The next round of aspiring community leaders need to submit their application, starting tomorrow.

This will be the sixth version of the player elected council which are scheduled to take seat on april 6th 2011.

As CCP Diagoras mentions in his latest developer blog, the terms have been extended to last 12 months from the initial period of 6 months. During that time, the CSM (Council of Stellar Management) will partake in 2 summits on Iceland (curtesy of CCP Games) and are required to attend these summits on Iceland. Outside of that, participants will also be required to attend meetings with the other members of the CSM alltough there are no requirements for the participants to meet up in the flesh during those.

Typically, those are sorted out via online attendance.

As it is customary when NDA’s are involved, transparency in representation is vital to give the players ensurance that they aren’t misrepresented. While this can never be guaranteed, prior CSM’s have been given the boot for breaking the NDA and are often the source of grief as they give up valuable spare time in order to spend time representing players and presenting developers with issues and bugs that there are no guarantee of getting fixed. While this is the tireless nature of the business, its also a reason why some players feel that the CSM is somewhat irrelevant.

As the new application period has opened up, the rumor mill has allready begun to rear its ugly head again.

The question is, would you give up your spare time to work with others to get game issues adressed while taking heat on the forums for no guaranteed result?

Read the full developer blog here … and watch this space as I talk to other volunteers under CCP’s flag in the coming months.

As announced in this previous blog, the candidacy application period for the sixth Council of Stellar Management is due to open tomorrow, February 9, just after the turn of midnight. If you would like to run, you will be able to apply on this page when it opens. The candidacy application period will end just prior to midnight on February 23.
So, what does being on the CSM involve? The summary of the CSM white paper states the purpose of the CSM as being the following:

“The purpose of the CSM is to represent society interests to CCP. This requires active engagement with the player community to master EVE issue awareness, understanding, and evaluation in the context of the “greatest good for the greater player base”. ”

How large or small the amount of effort that is put into performing CSM related tasks and duties is at the discretion of the council member. Of course, the less effort that is put in, the less impressed that the community will be with that council member come the time of the following election. The only required duties that the CSM involves are regular meetings with the rest of the council (at intervals to be decided by the council themselves), two planned summits at the CCP HQ in Reykjavik and being involved in writing the meeting minutes for those summits.

The two CSM summits in 2011 will take place on the 18th to 20th of May and the 14th to 16th of December, though there is the possibility of a slight change of a week either way with these dates.

The fifth CSM was the first where the term length was extended from the original term length of six months, and at the time of CSM6 taking office CSM5 will have been in office for ten months. The next term will end in April 2012 having lasted for twelve months, and it is currently the intent for all future terms to have this duration.
The requirements to be able to run as a candidate in the CSM6 elections are as follows:

  • You must have an active EVE Online account that is older than 30 days.
  • You must be aged 21 years or older as of April 6, 2011.
  • You must provide your address and an e-mail address where you can be reached, which will not be made public.
  • You must provide a scan or reasonable quality photograph of a valid passport to verify your identity and that you can travel internationally to the CCP HQ in Reykjavik, Iceland.
  • You must be willing and able to sign a non-disclosure agreement with CCP as the CSM are very often provided with information that is not for public release.
  • You must be willing for your real name and country of residence to be made public alongside your character name on the EVE Online website. Other personal details required for candidacy will not be made public.
  • You must provide a campaign message stating your reasons for running, in no more than 200 words.
  • You must have up to date and accurate account ownership information on all of your EVE Online accounts.

In addition to the above in accordance with the CSM white paper, any serious violations of the EVE Online EULA may void your eligibility to run. All applications will result in an audit of the accounts belonging to the applicant. In cases where EULA violations have occurred, the application will be assessed on the basis of the severity of the violation and the length of time since the violation occurred. More information on candidate eligibility can be found in the CSM white paper.

If you have any comments or enquiries regarding the election period or running as a candidate, please feel free to contact us at csm-contact[at]ccpgames.com. We’ll do our best to get back to you as soon as we can.

– CCP Diagoras