There's a fledgling democracy in EVE Online and Kevin Schram reports on it and some of the controversies that have surrounded it and the game so far.

In part because of the t20 controversy, CCP announced in March 2008 that a Council of Interstellar Management would be created. Nine players would be elected to the Council and would be flown to CCP headquarters in Iceland and would hold court with CCP developers and be able to voice the concerns and suggestions of the games' player base.

Since the creation of the CSM in 2008, they have claimed several vital improvements in EVE as their doing. First and for most, being the skill training queue. For the uninitiated, skills in EVE are based on 'setting a skill to train' and then waiting for a timer, as opposed to a certain game with elves and mages where you kill butterflies for hours, grinding your way to a higher skill level. The timer on these skills range from just 30 minutes for some low level ones to 25 days for some higher level ones. Formerly, if you weren't online to change your skills when the previous one ran out, your character would stop skilling. The skill queue, which the CSM claims as a product of its existence, allows players to plan skills to train up to the next 24 hours.

Read it all here.