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I haven't forgotten about this...will reply when I'm able to in a few hours. I just have limited time atm and Laurentus's proposal was shorter.

Thus proving shorter things get people's attention more.

The idea isn't "horrible," and I think Pengu's reaction is a bit too harsh, but it does have many obstacles in its way that could prevent it from making it through the entire process.

I did say "no offense meant" meaning that I wasn't trying to put down the idea itself since I do very much appreciate Barnes coming up with such an idea as I do everyone.  Personally though I just don't see this as a good idea being as the houses are so small.

And this is coming from someone who is a noble, has a seat on the cabinet, has had Overhusen appointments, and has a Wintreath commendation.  Right now, throwing any of the noble houses into a larger role just doesn't seem like a good idea.  Until we:

*Have larger houses
*Have more ways to honor members outside of Wintreath Commendations and Nobility elevations (Paragon status doesn't count since that's reserved strictly for former members)
*Have a larger population in Wintreath (the forums as well as the region) in general
*Have a larger set of active members (since most of the houses including mine have very few actual active members)

Then this is an idea that I don't feel comfortable with becoming a reality.  Once all of those concerns are met and resolved, then I'd be more down with this idea.

I hadn't believed Paragonhood was reserved only for former members. The Underhusen even passed a vote to make you a Paragon. As for needing a larger userbase, how large were you thinking? I don't want everything to become too restricting out of being "too small" when we are already one of the largest regions in the game.

According to the Monarch, Paragonhood was originally intended and reserved only for former members.

I share the concerns expressed by some others. Nothing against Pengu, who is someone I feel deserves every praise and reward possible, but the original purpose of Paragonhood/Honorary Citizenship was to memorialize important members of the community that for whatever reason could no longer be a part of NationStates. There is a precedent for people returning because of the fact that it would be an insult to strip someone of an honour just for being active again. I'm just not sure it's in good taste to memorialize someone who is still active in the community, and I hope Pengu can stay active with us for a long, long time.

Thanks for clarifying (despite me disagreeing with its intention and still wanting to make Pengu a Paragon). Regardless, I still wanted to emphasize that it is a separate award from Nobility because it's granted by the legislature.

I hadn't believed Paragonhood was reserved only for former members. The Underhusen even passed a vote to make you a Paragon. As for needing a larger userbase, how large were you thinking? I don't want everything to become too restricting out of being "too small" when we are already one of the largest regions in the game.

Are we?  We're 25th right now in the list.  Take out the GCRs and the puppet dump, and we're 15th.  Yes, we're bigger than pages and pages of regions, but that's still 14 regions bigger than us, some double or even quadruple of what we are.

We currently have 471 nations.  The #13 region (Allied States) has 629.  4 regions hit the 1K mark, and 10KI hits 2 thousand.  Albion is a region smaller than us, but they have over 1K forum members and their activity continuously outmatches us.  Likewise, the GCR regions have forums with ridiculous amounts of activity, even though they're GCRs that people get sent to automatically when they join.

As it stands, as per Moot's last Revocation update, while we have 471 regions, we have only 95 remaining citizens...and again, not even all of those are currently active citizens.

Until we can triple that number and have them all be active citizens, this is a valid concern.  We don't want to put the Noble Houses into such a position when:

*Our overall forum count is low.
*The noble houses have in attendance:
 -Valeria: 6 active members including the count himself.
 -Penguon: 4 active members including the count himself.
 -Meindhert: 2 total members including the duke himself.

And all other houses have either only 1 total member, or 1 active member.  By this bill, none of the other houses would be allowed to be elevated due to having no members outside of the one, or no active members outside of the one.  Until things change and all of the houses (or at least a majority of them) have at least 5 active members rather than just one or two, this is an idea that should sit on the backburner for now until our activity level and citizenship count takes a substantial jump.

