Are you a current or former citizen? If former, why?I am the State.
What expectations of conduct and responsibility do you have of your fellow citizens?"it's my hope that Wintreath will not be a
political region, but a
cooperative region, where people of all sorts of experiences and ideas and beliefs can come together and make a region and a community that we can all proudly call home. I hope that we foster a community that puts the region before political ambitions, but I also hope that we recognize that every person here from myself to the newest Citizen deserves the best damn experience they can get out of this region. I hope that if anyone ever feels excluded, lost, or confused that they will at least know who to go to to get them back on track. Most of all, I hope that we can become and remain a community of friends that we enjoy being a part of. That may sound naive, but I honestly believe that if we all work at it we can accomplish this."
-Wintermoot,
A Community Vision, November 15th, 2013
A community of friends. More than anything, I wish that everybody would remember that no matter who they are, what they believe, or what they have done in the past, the people in our community are our friends, region-mates, and comrades, and that we treat them as such at all times, even if we may feel frustrated, annoyed, stressed, or upset at them sometimes. Our region was founded on the principles of openness, personability, warmth, compassion, empathy, and forgiveness, and if we embrace those principles and apply them to our dealings with each other, I know that we will restore our great community.
I am still coming to grips with my own failures to uphold these principles in regards to Mars, German, and especially North and AJ, but I have made the decision to re-embrace them and try to remember them in what I do here, and I hope that others will too.
What expectations of conduct and responsibility do you have of the Monarch?The Monarch is the head of state and executive of the Wintrean government, responsible for for advancing and growing the region. I should note that this is separate from my role as Founder, in which I'm the final guardian and guaranteer of the region's principles and values, responsible for the region's official platforms, as well as the final authority on administrative out-of-character issues.
Do these differ from your expectations of Wintermoot's personal conduct and responsibilities? If so, why?For what it's worth, on a personal level I've always hoped that I would be known as a hardworking, fair, and honest leader, who has done his best to be a good friend to those that wanted it. I have made mistakes, but for what it's worth, they have never stemmed from malicious intent. I have always had good intentions, even when I've been wrong and fucked up incredibly.
What expectations of conduct and responsibility do you have of the Cabinet?The Cabinet is supposed to help me in my role as Monarch, by taking on the details of specific portfolios in a way that I, as one person, cannot. It also serves as an advisory body, and often discusses ideas for growing the region, improving various aspects of it, and overcoming regional crises.
How do these expectations differ for the Underhusen?The Underhusen is the portion of government that I have the least connection with, as their role is to represent the Citizens of Wintreath. Together with the Overhusen, they have exclusive control over Citizenship policy, declarations of war, and the adoptions of treaties. They have shared or parallel control with the Monarchy over such things as persona non grata declarations and the court/appeals system.
The Overhusen?Ditto for the Overhusen, except that they are appointed and represent me in the regional legislature.
Thanes?Thanes are part of the Cabinet as part of a Ministry, and they're supposed to tackle even more specific portfolios that the Jarl of the Ministry couldn't do on their own.
What expectations of conduct and responsibility do you have of the Discord Operators?To be fair and honest above all. To be community mediators and peacekeepers when needed, to nudge people away from continuing conflicts in the Discord when they have to, and to dole out punishment for violation of the administrative rules when necessary.
Are you aware of who the current Operators are? If not, why?As I approved each of them at one time or another, I certainly hope I do.
Are you aware of how Operators are selected and added? If so, what are your opinions on the current system?By tradition, operators are added by agreement between myself and the senior op, but this is not an actual rule, and I recently appointed CoS and AJ on my own.
In general, ops are considered based on their temperament and ability to wade into stressful or emotional situations while remaining calm, level-headed, and objective. Any person who has recently received an official warning for violating the rules is disqualified, though there's no hard definition on what "recently" means. Beyond that, I consider whether they have special experience and skills, such as experience with moderation, Discord, or conflict-resolution.
Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the current system?I do not. Going off of what I read in Pengu's post, I would be very concerned that having a community poll would turn the selection of ops into a popularity contest, especially bad for a position that may call for ops to make very
unpopular decisions. However, I am open to giving more people who are pillars of the community input into the process before the decision is made.
Do you distinguish between Discord Operators and other government officials? If not, why?The government runs the "in-character" aspects of our role as a NationStates region, such as regional law, interactions with other NationStates regions, and organizing the community in ways that everyone agrees is for the common good (the Ministry of Culture runs entirely on this last concept, as it has no actual power over regional culture). The Discord ops team, as part of administration, is tasked with the "out-of-character" handling of the community, such as making sure the administrative rules are up to snuff, getting involved when things get too heated in the community, and considering punishments when someone has crossed the line and broken a rule.
I will admit that there have been times where this has blurred, especially in several cases where the Cabinet has discussed and made judgement in ongoing administrative matters. I think this comes from a time when the ops team was inactive and in many ways the Cabinet was the only active and effective group body in the region. However, I do not consider this to be appropriate and will not be allowing it to continue, especially now that we have an active ops team. It's not a reflection of the people in the Cabinet, who are great, it's just that Cabinet has its roles and the ops team has its role, and those two roles shouldn't overlap.
Do you believe the recent cases have been handled appropriately? Why or why not?Of course not. I will say that the ops team had good intentions in all its attempts to deal with situations, but I will also admit that it's possible that the ops team has been aloof in its considerations. Many of the ops were appointed during earlier eras of the region where, quite frankly, community standards were much more lax, there was little in the way of community conflict, and there wasn't much need seen for moderation. Believe it or not, we once went through a period of
years without so much as a warning given out. I believe that adding in new ops with a fresher perspective will probably go a long way to resolving this issue.
