Greedy Goblin

Sunday, March 29, 2015

Weekend minipost: CSM trolls

Another little bit for the few weekend readers:

Round beginning - 75 candidates remain
36983 votes, 2466 quota
Initial talley:
355 "Sabriz Adoudel"
329 "Alyxportur"
306 "Xander Phoena"
285 "NSA Bivas"
281 "Angrod Losshelin"
266 "Ariete"
263 "Aeon Boirelle"
244 "PsychoBitch"
188 "Janwa Resh"
183 "Purinpu"
173 "Vic Jefferson"
171 "Psianh Auvyander"
157 "Borat Guereen"
155 "Klapen"
143 "Lyonic"
142 "Soelent"
131 "Leelo dallasmultipas"
127 "Harry Saq"
122 "Jenshae Chiroptera"
116 "Kasken"
116 "Cycule"
109 "DomanarK"
106 "Suzy RC Mudstone"
104 "Radu Lupescu"
101 "Nervon"
94 "Ryan Farmern"
91 "Decimat Draconia"
89 "Crante"
86 "My name isJeff"
80 "Harek"
73 "Bane Cortex"
67 "Malis Caretia"
66 "Roban Crause"
63 "Dadrom"
61 "Erweb Maken"
58 "KaziKai"
57 "Aradus Gunnell"
43 "Miralissa Issa"
42 "Aiwha"
38 "CatanaFleet Red"
36 "commander aze"
31 "Bait'er De'Outlier"
28 "Michael Laloush"
26 "Soul Crusher"
26 "Perosteck Neuchatel"
16 "Justin Amalastoner"
12 "Raiealatar"

These candidates got less than 1% of the votes as #1. CCP did a huge mistake removing every barriers of entry. These hopeless candidates forced those who wanted to be informed voters to dig trough awful lot of pages. People could see this mess and decide that it doesn't worth their time. I wouldn't be surprised if half of these candidates were Goon alts sent for this very purpose.

Seriously, what was CCP thinking? What benefit they expected from this?

There must be a pre-voting system that demands 300 accounts to support a candidate. To prevent trolling, such support can't be unmade: once you gave your support to a candidate, he becomes your fixed #1 vote on the election. You can of course set the remaining 13, and this fix is removed if he don't make it to the ballot.


PS: Goons being Goons.
Finally a glorious battle between MoA and the finest fleet of SMA.

9 comments:

Unknown said...

I do have the same suspicion that the STV is being gamed by the large groups throwing candidates to spread the already few independant votes around.

I disagree with a pre-requirement like you put it, as truly independant candidates could not rise from the ranks.

What I would suggest instead is adding another CCP vetting layer, as they have more information via the accounts behind each alt. From the campaign threads, and their internal info to root out real trolls, they would select 28 candidates at the end of the campaign before vote open so that everyone make their choice amongst a more limited group, openly selected by CCP.

After all the CSM is a focus group for CCP, and it make sense for CCP to narrow the field based on their own interests. Serious candidates that spend efforts on their campaign would get a better chance of not getting drowned by mass of troll candidates.

CCP could

Anonymous said...

This is why any coherent representative system has districts of some kind. And preliminary elections.

But really? The CSM is neither a "Council" nor involved in "Management" of any kind. It's a glorified focus group. One CCP can ignore at will.

Why are you taking it so seriously?

Anonymous said...

They could have candidates make a Plex deposit that only gets returned to them if they get more than (e.g.) 1% of the vote.

They do that in the UK to discourage frivolous candidates.

Anonymous said...

"Plex deposit"

Goons would easily justify 30 billion ISK to add 30 troll candidates to the mix. You don't think their finance team makes ten times this from early access to game change information? Let alone their CSM candidates blocking all nerfs to moon goo and other null sec income streams.

Gevlon said...

If the PLEX deposit is 10, that will hurt even Goon finances. Remember that troll candidates aren't all-powerful, so they don't worth infinite resources.

Manserk said...

It doesn't matter because single transferable vote

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI

Gevlon said...

@Manserk: theoretically yes, practically, no.

At first, when the voter faces the crowd of candidates, he can decide that voting doesn't worth the effort of reading 75 introduction pages.

Secondly, by the time every below-1% candidates were eliminated, 36115 votes out of 36983 left. 800 votes exhausted, because the voters didn't put enough candidates on it. To not lose his vote, the voter doesn't only have to decide which candidates he likes, but also figure out which candidates aren't trolls.

Even I failed in that, out of my top 4, only one wasn't below 1%. Of course I put Sugar, Mike and Steve on the ballot, exactly for this purpose, but this needed knowledge about politics and not only about candidates. (I don't like Mike and Steve, but I knew that they aren't horrible and have chance).

Anonymous said...

Another option might be to break the game up into constituencies and have people registered to vote in the constituency that they spend the majority of their game time in. (E.g. 1 low sec, 1 wormhole, 4 null and the rest high or however population/activity breaks things down.)

That would mean that individual people would have to sort through fewer candidates to figure out who they wanted to vote for.

Anonymous said...

I honestly don't believe for one second there was any troll candidates, I do think there were candidates that just couldn't bother putting in the effort and some that didn't win because nobody knew who they were but but no troll candidates.

Every single person on the ballot wanted to win to varying degrees and for different reasons.