Alekseyev Karrde

Alekseyev is the second CSM candidate that I'll review here.  I've read his candidacy post which is mirrored on his blog. 

Focus:  Mercenary experience.
Secondary Focus: War Declaration mechanics, small gang PVP
Tertiary focus:  broken game mechanics.

The Good: 

Member of Noir., a well known and respected mercenary corporation.  I haven't had any business with Noir. directly.  I may have ended up on some of their kill mails, but I don't really pay attention to such things and I certainly wouldn't hold that against them.  What is important is that I've heard of them and this is important because any viable candidate has to have some brand recognition. 

Member of CSM4:  This guy's been there before, he knows the players and he knows the process.  Experience is invaluable and he has already established relationships with CCP developers (for better or worse).

Platform:  War Declaration mechanics are indeed broken.  War declarations are far too easy to evade, and have little or no impact or consequence to the game.  If the war dec function was removed from EVE, I don't think anyone would notice.  That being said, Alekseyev didn't mention how he'd like to see the mechanic fixed (more later).

The Bad:

Area of Play:  Mercenary corporations operate in a small niche of EVE that was created as an indirect consequence of other mechanics in the game.  That in itself isn't bad, but the Mercenary experience is a very small aspect of EVE that affects only a handful of players.  Of course fixing the war dec mechanics is important to a mercenary corporation like Noir.  Unfortunately this platform alone is far too narrow to support another merc bloc candidate.

Over representation:  Selene and Elise apparently represent the Mercenary bloc on CSM6.  Selene has already announced and won a position on the CSM7 ballot.  Elise has not.   If Alekseyev's platform was a bit wider and if he had addressed a wider range of issues, I would have dismissed his association with the merc bloc as a non issue. Even one seat going to a single candidate with a focus on war dec mechanics and the mercenary experience is over representing that small group of players.

Specifics:  Alekseyev offered very few specifics in his candidacy announcement.  What's clear is that he wants to fix war dec mechanics, but he hasn't presented any vision for what his solution would look like.  I realize that CCP likes to come up with their own solutions to problems.  I think that the candidates idea of a solution is an important indication of how he will frame his argument. 

Communications:  A few questions were posted in Alekseyev's  announcement.  None were answered.  We already have too many non-responsive CSM members.

History:  A search of forum posts by Alekseyev yielded three posts, one of which was his announcement.  Apparently Noir. was involved in a dispute with another corporation over the terms of a contract.  The posts yielded no insight into this candidate's perspective.

Conclusion:  At this time I can not support Alekseyev for CSM7. While I agree with his assessment about war dec mechanics and I personally admire Noir., Alekseyev's platform is too narrow to deserve a seat on CSM7.

Good Luck, Alekseyev.