Wintreath Regional Community
The Frozen Village of Fourneshore - Chats and Discussions => Winter Square - Governance => Topic started by: Wintermoot on August 12, 2024, 05:36:18 AM
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Introduction
This is intended as a follow-up to my first post: On In-Character Governance and Considerations for the Delegacy (https://wintreath.com/forums/index.php?topic=8170), which explains my general ideas toward in-character governance that dovetails with this post. If you haven't already you may want to read that post first.
As we continue our revival, the time has come to consider how to do NationStates foreign affairs going forward. Since our community split in February 2023, I have been handling our foreign affairs, which in turn has been on autopilot. We've accepted all requests for new relations, and I've represented Wintreath at various events in other regions. However, we have not put out a foreign dispatch or assigned ambassadors since the split, and, being one person, I have not been able to go out of my way to represent us to any particular community or group. However, our friend-regions have been very understanding and nobody has terminated relations with us due to this inactivity. In fact, several regions have gone the extra mile of maintaining regular contact with us even as we couldn't reciprocate. As a result, we have relations with more regions now than we did at the time the split happened.
Minimalist Governance and Is FA Fun?
In my last post, I discussed the concept of minimalist governance, which focuses on things that are required (such as having a delegate), and then as a community focusing on the fun things we want to do (instead of having a government that is tasked with creating them). That raises the question of where foreign affairs plays in this minimalist mindset. Obviously, having relations with other regions is not a requirement. Wintreath, the NS region, and our community would all continue on without them. So the question becomes whether having them is fun.
Sometimes foreign affairs isn't fun at all. For a time, leading Wintreath's foreign affairs was a dismal experience due to various controversies and dramas, exasperated by our own community conflicts and splits over the course of over three years. At times we also give people who have been banned in other regions a second chance if we feel they're deserving of it, which at times has also led to contentious relations. However, I sincerely believe that with the improvements we've made in leadership and moderation over the past year, many of those experiences have come to an end. I believe Wintreath is now a safer and more harmonious community, and one that's more discerning about when second changes are deserved. Our community is one where people within can feel comfortable being themselves while our friends outside can have faith in us as a reliable friend.
Since our split, our foreign affairs have been very positive overall. We've had major successes such as the establishment of the N-Day Trident Alliance, which in turn has survived the last two N-Days as a top faction. We have great friend-regions, some of whose members have become regular fixtures within our own community. I believe that's both the hallmark of great relations between communities and evidence of the promise that future foreign affairs can hold. FA can be a fun and enriching experience for Wintreath, and having weathered past storms, it would be tragic to abandon that promise now.
Community-Based Procedures
Having determined that foreign affairs is something we should do in modern Wintreath, the question then becomes how to run it. Obviously, the answer isn't to revive an unnecessary FA ministry or to try to force people to become ambassadors...to push jobs on people that they don't want. I've given the matter some thought, and I believe I've come up with a system that's community-based, straightforward, and efficient.
Opening Relations
Opening relations requires two things: community approval and somebody to step up as our ambassador to the new community. Obviously the odds of successful relations are low if the community doesn't support having them, and if nobody is interested enough in the other community to serve as our ambassador then our interest probably isn't high enough to justify relations. In Wintreath and other regions, there's a lot of zombie relations: relations that only exist on paper with little to no interaction between governments or communities. Our foreign affairs should reflect where things actually are, not where we wish they could be, and if there's no interest in a relation then we shouldn't enter into it to begin with.
So when another community requests relations with Wintreath, a notice would be given to Citizens in the #governance Discord channel. First, it would ask if there were any objections to opening relations, and then ask for volunteers to serve as our ambassador to them. If there's no objection within a day and a volunteer in a reasonable timeframe, awesome! Relations started! If there was an objection, we would discuss the issue with the goal of reaching a consensus one way or another. If the consensus were to not have relations or there were no volunteers to serve as ambassador, then we would not pursue that opportunity.
Closing Relations
To prevent the accumulation of zombie relations, I believe we should automatically close relations if we haven't been able to find an ambassador within one month of the position becoming vacant, unless there's some emergency in the community that prevents ambassador positions from being filled. As aspirational as it would be to hope that all relations could be revived, again, if there's no interest among the current members of the community then it's a relation that serves no purpose.
Otherwise, it's rare for us to initiate a closure, but it does happen. In those cases, any Citizen would be able to initiate a discussion on closing relations with a community in the Discord #governance channel, with the aim of coming to a community consensus. In the event that support for closing relations appears to be overwhelming or in response to an emergency, the founder may also close relations in the interests if speed and efficiency as recently demonstrated by closing relations with Alcris.
Maintaining Relations
This is the big question mark, and will be based largely on what individuals and the community want to do...would it like to put together a publication? Would it like to send shorter summaries? Is there any interest in events and if so, what kind? These are questions that would need to be tackled over time, but would be based on what we and our friend-regions want to do, not on what we feel we're supposed to do (which usually ends up being some job or duty that sucks away any interest in FA).
