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Monday, August 3, 2015

CSM X: The Gorga Mess

Sometimes I just am not in the mood for shenanigans. The latest example concerns the matter of Gorga's participation on the Council of Stellar Management this term. Or, perhaps lack of participation is a better term. From what I can tell, Gorga was a no-show for just about the entire term. No big deal, right? The CSM sees this problem every term.

In CSM 9, inactive members were encouraged to resign. This year's collection of representatives don't seem so accommodating. On Friday, following a meeting, Jayne Fillon sent out the following tweet at 1644 GMT.


My reading of the Twitter feed is perhaps not as generous as some would like. First, StupidGenius from Cap Stable asked Jayne a question about how many members of CSM backed a public call for Gorga to resign. Jayne responded at 1818 GMT.


A public call for Gorga to resign is a huge escalation in the situation, one that ensured drama. But I became even more puzzled reading a tweet from CCP Leeloo, CCP's CSM coordinator, less than three hours later.

So if CCP is taking steps to address the issue, why make a public call for someone's resignation? I suspect some sort of politics is at play,whether a factional conflict inside the CSM or someone preparing for a re-election run. Perhaps both suppositions are true. Either that, or someone just likes drama for its own sake.

I thought about listing all of the parts of  Jayne's appearance on CSM Watch Saturday I found troubling. I listened to the podcast 3 times to make sure I understood what he said. Quite frankly, the circus that Jayne's tweet started is not worth the effort, both for me to write and anyone to read. Let's just say that Jayne's performance left a negative impression on me.

Early Sunday morning Sugar Kyle addressed the issue in her weekly CSM update. She began her section on the Gorga situation as follows:
"Friday, while I was at work, all hell seemed to break loose. I came home to discover that 'The CSM' wished for Gorga to resign. Not having been spoken to about the subject, I spent a large amount of the evening finding out what happened even as people asked me what was going on."
I should add that in the episode of CSM Watch, Jayne disclosed that the CSM took no vote and he took that no one speaking up against asking Gorga to resign meant that no one had an issue with doing so publicly. Jayne responded to Sugar's comments on Twitter:
Reading Sugar's blog post does leave a different impression of the conversations occurring in the CSM communication channels:
"The case of the public call for Gorga to resign is an interesting situation. I was at work and started getting people asking me what was going on and why did I want Gorga to resign. The topic of looking into his inactivity had cropped up. Is he okay? Is he busy? Has anyone heard from him?"
In fact, Sugar seems to have more of an issue with the way she was dragged into the mess more than any desire to see Gorga remain on the CSM:
"However, on Friday as I understand it there was the Friday meeting. I was not at because I was at work. Then there was a tweet. Then all hell broke loose. I have no problem with members of the CSM asking another member to resign and stating a reason for that. If people wish they can start to lobby for me to resign. That is personal choice. My natural tendency is to be very angry at being included in another decision..."
Sunday proved an interesting day as in the wake of Sugar's weekly update Jayne had to retreat from his original position. After getting hammered on Twitter, Jayne wanted to discuss the matter on the Tweetfleet Slack. I pointed out that despite Jayne's original tweet on Friday, the decision to call out Gorga in public was not unanimous. When Stupid Genius asked whether the decision to call out Gorga publicly was a unanimous choice of the other 12 members or decided at a meeting, he was told all the other members agreed when in fact the decision was made at a meeting. EVE Radio's Dirk McGirk had another relevant question. Who, in fact, were the other CSM members who chose to make the decision to call out Gorga publicly. Jayne's response is below:
"When I tweeted about it being unanimous, that was in reference to his inactivity. He didn't specify in his question and I didn't specify in my answer, my fault. Secondly, there was no official vote or anything, it was a discussion followed by a screenshot of the proposed tweet, and a call for objections. No one objected so I posted the tweet. That meeting wasn't recorded, so I don't have the information of who was on the meeting or active in the Skype channel at the time. I know that cagali, Manny, and sugar were not, but for a more detailed answer you can talk to Corbexx and hope he recorded it.

"At the end of the day, if sugar wants to separate herself from this, that's fine, but until you ask sugar 'do you think that Gorga is inactive and should resign?' and receive anything except a yes in response, I stand by what I said."
Let's forget that a big difference exists between causing a scandal by doing something publicly versus quietly handling the situation. What is Jayne's response when someone wants to know who approved the measure? The meeting in question was not recorded. The action passed without an affirmative vote. In effect, we don't even know if a majority of the CSM actually paid attention enough to agree by staying silent. One could assume that a majority did. Then again, I think everyone assumed the vote was 13-0 when Jayne sent out the original tweet. In reality, however, we just don't know. How's that for CSM accountability?

Truthfully, I don't care if Gorga is on the CSM. What I do care about is that the CSM not squander any political capital they may possess with CCP on in-fighting. Especially with a stupid stunt like this. Just handle the situation quietly. Stop the unnecessary drama. As a former corpmate tweeted yesterday:

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