[Jester's Trek] Attention CSM9 candidates
Attention CSM9 candidates
Just a quickie, but I keep forgetting to cover it, so I thought I'd cover it.
For those who haven't seen it yet, here are two files that show STV in operation during the CSM8 election. The first covers the full 14 candidate selection. The second covers the two candidate election to decide on the permanent seats:
http://jestertrek.com/eve/blog/2013/csm-1.txt
http://jestertrek.com/eve/blog/2013/csm-2.txt
I don't have a whole lot to say about these. I mostly want to make sure they're available to those of you who might be interested, and to have them on the blog so that I can point to them next year as we approach the CSM9 elections. Though we haven't talked to CCP about it yet, it seems very likely to me that STV will be a continuing feature in CSM elections for some time to come. It certainly seems to have produced a more active, engaged CSM!
For me, two of the interesting candidates to watch in the first file are Chitsa Jason and James Arget. Both start with about 1600 votes, virtually tied with Nathan Jameson. What's interesting to me in terms of watching the algorithm run is both of these strong candidates apparently would have been elected whether STV was running or not. But since they started in the 12th and 13th position respectively, neither has a chance to transfer any of their votes to other wormhole candidates. But both they and Nathan pick up votes at each elimination, indicating all three had good but not overwhelming cross-candidate support. It was touch-and-go to the very end which two out of the three would be on CSM8.
This was interesting to me because all of the wormhole candidates endorsed each other as slots two through five on their respective ballots. And the CCP analysis of the way the STV system actually worked showed that those were the critical endorsement slots. But the wormhole candidates couldn't really take advantage of this with candidates outside w-space.. they had nothing to negotiate with, no carrot that they could wave in front of a strong candidate to say "I will endorse you as my #2 or #3 slot if you will do the same for me."
Take-away: aligning yourself with people in your own bloc is fine, but if you don't also align yourself with strong candidates outside your bloc, you throw your chances of getting on the CSM down to random chance and the vagaries of the STV system. Save an endorsement or two for people outside your bloc so that you can trade them for equal endorsements from these other candidates.
Compare and contrast with Malcanis. Malcanis, also a strong candidate, actually started in a weaker position than all three of these wormhole candidates. But Malcanis aligned himself early with several very strong candidates, endorsed them, and received equal endorsements in return. These candidates, including myself, had a lot of down-tier votes to share and that combined with the broad support the strong candidates enjoyed, allowed more and more of these down-tier votes to filter down to Malcanis.
The take-away: for the CSM9 election, the best strategy is to have a strong base of support yourself, but also to align yourself with a broad spectrum of strong candidates who will support you with their down-tier endorsements.
You can see the same thing playing out in the second file, only this time I was the beneficiary. Certainly, I started with a strong base of support. But in the middle rounds, you can see Sort Dragon pulling within a hundred votes of pushing me out of the #2 spot. But I also had aligned myself with several very strong candidates. When they were eliminated -- particularly Ali Aras, Mangala Solaris, and Trebor Daehdoow -- that vaulted me well past Sort and to within 50 votes of taking the #1 slot from mynnna.
So, we see the same take-away. Build a strong base of support for yourself, but align yourself with other strong candidates.
Anyway, just something of interest for those of you thinking about a run for CSM9. And no, it's not too early. If you're going to run, you should be paying attention to what we're up to, particularly around summit time, which is coming up...
Source: Attention CSM9 candidates