As part of maintaining relations, our ambassadors should be regularly surveyed to make sure their assignment is still fun and interesting to them, and hasn't become an obligation. Assignments that keep becoming obligations are potential relations that should be reviewed for closure.
Foreign Affairs and Out-of-Character (OOC) Issues
While our recent foreign affairs experience has been very positive, there are still foreign communities which we have past OOC issues with, not to mention any the potential for new situations to arise. For example, if someone is banned from another region, they come to Wintreath, and then their original region contacts us about it. In these cases, the Regional Stability Squad will continue to oversee these matters as Wintreath's OOC oversight body. When that authority conflicts with the procedures here, the authority of the RSS will take precedence.
A Community-Powered Approach
Traditionally, foreign affairs has been the exclusive purview of the in-character government, especially the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. However, we have decided not to return to traditional NS-style governance for good reason, creating both new challenges and new opportunities for governing our community. In my opinion, a community-powered approached to foreign affairs has worked well in regions such as Forest, where knowledgeable and interested people regularly discuss the pros and cons of establishing, strengthening, and closing relations with various regions. Beyond that, our approach is minimalistic, efficient, and requires nothing more than volunteers to serve as ambassadors...no government or bureaucracy required.
I strongly believe that a system like this is the way to go. However, these are ultimately just my thoughts on something we should all be comfortable with. So please share your thoughts and feedback if you have any!
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Echoing comments on Discord, I also think that closing embassies out of lack of ambassadors seems a bit harsh. Lack of interest in the ambassador role does not necessarily reflect lack of interest in any given region and can be due to many other factors. It can be difficult to find people who want to take on the role of ambassador, even when there is direct interaction and relationships between regions. It would be a shame to be permanently lose connections with other regions simply because people are temporarily too busy or the region is going through a brief lull.
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But if there's nobody willing to be an ambassador, how can there be relationships? It seems to me that accepting relations and then not doing anything with them...stringing them along, essentially, is worse than just saying we don't have the ability to do this right now.
I know hope springs eternal, but if there's no interaction and there's no interest in interaction for whatever reason, at what point do we let go?
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But if there's nobody willing to be an ambassador, how can there be relationships? It seems to me that accepting relations and then not doing anything with them...stringing them along, essentially, is worse than just saying we don't have the ability to do this right now.
I know hope springs eternal, but if there's no interaction and there's no interest in interaction for whatever reason, at what point do we let go?
We've had people come over and participate in the Minecraft server, join in discussions etc. I would consider that to still be a relationship even if there is no formal ambassadorial work going on.
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We've had people come over and participate in the Minecraft server, join in discussions etc. I would consider that to still be a relationship even if there is no formal ambassadorial work going on.
So what's the solution? How do we separate these informal but positive relations with relations that are just absolutely dead beyond hope?
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We've had people come over and participate in the Minecraft server, join in discussions etc. I would consider that to still be a relationship even if there is no formal ambassadorial work going on.
So what's the solution? How do we separate these informal but positive relations with relations that are just absolutely dead beyond hope?
I don't know if there's any single good reliable consistent metric. There often tends to not be. I think it's clear that whether there is an ambassador isn't the solution though. If this is something we wanted to do, ideally we would re-review all the relationships regularly, but without a formal government group that is difficult. Maybe some sort of more complex metric depending on certain number of interactions between regions over a period of time based on people posting in their spaces and ours, but that would be difficult to track.
Maybe this is the wrong angle to come from though - is it such a big deal to have these relations continued? It's not like there is any cost to having them. We already got rid of citizenship revocation; I think that in a similar way, to allow these relations to continue would also be a consistent application of our principle of openness.
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I don't know if there's any single good reliable consistent metric. There often tends to not be. I think it's clear that whether there is an ambassador isn't the solution though. If this is something we wanted to do, ideally we would re-review all the relationships regularly, but without a formal government group that is difficult. Maybe some sort of more complex metric depending on certain number of interactions between regions over a period of time based on people posting in their spaces and ours, but that would be difficult to track.
Maybe this is the wrong angle to come from though - is it such a big deal to have these relations continued? It's not like there is any cost to having them. We already got rid of citizenship revocation; I think that in a similar way, to allow these relations to continue would also be a consistent application of our principle of openness.
Over time as I've become more of a minimalist I've grown more comfortable with letting go of things that aren't active or working out just in general, so it very well could just be a me thing. It doesn't cause harm to have inactive relations per say, but it doesn't do any good either, and it doesn't reflect the reality of our relations. If push comes to shove and we have difficulty getting ambassadors, I'd rather the ones we get go to growing relations we already have rather than hoping an inactive relationship could be revived. I suppose if we want to do a review, I can commit to starting that discussion in #governance every 6 months or so. It's not something we need to be hyper-focused on, just something to look at every once in awhile.
But beyond that, I feel like we should review our stuff in general to make sure it matches what we're actually doing. It's funny that you bring up Citizenship revocations, because I was originally going to propose this month that we bring them back (trying to pace myself when it comes to Wintreath work). Not anything that strict like we used to have...something basic like needing to make 1 post a year on any platform. We still have people who we know left during the split a year and a half ago and are still Citizens because they didn't formally renounce their Citizenship. That way our list of Citizens reflects our somewhat active community.
