Basileus Volkan wrote:Arrogance is usually only seen as such from below.
Ones personal feelings towards a political figure do not determine their competence.
In fact, as far as I am aware, the current CSM has done a lot more than the previous ones.
That's a bit of a side issue, but one that bears repeating.
Having been on all those pasts CSMs (except the first), I am in a very good position to tell you that while the quality of elected members has overall increased, the major progress in terms of ability to accomplish things is because the CSM-CCP process has strongly evolved.
Practical examples:
During CSM 2, communication between CSM and CCP was limited to exactly 1 summit in Iceland and 1 brainstorming session with CCP Abathur and CCP Greyscale. No "pre-meeting", no post-meeting, nothing. Something CSM 2 fought to change.
During CSM 3, communication between CSM and CCP was limited to 1 iceland summit and 2 online meetings.
During CSM 4, we got the stakeholder status that allowed us to fight for the inclusion of "our" items in the release plan (the list of stuff includded in an expansion), before that it was up to devs to pick stuff from our list if they chose to.
During CSM 5, communication was extended to a lot of forum dialog with the devs (the private CSM forum was only used by CSM members before that). We got devs to start poking us about requests that they have while they were developping stuff.
So far, during CSM 6, we got a few of the key devs (or just cool devs) to hang out with us in a skype channel where a lot of discussions can take place, in addition to an increased dev presence on the forums.
The CSM is only as good as its capacity to engage the devs in dialog and give them feedback. Each CSM has added more communication abilities on top of what its predecessor already had, it should therefore come as no surprise that each CSM is able to accomplish more.
Also, while initially many devs were very cautious about the CSM ("who the hell are these players hanging about in the office"), over the terms they've come to accept us as a good feedback tool. We're only as good as CCP's willingness to use us (I think I'll forever have CSM 3 Zastrow's "but please use us as cheap hookers" request in my mind :p)
So, yes, CSM 6 looks set to do a better job than CSM 5, but not as a question of effort on the part of previous CSMs.