Houses of one are allowed to be elevated, under the provision they choose an extra person to join them. I have already outlined my reasons for including that clause, though it is not steadfast. It doesn't prevent anyone outside of the three noble houses from becoming noble.

I suppose I can ask you from your personal experience: what does a large region look like? How much activity is sufficient? What does a group/family structure look like in such a large region? I imagine you perceived all of those to exist in XKI when you were a member (or at least an ambassador, if I recall correctly, something dealing with extended time in the region). And most importantly, why do said structures work in large regions and fail in moderately-sized regions? I would have thought we are a big enough community.

Houses of one are allowed to be elevated, under the provision they choose an extra person to join them. I have already outlined my reasons for including that clause, though it is not steadfast. It doesn't prevent anyone outside of the three noble houses from becoming noble.

I suppose I can ask you from your personal experience: what does a large region look like? How much activity is sufficient? What does a group/family structure look like in such a large region? I imagine you perceived all of those to exist in XKI when you were a member (or at least an ambassador, if I recall correctly, something dealing with extended time in the region). And most importantly, why do said structures work in large regions and fail in moderately-sized regions? I would have thought we are a big enough community.

The first was correct, as I was a member of 10KI before I was a member here.  In 10KI, it's tricky.  They do have elections for certain areas, but they have no UH/OH type of structure: The forum is ran by 9 people in something called the Council of Nine...which includes Grub in that list.

They have e Delegate, 4 senators, the founder himself, and 3 other roles which make it up.  While 3 of those roles are given by Grub himself, the other 5 are through elections similar to ours: Interested members express their interest if they have the correct credentials (which are a bit more strict than ours which let anyone and their mother campaign), and they may/may not represent a current party...though party members usually receive more support.  Everyone votes, and the person with the most votes is elected.

The 4 senators control different parts of the forums.  One oversees the houses, which have their own forum and are generally pretty active...though outside of occasional competitions usually don't have an essential purpose...much like ours.  Another senator oversees the political parties, which again each have their own areas, locked to all but those in that party.  The third oversees and runs their lottery system that they have, since they have a currency implemented.   The last mimicks the Ministry of Information in which they're responsible for the regional updates that end up being sent to the delegate each month.

There's also Ministers and whatnot, I believe they're the other 3 roles I'm thinking of in the Co9 makeup.

A difference between our elections and theirs are that any of their government roles require a one-region only type of deal, meaning you wouldn't be able to seek a political stand in another region...whereas we allow any of our UH or OH candidates to jump into elections in other regions...we're just against dual cabinet-type duties, which any of the positions there pretty much mimic.
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As for your next question, substantial activity to me means that we don't begin losing our shit if there's a sudden blip in activity because people get busy.  After all, we'd be active enough to where it'd barely be noticeable, as opposed to become a wasteland until certain people return.

Right now, that's where Wintreath is at.  Look at how much things dropped and how concerned people became when a couple of people disappeared.  How much people were worrying when Laurentus and PB disappeared and Werewolf went on a sudden standby.  That right there tells me that activity isn't at a good enough level to consider something which would require a large chunk of activity to succeed.  People disappear without warning, it happens.  Until we're at a point to where that doesn't become such a concern as to whether we're going to continue thriving as a region, we're not at a place to implement anything that could potentially backfire on us.

To answer a comment that may come up about the concern being related to Werewolf, my concern is that we wouldn't be incredibly panicked about this were we in a better activity state because there'd be multiple games (not Werewolf, but multiple games of different types) running that people could play while they waited...as opposed to Werewolf literally being the only game we have running at the moment.
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In your third question, the house system in 10KI and in Albion very much mimics ours right now, to where they have little purpose outside of being a place for people to join.  10KI's have a forum specifically for them, to where people can chat in their house to the other members.  In Albion it's more sporadic like ours to where there's no set place, but they're just there.  But the member counts are substantially higher...in Albion more because they deal with more relationships and marrying and whatnot to where families cross (and their own family tree is really confusing).  In 10KI it's member count where the house I was in, for example, has over 30 total members that were part of it, and 10 active ones still.  The largest one has almost thrice that total, and over 20+ active members.
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To answer your last question, it falls to activity.  This structure would work in 10KI or Albion because they have the activity to back it.  As I mentioned, a couple of people could leave, and they'd be perfectly alright because it wouldn't affect them.  Whereas if a couple of active members here suddenly went inactive, as evidence has shown in both our history and in recent times, things get really dead around here aside from a couple of topics.  Even the IRC has suffered when people leave.