I think the true main problem with zombie Citizens is that in the past we put the cart before the horse...directing people to become Citizens as soon as they joined and before they had explored the community and decided if Wintreath was right for them. Last fall, I removed those directions from our NS welcome telegram, and what I've found that we've had far fewer applications, but those we've had are from people who have mostly stayed afterwards. So any revocation would impact far fewer people to begin with, and I think there's other ways to deal with the issues that led to us abandoning revocations, like an option for a private Citizenship app where people don't see that someone is having to reapply.
Didn't mean to elaborate so much on that...this is not an actual proposal, but I figured if I'm going to bring up revocations at all I better make my case along with it. :P
Even with our forum games. I've been thinking things like "Would Spyfall be more successful if it was moved to Discord? Should we close Werewolf since we haven't had a native Werewolf scene in years? What do we really need a website for? (my answer: security checks and information/discussions that people on the RMB side can look at without being on Discord)
I guess in the end I feel like we'll be more focused and organized if we narrow things down to what's active and what we're actually doing, and then we can build on that as we go on.
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I enjoy a good NS festival sometimes. As with most things, it depends on where I am at any given time with my depression, but in the past, I've had fun with some of them. Can be a nice way of meeting new people if done right, and planned properly, not something I do well. Either I had them happen too soon or not soon enough, I'm never quite sure. I used to enjoy attending some of them though, so that could be fun.
To be honest, I'm always a bit worried someone might have a problem with some of my worst decisions in NS, but alas, I might also have been completely forgotten to history so meh, as long as I'm not causing Wintreath a problem, I'm happy with what we decide to do for the most part. As long as I don't have to talk to anyone I don't want to talk to. O:-) I might also want to open relations between Wintreath and my own region, but that's just my own selfish hope.
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In terms of Wintreath's foreign affairs, I think having embassies with other regions, even if there is minimal activity between us, is a good thing. Even if we don't have active relations with a region, having an embassy open with them shows that there is still an amount of friendliness between our regions. For an embassy to be closed I think it should require someone to request a review of said embassy. Routine reviews of embassies would also be fine, but should be significantly less stringent than any investigation coming from a specific request to review. Routine reviews should only serve to clear out regions that are very clearly dead.
In terms of reviewing citizenship, I think that would be a good thing, although there are many many ways to do it that would be undoubtedly poor. I think one way we could clear out inactive citizens would be to have routine checks where citizens must respond to show a wish to retain citizenship. Having it on a consistent schedule, like requiring a simple response on the first week of every month or something would allow people to easily maintain it while clearing out inactive people. I think that frequent announcements for it would be needed so that way active people don't miss it (and perhaps responding to said announcement if it's on discord would count too), but I don't think anyone should be pinged for it, that way we don't summon inactive people who don't actually care. Pinging people on these forums would probably be fine though imo, because people aren't likely to see a ping here unless they're active. I think that missing two responses in sequence would then be the threshold of losing citizenship.
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In terms of Wintreath's foreign affairs, I think having embassies with other regions, even if there is minimal activity between us, is a good thing. Even if we don't have active relations with a region, having an embassy open with them shows that there is still an amount of friendliness between our regions. For an embassy to be closed I think it should require someone to request a review of said embassy. Routine reviews of embassies would also be fine, but should be significantly less stringent than any investigation coming from a specific request to review. Routine reviews should only serve to clear out regions that are very clearly dead.
In terms of reviewing citizenship, I think that would be a good thing, although there are many many ways to do it that would be undoubtedly poor. I think one way we could clear out inactive citizens would be to have routine checks where citizens must respond to show a wish to retain citizenship. Having it on a consistent schedule, like requiring a simple response on the first week of every month or something would allow people to easily maintain it while clearing out inactive people. I think that frequent announcements for it would be needed so that way active people don't miss it (and perhaps responding to said announcement if it's on discord would count too), but I don't think anyone should be pinged for it, that way we don't summon inactive people who don't actually care. Pinging people on these forums would probably be fine though imo, because people aren't likely to see a ping here unless they're active. I think that missing two responses in sequence would then be the threshold of losing citizenship.
The manner in which reviews would be conducted would definitely needed to be agreed on and consistent. Personally I don't like overly stringent requirements for stuff like embassies and foreign relations. I think sometimes loyalty is more important to numbers.
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In terms of reviewing citizenship, I think that would be a good thing, although there are many many ways to do it that would be undoubtedly poor. I think one way we could clear out inactive citizens would be to have routine checks where citizens must respond to show a wish to retain citizenship. Having it on a consistent schedule, like requiring a simple response on the first week of every month or something would allow people to easily maintain it while clearing out inactive people. I think that frequent announcements for it would be needed so that way active people don't miss it (and perhaps responding to said announcement if it's on discord would count too), but I don't think anyone should be pinged for it, that way we don't summon inactive people who don't actually care. Pinging people on these forums would probably be fine though imo, because people aren't likely to see a ping here unless they're active. I think that missing two responses in sequence would then be the threshold of losing citizenship.
