every other attempt failing), and the more players participate, the stronger our ability to bring your issues forward to CCP. Please make sure that your voice is heard.

CSM Candidates At A Glance

(Click for full version)

Due to an idea posted by Small Chimp, I've decided to try to make it possible for voters to get a read on all CSM candidates at a glance, without having to sort through 40 campaign pages. It should be pointed out that a lot of the candidates gave much longer answers than what I have written above for the first two questions. I've run all abbreviations by them, but not everyone has responded. Any faults in summarization are my own.

The full version of the questions asked are:

What is the single biggest issue you will attempt to work on if elected to the CSM?

What is your single biggest activity as an Eve player?

Rate your knowledge of the following aspects of the game on a scale from 1 to 10, where 10 is high:
- 0.0 Warfare
- Piracy
- PvE
- Industry

Rate your general happiness with the following aspects of the game on a scale from 1 to 10, where 10 is high:
- Supercapital ships
- Sovereignty mechanics
- Low security space
- Local chat channel
- Minerals and T1 items in NPC loot
- Players being allowed to join NPC corps at will
- The user interface

Additional candidates will be filled in as I get answers back from them.