So until that's remedied, we need to focus on that before we shift to something that'll require even more activity.

@Laurentus, it's not that your proposal being shorter got my attention to, it's that it was quicker to write a response to.

I have some of the same concerns here that I did with Gerrick's proposal, especially on creating a dedicated portion of government to the nobility. I know it was a popular idea, but I'm not sure it's feasible at this time...Gerrick's proposal tries to get around that by encouraging the elevation of more nobles, and yours tries to get around it by allowing larger families a second representative in the Overhusen, but neither solution solves the problem of having a dedicated portion of government for a relatively small portion of the region. Which leads to my other concern...the potential politicization of the nobility. If we're not careful in how we implement this concept, we could very well create a Wintrean aristocracy, where barring an unprecedented revocation of nobility, we will have a portion of government which is arbitrary, static, and unaccountable to anyone except their own families.

Specific to this legislation, I'm a bit iffy on the provisions that I assume are meant to encourage families to grow. Families have their own criteria for adopting others...I know that for me to adopt someone into my family, I have to consider them a close friends and they have to be unclaimed by another family (cause I'm not into poaching people). That makes it hard for me because by the time I develop such a friendship usually people are already in another family, and that's why I'm the only member at the moment. Because of that, I wouldn't want to have to adopt a member just to meet a quota, and so I have an issue with requiring other families to. I'm also unsure on the provision that gives noble families with over four members another representative in the Overhusen...do we really want to encourage noble families to grow so they can assume more power in a chamber of government, potentially at the expense of other families?

Finally, I have the same concerns about either house introducing legislation as I did with Gerrick's proposal...I think having to deal with a reconciliation process is too complicated and too unnecessary for a forum-based legislature. If the goal is for both chambers to be on the same page, I think the better solution is to encourage them to work on drafting legislation together before introduction, either in the Citizen Platform or in their own private area.

I don't suppose there's anything in this that couldn't be overcome with discussion and compromise, but I have to admit I'm starting to have proposal fatigue. After the ratification on the open assembly amendment failed, we discussed and compromised...and then for some reason ditched the legislation all together, in spite of the fact that I'm sure it could pass in another ratification so long as people were reasonably sure that everyone had a chance to give input on it. Same with Gerrick's proposal...I though we were making good progress there, and then people just stopped talking about it. I hope that isn't the fate of every proposal that someone ends up not liking.

I guess to throw out the issue with activity, let me ask you this:

Let's say Vidi, Lumen, and Belmont became inactive.  I became incredibly bogged down by work and couldn't make it online.  Weissreich disappeared again like he's done before, and you were overloaded with studies and couldn't make it online.

That's 2 of the 3 houses right there that would have nobody.

Then for added kicks, let's say there ends up being a conflict between our region and New Hyperion that causes members from there to leave.  This one is an obvious more extreme situation that hopefully never happens...but like the worry we had when the Open Assembly bill failed when several of the members, many of them from House Valeria, were fatigued enough to where some of them discussed leaving the region...it's a valid worry to have.  So let's say that it does happen.

Now that's all 3 of the houses that would have nobody.

So what would happen in this case?

That's my main concern and why I think activity needs to skyrocket first.  If the house numbers were substantially larger than just a couple of members, even these wouldn't be a worry...because they'd be able to shuffle through members so they'd have a seat.  But right now if any or all of those were to happen, it'd be crippling to this system.