Nice idea, that reminds me of a micronation I'm in that maintains citizenship by emailing everyone once a year to confirm that they still want to stay citizens.
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The manner in which reviews would be conducted would definitely needed to be agreed on and consistent. Personally I don't like overly stringent requirements for stuff like embassies and foreign relations. I think sometimes loyalty is more important to numbers.
While the manner in which reviews are called for and carried out should be agreed upon and consistent, I don't think there should be any checks on "activity" or "numbers". I don' think there are any good quantitative measurements that consistently provide a good measurement of a region's worth. Like you said loyalty is sometimes better than numbers. I said that routine checks should be less "stringent" than one called specifically for a region, because if someone's calling for a specific embassy to be reviewed there's likely a problem that should be carefully looked into. Routine checks would mostly just be fore clearing out regions that are long dead (like raiders tag it and there's only defender sleepers kinda dead).
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The manner in which reviews would be conducted would definitely needed to be agreed on and consistent. Personally I don't like overly stringent requirements for stuff like embassies and foreign relations. I think sometimes loyalty is more important to numbers.
While the manner in which reviews are called for and carried out should be agreed upon and consistent, I don't think there should be any checks on "activity" or "numbers". I don' think there are any good quantitative measurements that consistently provide a good measurement of a region's worth. Like you said loyalty is sometimes better than numbers. I said that routine checks should be less "stringent" than one called specifically for a region, because if someone's calling for a specific embassy to be reviewed there's likely a problem that should be carefully looked into. Routine checks would mostly just be fore clearing out regions that are long dead (like raiders tag it and there's only defender sleepers kinda dead).
I hate the taggers, I don't understand the point. If I was going to do something, I figure you either go all the way or fucking forget it. Partial conquest to me is like partial surgery, not good enough!
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I hate the taggers, I don't understand the point. If I was going to do something, I figure you either go all the way or fucking forget it. Partial conquest to me is like partial surgery, not good enough!
Don't think of tagging as conquering a region, think of it as graffitiing an abandoned building. Additionally occupations can take weeks or months, and constant vigilance from the raider BC officers to turn off defender jumps. Tagging takes only an update and can hit dozens of regions in that short time. They have fundamentally different goals. Occupations destroy regions. Tagging is just putting some promotional material on some already dead stuff. Additionally tagging is a lot more fast paced given they have to contend with fenda chasers. The more people you have the better you are against them, and everyone gets to be active. Occupations require pilers, but the only people who you benefit from being active are the BC officers. imo tagging is much better than occupations. Tagging harms no one, occupations kill communities.
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I hate the taggers, I don't understand the point. If I was going to do something, I figure you either go all the way or fucking forget it. Partial conquest to me is like partial surgery, not good enough!
Don't think of tagging as conquering a region, think of it as graffitiing an abandoned building. Additionally occupations can take weeks or months, and constant vigilance from the raider BC officers to turn off defender jumps. Tagging takes only an update and can hit dozens of regions in that short time. They have fundamentally different goals. Occupations destroy regions. Tagging is just putting some promotional material on some already dead stuff. Additionally tagging is a lot more fast paced given they have to contend with fenda chasers. The more people you have the better you are against them, and everyone gets to be active. Occupations require pilers, but the only people who you benefit from being active are the BC officers. imo tagging is much better than occupations. Tagging harms no one, occupations kill communities.
I still consider it beneath me. Mind you I only took dead regions anyway. Can't ruin a long gone or banned founder region, only improve! More importantly, as with most things, my time has long past. My military stance is "retired."
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I hate the taggers, I don't understand the point. If I was going to do something, I figure you either go all the way or fucking forget it. Partial conquest to me is like partial surgery, not good enough!
Don't think of tagging as conquering a region, think of it as graffitiing an abandoned building. Additionally occupations can take weeks or months, and constant vigilance from the raider BC officers to turn off defender jumps. Tagging takes only an update and can hit dozens of regions in that short time. They have fundamentally different goals. Occupations destroy regions. Tagging is just putting some promotional material on some already dead stuff. Additionally tagging is a lot more fast paced given they have to contend with fenda chasers. The more people you have the better you are against them, and everyone gets to be active. Occupations require pilers, but the only people who you benefit from being active are the BC officers. imo tagging is much better than occupations. Tagging harms no one, occupations kill communities.
Speaking from experience, taggers do also occasionally target slow-paced communities with low RMB activity as well, oftentimes with activity concealed due to having moved more off-site to forums or Discord (and as a result, founder CTE also doesn't get noticed until it's too late). I would therefore extend your analogy to vandalism of any low-security building rather than just abandoned ones.
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To be honest, I'm always a bit worried someone might have a problem with some of my worst decisions in NS, but alas, I might also have been completely forgotten to history so meh, as long as I'm not causing Wintreath a problem, I'm happy with what we decide to do for the most part. As long as I don't have to talk to anyone I don't want to talk to. O:-) I might also want to open relations between Wintreath and my own region, but that's just my own selfish hope.
