CSM Wire - CSM 12 Election Edition

With the arrival of the silly season (aka the Council of Stellar Management election), I spent most of the weekend updating and improving my CSM Wire site. Out with the generic white template, in with pastels. But people don't usually visit the site for the looks.

I built CSM Wire out of a desire to make doing research on the CSM, especially during election season, less painful. I then figured that if I found the information useful, that others covering the CSM elections might also. By adding links to interviews and other content, I hope that anyone interested in voting in the CSM election will find the site useful.

Now that the site is presentable with the basic features I plan to use this season, I figured I would explain what I included on the site.

The Home Page

Along the left side of the website is a list of the declared candidates. Until CCP finalizes the list, I will only create pages for those candidates who have posted in the CSM Campaigns section of the official EVE Online forums. Clicking on a name sends visitors to a candidate's page.

Along the top is a series of buttons with various topics. The "Eligibility And Voting" section lists the rules governing the election. I still need to add an explanation of the single transferrable vote system used in the election.

The CSM 9, CSM 10, and CSM 11 buttons lead to a little history of the CSM. I created the site in 2015 so only the CSM 10 and CSM 11 sections have previous election content.

Information about the current CSM

The CSM 11 page will probably draw some interest as researchers and voters try to figure out how the current members performed. In addition to a link to the CSM 11 election content, the page contains a list of the current members (along with links to their individual pages), the summaries written by Jin'taan, a copy of the first summit meeting's minutes, and an attendance chart. I'd take the attendance chart with a grain of salt as real life does get in the way. I may try to compile a list of the roundtables some of the individual members held, but I can't make a promise about that.

An example of candidate information

Finally comes the information most people will search for, about the candidates themselves. I include the date the character creation date, corp/alliance, and any links to social media and/or outside websites. I also include links to the candidate's EveWho.com listing, EVE Online forum posts, and zKillboard history. Below the above information I link to and copy/paste the candidate's campaign post from the EVE Online forums.

Those are not all the sources of information I use, but do present a very solid base with which to start. Also, if all those sources come up dry, I start to question if the candidate even exists.

I do have to add one more little fact. From experience, I know I will have to prune 10-12 candidates from the site once CCP announces the final list of approved candidates. My problem is that I can't wait until the candidates are approved before creating the pages. I figure I still may need to make 5 or so additional pages once the candidates are announced, but that is a lot better than 35 or 40. Also, I need to have the site up-to-date as quickly as possible. Having the site ready a day or two before the election period doesn't do much good.