Just because I find Pengu's perspectives and comparisons with XKI so fascinating, I thought I'd respond with some of my own, though it's unrelated to this.

I personally highly admire XKI...I know they've been put down by other defenders a lot because of their regionalism and because in the past TITO has worked separately from other defenders in ops, but they're a storied region that has stood the test of time, that have their own unique community that you can't find anywhere else, and that continues to thrive as one of the largest and most active communities in the game. In a lot of ways, I hope that Wintreath resembles some of those aspects as it ages over the years. A lot of the things that others put them down for I see as strengths for them...and for us.

I think on our end, we've had a lot of success with building activity, but we have to recognize that in a lot of ways we built our activity tall, not wide...our success comes because we have fewer people generating a lot more individual activity, so when a few of those people get busy or go on a leave of absence, we really feel it. Ultimately, if we're to grow further and to create a more stable community, we're going to have to get more people involved on the forums and getting involved in more diverse things, and while I'm trying to slowly change things so that it's easier for new people to come and get involved, it's going to take time.

Also, technically families have the right to create homes/topics in The Wonderful World of Wintreath, though I don't think any family has really done that yet.

The "either chamber" provision was just idealism on my part. I actually completely understand why legislation is introduced only in the lower house, so I figured it would be more difficult to work the way I put it. I'm pretty flexible on that, and I'd be willing to take that out.

I hope we don't ever have to be plagued with all of the "what-ifs" where everyone goes inactive, and if we do, I'd be more worried about the permanent state of the region than over a lull in legislative activity. I understand that a lot of the panic when someone temporarily leaves is due to the deep involvement of each individual member rather than the minor involvement of many.

Yet, I honestly believe there can be a balance that can be achieved between activity and size, so we wouldn't have to significantly transform ourselves into too big of a region in order to obtain a successful house structure. It may involve restructuring of our recruitment efforts or RMB efforts or a region-wide effort to get Citizens to join the houses, but we don't need dozens of members per house in order for houses to function properly.

I know many of us are undergoing bill fatigue, and to a certain extent, I am as well. But I don't want that to mean we need to retain the status quo. @Gerrick and @Laurentus and I are trying to revive the current Convention discussion and overcome it once again. Even though the bill didn't pass at ratification, a majority of individuals have demonstrated that some kind of change is needed. Whether that comes from integrating the house system, and by extension our culture, or something else, we all have to figure out. This is how I feel, so I want to find a way to make this, or something, work.

But I want to hear what everyone else thinks. I really do want to hear an examination of the provisions for the bill and how their negative aspects, such as a potential familial aristocracy, can be avoided. I'm doing what I should've done a while ago: tag legislative members to hear their thoughts on the law proposal. @Weissreich @North @HannahB @Point Breeze @Wuufu @Joshua Bluteisen @Colberius X (Everyone else I've already tagged or have already responded.) Colby and Weiss, you two are the patriarchs of noble houses, so the bill's effect would be especially prominent, but all of your perspectives are quite valuable.

I think with the continued attempts to make the Houses mean something, we're expending too much energy to make it work in the legislative, when really, outside of the cultural opportunities it brings to the system, it just isn't necessary. Note that I really like the idea, but the execution is hard to do. What I have not yet seen is something that the inclusion of the nobility fundamentally alters, and simplifies. We have to jump through so many hoops to make it work, when in the end, we could have gone for a simpler system that wouldn't require as much commitment from key players, citing Pengu's valid concerns.

That's why I, regretfully, didn't include it in my new proposal. Of course, I'm having enough trouble to make my own proposal work without the inclusion of the divisive nobility system.

Also, can I just express my frustration that so few people are bothering to comment again?

I forgot to mention @Reon again.

EDIT: Er. I don't know what exactly went wrong. I guess I had too many pages open, and replied in the wrong one. Sorry, Reon, I wanted to mention you in my proposal, not this one.