In some ways Wintreath marches to the beat of its own drum, most prominently in accepting people that other regions might have a problem with. Sometimes that's just people who are disliked. In other cases it's people who have been banned elsewhere. In that latter case, of course we don't just take in anybody of course...it depends on what exactly they did, whether they recognize their behaviour was wrong, and whether they're committed to improvement or have already improved. Unfortunately, there's also cases where regions exaggerate or make up claims against people, and so we have to make our own judgements based on the evidence that's available to us on a case by case basis.
That being said, sometimes other regions may not agree with our judgement. When that happens, hopefully those differences can be navigated, but it's also possible they're irreconcilable. But even then, I don't think it's an issue of any one person causing a problem.
In terms of Wintreath's foreign affairs, I think having embassies with other regions, even if there is minimal activity between us, is a good thing. Even if we don't have active relations with a region, having an embassy open with them shows that there is still an amount of friendliness between our regions. For an embassy to be closed I think it should require someone to request a review of said embassy. Routine reviews of embassies would also be fine, but should be significantly less stringent than any investigation coming from a specific request to review. Routine reviews should only serve to clear out regions that are very clearly dead.
I'm not concerned with minimal activity, but no activity at all over the course of a long time. Sometimes regions have emergencies that prevent them from conducting FA, just as we've had, and that's understandable. But in other cases it feels like there's just no interest on either side and no informal relations that would justify holding on...kinda like something thrown in the closet that we haven't used in ages, but don't want to get rid of because what if we could use it in the future?
I read some advice a few years back that if you haven't used something in a year, it's time to let it go. It's proven to be good advice in my life, and I suspect it would be good advice here too.
However, I don't think we need to resolve this issue to restart a FA program. It's possible that things would change once we sent ambassadors, or at the very least we'd have additional evidence where relations are dead beyond any interest in reviving. We could review things in spring, see where things stand, and then return to this particular aspect of discussion.
In terms of reviewing citizenship, I think that would be a good thing, although there are many many ways to do it that would be undoubtedly poor. I think one way we could clear out inactive citizens would be to have routine checks where citizens must respond to show a wish to retain citizenship. Having it on a consistent schedule, like requiring a simple response on the first week of every month or something would allow people to easily maintain it while clearing out inactive people. I think that frequent announcements for it would be needed so that way active people don't miss it (and perhaps responding to said announcement if it's on discord would count too), but I don't think anyone should be pinged for it, that way we don't summon inactive people who don't actually care. Pinging people on these forums would probably be fine though imo, because people aren't likely to see a ping here unless they're active. I think that missing two responses in sequence would then be the threshold of losing citizenship.
I definitely agree with not pinging people. What happened a lot of times with Citizenship checks in old Wintreath was that people were pinged for inactivity, revived their NS nation, then went inactive again until the next time they were pinged. The truth is, they weren't interested in Wintreath anymore but felt obligated to maintain their Citizenship. And we shouldn't consider having Citizenship or maintaining it to be an obligation...it should be a natural byproduct of their interest and care. I want people to be here because they want to be, not because they feel obligated to be.
That's why basing it on having made a single-post on the RMB, Discord, or the forums is probably the best way to hone in on people who have lost interest without punishing people who are busy or who are only around once in awhile (which is ok!). It's based on what people are already doing anyways and doesn't create an obligation. It's not something that's going to punish anyone if they happen to be away the wrong week. And it should be easy to manage too...a script would let me know if someone hasn't posted on the RMB or forums, and doing Discord searches for the number of Citizens we have should take less than 15 minutes. We could add something inviting people to respond if they want to maintain Citizenship, preferably in addition to this, but if they haven't made a post anywhere in 6 months or a year I'm not sure they're going to do it here either unless they're pinged (which goes back to obligation)...but we could experiment and see.
Nice idea, that reminds me of a micronation I'm in that maintains citizenship by emailing everyone once a year to confirm that they still want to stay citizens.
Not related at all, but that sounds cool! It'd be interesting to hear more about your experiences with micronations and what led you to join one.
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I get emails for pings here so I see them easily. Was surprised to learn that this seems uncommon, did I turn that on myself or was that changed as a default setting after I joined?
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I get emails for pings here so I see them easily. Was surprised to learn that this seems uncommon, did I turn that on myself or was that changed as a default setting after I joined?
I don't know...it's hard to remember everything over the course of 11 years. :P
Years back I created notification option settings in the New User CP, and you may have opted into them at that time. They could have been by default at one time too. Over the years email providers have come to look down on automated emails that aren't opt-in, and we've had a few cases where our notification emails were reported as spam, so it's possible I could have changed it based on that.
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I get emails for pings here so I see them easily. Was surprised to learn that this seems uncommon, did I turn that on myself or was that changed as a default setting after I joined?
I don't know...it's hard to remember everything over the course of 11 years. :P
Years back I created notification option settings in the New User CP, and you may have opted into them at that time. They could have been by default at one time too. Over the years email providers have come to look down on automated emails that aren't opt-in, and we've had a few cases where our notification emails were reported as spam, so it's possible I could have changed it based on that.
I do remember it took some effort to get those emails to stop going to spam haha
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I do remember it took some effort to get those emails to stop going to spam haha
We used to send a happy birthday email to people who had put their birthday in the forums...eventually stopped cause there were quite a few people who were not happy about our happy birthday email lol.
In fairness, I get it. At one point I'd get 20 of those emails from sites I hadn't been a part of for years...it was a little annoying. I think websites have stopped sending those in general, cause I don't think I get them anymore.
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So in a nutshell, how would foreign affairs work for modern Wintreath?
Well it'd need to be something that benefits an agenda for the community/region - and if there's no such motivation that requires an external facing presence then you have your answer: you don't need a foreign policy, presence or anything related to it.
You don't even need to maintain embassies, consulates or a diplomatic service if your aim for the community is to be a relaxing place to chill out, game and be a safe space for its members then you can do all of that without needing a foreign policy.
Do you even want the workload that comes with a foreign policy and all it entails? I can't imagine having to do all of that again, gone are the days where I could plot the foreign policy of a feeder, sinker or anywhere else and I had quite the impressive resume. Eventually I realised that unless it benefits the community you want to build, and your community understands why and actively wants an external presence, there isn't any reason to have one.
I don't think Wintreath needs a foreign policy, or presence; and that includes no embassies or consulates.
Let visitors come, and let them join the Discord, post on the RMB, or post on the forum - but don't give them a special section. By all means give them a mask or group on the forum, but I don't see why you should as it's just admin work. In the same vein, don't maintain a diplomatic service because there's no point to it - Wintreath doesn't need to maintain one, and it formalises something that should be better spent on recruiting and integrating new people in different avenues not spent in the game on a thankless task that ultimately wouldn't benefit Wintreath at all.
A foreign policy is only for a region which craves acceptance and approval from those around it, and Wintreath has shown it can stand on its own merits with or without the approval of fair-weather and often capricious third parties who are jealous of its longevity and bonds that few communities can form naturally. I've seen both good and bad in politics heavy communities, and I vastly prefer the communities where political systems are roleplay only and the general community exists to be chill, relax and enjoy each other's company with no expectation of anything else.
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So in a nutshell, how would foreign affairs work for modern Wintreath?
Well it'd need to be something that benefits an agenda for the community/region - and if there's no such motivation that requires an external facing presence then you have your answer: you don't need a foreign policy, presence or anything related to it.
You don't even need to maintain embassies, consulates or a diplomatic service if your aim for the community is to be a relaxing place to chill out, game and be a safe space for its members then you can do all of that without needing a foreign policy.
Do you even want the workload that comes with a foreign policy and all it entails? I can't imagine having to do all of that again, gone are the days where I could plot the foreign policy of a feeder, sinker or anywhere else and I had quite the impressive resume. Eventually I realised that unless it benefits the community you want to build, and your community understands why and actively wants an external presence, there isn't any reason to have one.
I don't think Wintreath needs a foreign policy, or presence; and that includes no embassies or consulates.
Let visitors come, and let them join the Discord, post on the RMB, or post on the forum - but don't give them a special section. By all means give them a mask or group on the forum, but I don't see why you should as it's just admin work. In the same vein, don't maintain a diplomatic service because there's no point to it - Wintreath doesn't need to maintain one, and it formalises something that should be better spent on recruiting and integrating new people in different avenues not spent in the game on a thankless task that ultimately wouldn't benefit Wintreath at all.
A foreign policy is only for a region which craves acceptance and approval from those around it, and Wintreath has shown it can stand on its own merits with or without the approval of fair-weather and often capricious third parties who are jealous of its longevity and bonds that few communities can form naturally. I've seen both good and bad in politics heavy communities, and I vastly prefer the communities where political systems are roleplay only and the general community exists to be chill, relax and enjoy each other's company with no expectation of anything else.
I agree that we don't need to make press releases or necessarily send ambassadors to others, but if there are people who want to make them (because they find it fun, not out of a desire to involve wintreath in interregional politics) then it's not something we shouldn't allow.
Embassies allow others to post in our RMB and participate in our community, and allow us to post in other region's RMB. Even without the desire to have foreign policy this contributes to our ability to have a more open and welcoming community.
There is no harm in having friendly relations with others. Like you said we aren't here to jump through hoops to get approval from others regions, so regions that impose such hoops expecting people to jump through should be ignored. However, we can still have friendship with other regions without necessarily seeking out their approval. If maintaining a friendly relationship requires nothing of us beyond simply having an embassy open then there's no reason not to.
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I agree that we can stand on our own merits, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we should or have to.
Foreign affairs for a small, uninvolved UCR community like Wintreath is nowhere near as demanding as foreign affairs for a feeder/sinker or even a prominent UCR. Most of our relations are with other small to mid-sized UCRs with no involvement in NSGP, with a few exceptions...they're in the same place as us, so the expectations are minor. I ran FA mostly on my own for over a year, and it wasn't much effort...just the occasional appearance at an event or answering a DM.
It's been claimed to me...though I have a hard time believing it...that some people in other regions have a fascination with Wintreath, in a good way. We get visitors to our community that I don't think we would get without our links, and if we were to do things like start games or do events it would be a good venue to build on those relations. The key is to make sure the regions we have relations with fit with who we are and what we're doing, and I think most of them do.
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In terms of reviewing citizenship, I think that would be a good thing, although there are many many ways to do it that would be undoubtedly poor. I think one way we could clear out inactive citizens would be to have routine checks where citizens must respond to show a wish to retain citizenship. Having it on a consistent schedule, like requiring a simple response on the first week of every month or something would allow people to easily maintain it while clearing out inactive people. I think that frequent announcements for it would be needed so that way active people don't miss it (and perhaps responding to said announcement if it's on discord would count too), but I don't think anyone should be pinged for it, that way we don't summon inactive people who don't actually care. Pinging people on these forums would probably be fine though imo, because people aren't likely to see a ping here unless they're active. I think that missing two responses in sequence would then be the threshold of losing citizenship.
I've been thinking more about this proposal and increasingly find it unappealing. We used to do monthly citizenship checks and I feel like removing them was a good thing which both freed up busywork for Wintermoot and helped make Wintreath more welcoming, as well as making citizenship feel less like an obligation which had to be renewed. Doing some sort of monthly thread where people have to remember, without any pings to remind them, to check in, seems to up the obligation feeling even more than the old system IMO.
On Discord we are currently discussing privileges for ex-citizens (eg hangout participation) and making citizenship a natural byproduct of inactivity. I think that if reapplying for citizenship is as it was previously, then this just creates a two-tiered citizenship system. Instead, building off the naturalness idea, what if losing and regaining citizenship is fully automated? Let's say, two months after your last forum post or Discord message, you automatically get masked to Former Citizen. And upon making another post/message you automatically get remasked back to Citizen. This makes things fully seamless and natural, makes citizenship a true marker of activity, and continues to make things welcoming to anyone who has lost citizenship and wants to come back.
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On Discord we are currently discussing privileges for ex-citizens (eg hangout participation) and making citizenship a natural byproduct of inactivity. I think that if reapplying for citizenship is as it was previously, then this just creates a two-tiered citizenship system. Instead, building off the naturalness idea, what if losing and regaining citizenship is fully automated? Let's say, two months after your last forum post or Discord message, you automatically get masked to Former Citizen. And upon making another post/message you automatically get remasked back to Citizen. This makes things fully seamless and natural, makes citizenship a true marker of activity, and continues to make things welcoming to anyone who has lost citizenship and wants to come back.
I really like this idea, and fully support it if it can be feasibly implemented. The big problem with it is that someone has to program it.
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On Discord we are currently discussing privileges for ex-citizens (eg hangout participation) and making citizenship a natural byproduct of inactivity. I think that if reapplying for citizenship is as it was previously, then this just creates a two-tiered citizenship system. Instead, building off the naturalness idea, what if losing and regaining citizenship is fully automated? Let's say, two months after your last forum post or Discord message, you automatically get masked to Former Citizen. And upon making another post/message you automatically get remasked back to Citizen. This makes things fully seamless and natural, makes citizenship a true marker of activity, and continues to make things welcoming to anyone who has lost citizenship and wants to come back.
I really like this idea, and fully support it if it can be feasibly implemented. The big problem with it is that someone has to program it.
The forum potentially has this feature built in already, but there won't be any communication with the Discord site of things unless it is specifically coded. Granted, I don't particularly like this idea - one of the reasons behind having these checks etc is so someone is able to keep a rough idea who is actively involved, who is new, who isn't etc.
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We do collect RMB and forum stats...the forums do this out of the box, and since we've been importing RMB posts into Wintreath's database for years for the old forum newsfeed it's easy to do RMB stats as well. However, everything with Discord has always been manual, and there's no automated maskings.
When I checked on doing it with Discord some years ago, there didn't seem to be a great way to do it. If memory serves, the only way was to collect all posts for each month channel by channel and then create stats from that, and I decided it was just easier to do it manually through Discord searches. It's possible Discord has made this easier at this point, but I'd have to look into it.
I estimate it'd take about 20 minutes a month to do a Citizenship check, including using current scripts to detect Citizens who haven't posted on the RMB or forums and doing manual Discord searches, then handling the masking. I'm not sure how much time it'd take to code Discord stats, much less automated functionality, but I imagine it'd be at least a number of hours. I doubt it's something I could put together in the next few months with what I'm already doing with my job.
I would prefer to do manual checks at this time, with the option to switch to automated if it becomes timely/feasible.
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If I'm remembering correctly the issue with existing free bots was that they don't count messages in private channels, is that correct?
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There was an issue where bots weren't wanted in some private channels.
The bigger issue is that the free version of Statbot only keeps data for 30 days, which is why we had a subscription at one time. I also don't remember if you could look at everyone at a glance or if you had to look at them one by one, which would potentially be no better than doing manual Discord searches.
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On the Citizenship topic, I took some time today to put together data to help us make a decision on time. You can view it on this Google spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1M7HhfqTt9I7faL-Z_0gpuri_5yG4mm9fd3Wb0WwZAvc/edit?usp=sharing). Out of the 86 Citizens we currently have, here's how that changes based on the timeframe we decide for someone to make a single post on the Discord, RMB, or forums:
12 Months: 56 Citizens
6 Months: 43 Citizens
2 Months: 31 Citizens
Breaking Down
On Discord, 19 Citizens have never provided a Discord account for account linking (likely meaning most of them have never been on the Discord). 13 more were on the Discord at one time, but have since left (those are marked pinkish-red on the Discord column).
On NationStates, 46 Citizens' nations are currently CTE, just over a majority (marked pinkish red). 5 more exist but are in other regions (marked gold in the column).
Of course, everyone has been on the forums at some point or another, but in this day and age the vast majority of people's most recent activity is on Discord.
Some Thoughts
Most of the people who would lose Citizenship fall under 3 categories: those who have genuinely left, those who haven't been active but are maintaining a NS nation (in the old government this was sufficient to maintain Citizenship - Augustus Anumia hasn't posted anywhere since 2015 but is still maintaining a nation), and those handful of people who were Paragons in the old government.
Paragons were people whose accomplishments were considered so outstanding at the time that the legislature granted them permanent Citizenship. Most were genuinely stand-out members of the community at the time those votes happened, but most of them have not been around in years and most modern members wouldn't know who they are. I suppose one question to consider is whether they would continue to have permanent Citizenship, not have Citizenship but keep the Paragon title, or do away with Paragons altogether. If we're basing this on the community as it is now, and look down on status symbols, then doing away with it altogether would make the most sense, but I don't have a strong opinion either way.
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Coming back to this discussion of citizenship over a month later, I think an "Inactive Citizen" role/status would be better than removing citizenship. It allows for the easy visibility of who usually engages without taking away anything from those who don't. Unfortunately, this would either have to be done manually on a regular schedule, or have a bot programmed that goes through and checks automatically, although taking away citizenship would have to be done the same.
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Curious to hear any thoughts about the activity cut-off point, as I talked about on September 1st.
Coming back to this discussion of citizenship over a month later, I think an "Inactive Citizen" role/status would be better than removing citizenship. It allows for the easy visibility of who usually engages without taking away anything from those who don't. Unfortunately, this would either have to be done manually on a regular schedule, or have a bot programmed that goes through and checks automatically, although taking away citizenship would have to be done the same.
Sorry for the delay in replying ;-;
I'm curious, what are the benefits of having such a role (we do have that role on the forums, so I assume we're talking about Discord)? The vast majority of people who are former Citizens aren't around at all anymore, and a handful of others have become lurkers. Based on the rules we're considering, by definition former Citizens wouldn't have engaged at all in some time. I'm not opposed to the idea, I'm just curious to know what the benefit would be to slightly elevating former Citizens above where they already are in the Discord member list.
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Curious to hear any thoughts about the activity cut-off point, as I talked about on September 1st.
Coming back to this discussion of citizenship over a month later, I think an "Inactive Citizen" role/status would be better than removing citizenship. It allows for the easy visibility of who usually engages without taking away anything from those who don't. Unfortunately, this would either have to be done manually on a regular schedule, or have a bot programmed that goes through and checks automatically, although taking away citizenship would have to be done the same.
Sorry for the delay in replying ;-;
I'm curious, what are the benefits of having such a role (we do have that role on the forums, so I assume we're talking about Discord)? The vast majority of people who are former Citizens aren't around at all anymore, and a handful of others have become lurkers. Based on the rules we're considering, by definition former Citizens wouldn't have engaged at all in some time. I'm not opposed to the idea, I'm just curious to know what the benefit would be to slightly elevating former Citizens above where they already are in the Discord member list.
I think that if reapplying is required to regain it, 6 months is probably the way to go. If you automatically regain it with activity then 2 months is the way to go. 12 months feels very long to me. The longer you have it, the less people you will have posting as a chore to keep it, as there's far more time to forget about it. If a lack of activity results in removal, 6 months is probably a good enough length of time for anyone who would post as a chore to maintain to forget about it.
The benefits of having such a role would be to remove those whose accounts just sit around without participating, without creating as much "posting as a chore purely to retain citizenship". I feel that if people don't truly lose their citizenship they won't be as encouraged to do that.
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I'm fine with 6 months as well.
For automatically restoring Citizenship if they become active again, that'd be doable on forums and RMB. It's Discord that would be the problem, since the last time I looked into that the only way to know would be to have a script scan every message in every channel made since the last time it was ran and check the username against the list of Citizen Discord.
I would prefer reapplication, since people may come back and not necessarily want to be involved in Wintreath on a deeper level, but we can look at making some parts of the app optional if they're returning...I'm not sure they would need to reintroduce themselves, answer how they discovered Wintreath, or post their Discord and NS nation unless those have changed. It may just be making a post that says you want to be a Citizen again.