Beyond that, the failures of the team as a whole are a microcosm of my own failures. It's not that they should have known better from personal experience and close friendship with the people who left in the way I should have, but nonetheless they forgot that in many cases we were talking about people who had been pillars of the community for years, and we all wrongly let suspicion and perhaps insecurity cloud our judgement and handling of the situation. If we're being honest, they were probably influenced by me more than anything.
For what its worth, I think that if we were dealing with people who were newer to the region or that none of us knew personally, our suspicions would have been at least more justifiable. But when it comes to dealing with people who have been our friends and pillars of the community for a long time...I think we just need to remember that and do all we can to try to come together with them. Even if something looks suspicions, for all they have done and been to the region, they deserve the benefit of the doubt, the chance to address the things we see as suspect, and the opportunity to come together with us to work things out without being cast under suspicion.
I know that sounds unfair, and it is, but in a community of friends what sense does it make in this sort of region to treat people who have been beloved pillars of the community the same way as people the community doesn't know? For a long time after they left, I was actually proud our handling of the situation in a way, because I felt that we had not allowed the fact that they were our friends influence us, that we had put the region before our friendships...but it was never an either/or situation, and now I consider the fact that we didn't consider the fact that they were friends...as what went so horribly wrong with it all.
What suggestions do you have to improve the handling of similar cases in the future?I think I went into some of it above.
What suggestions do you have for how to avoid similar cases in the future?You know...recently I've come to think that maybe grievances against the ops team should be aired out in a public setting where everyone lays their cards on the table rather than handled behind the scenes.
I think a lot of why things got so bad in November is because there was so much secrecy involved. I know North absolutely had the best intentions in his communications with me and how I treated him in response is horrific, but because he was in a situation where he couldn't tell me who was so unhappy with the ops team, and we couldn't find any evidence of it ourselves, it created room for suspicion. And I suspect that because my only direct communication with him about it was shooting down his ideas for new ops and telling him that there was nobody qualified to be an op at the time (which I admit was a terrible choice of words on top of everything), it created the suspicion with them that we just didn't care about their concerns or opinions, which I'm sure was very hurtful for them to think. By the time we actually came together during the Weekly Meeting, it was far too late. Our groups had become echo chambers, where our suspicions festered into resentment and mistrust, and by that time we all pretty much completely believed the other group was acting in bad faith. I don't think there was any chance of things ending well at that point.
On the other hand, look at what happened last Saturday night. Through some miraculous series of events, we managed to come together while the new grievances were still fresh and before a new wave a resentment had festered permanently. It was a tough discussion, but you can't say we held anything back, and the presence of more objective and uninvolved members like Aragonn helped to eventually moderate the discussion to calmer levels. In the end, not only did we resolve the current issue on the table, in less than an hour we exposed someone who had been spending the last four or five months masterfully manipulating and playing everyone into hating each other. Someone who preyed on the fact that we had retreated to our private echo chambers and weren't talking to each other anymore. And it was only possible because we came out of our private groups, DMs, and servers, laid it all on the table, and eventually came back together.
You can't argue that the results are much better than what we tried in November.
What do you think about the level of integration between the forums and the server?I used to think that we needed to get everyone to join the forums and the Discord, but in recent months I've come to realize that the two platforms offer different experiences and that it's not necessarily wrong to just participate on one or the other (or on the RMB). As I told someone a few weeks back:
"we have the Discord chat server, the forums, and of course this region page, and each platform has its own flavour. Discord is where we have most of our casual and personal chats...it's where we tend to get to know each other and make friends, and it's also where the regional Cabinet discusses matters that require timely discussion. The forums are essentially the seat of our regional government, where legislation is proposed and discussed, elections happen, and appointments are announced. It's also where we have our forum games, such as Werewolf, Spyfall, and even a few that we've developed ourselves such as Clickwar and Mage Wars, and there's an area for roleplaying as well, though I have to admit it hasn't been doing so hot. Then there's this region page where we're at now, where discussions trend toward NationStates and national affairs."
I think more important than integrating people into any one specific platform is making sure that they understand what our community is about and what they can do here. When we have discussed the matter in the Cabinet, it's become very clear that there are even people who have been here for a long time who don't understand how the government works or how to interact with it, much less how to actually join it. People have some vague idea of what they can do here from our recruitment telegram, but it's not very clear how they can get involved once they're here. Historically, our most successful Wintreans actually tend to be those who came from other regions and already have some sense of how to get involved from their previous experiences, further evidence that we're not doing a good job of getting native Wintreans involved. And I believe we have done a poor job of instilling our community principles into the newer generations of Wintreans, which I feel is a contributing factor to some of these issues.
Do you use one exclusively over the other? If so, why?I try to use both daily, but if push comes to shove Discord will win out cause of the casual conversation aspect.
Do you believe the level of integration between the two is adequate? If not, what suggestions would you make to improve it?Again, I don't know that it's a big deal if someone wants to only be on one or the other, but we do need to make sure people understand the differences and benefits of each platform, and we need to make it easier for people to link their Discord account so they can get Citizen masking. There is a need for them to register on the forums and apply for Citizenship if they want that, but otherwise I don't think there's a need to do more if they don't want to. I think the true integration issue is making people aware of how they can get involved in the things that they want to, on any platform that it's taking place on.
Anything else that wasn't covered in the above questions?Nothing that comes to mind, but I'll give it some more thought and let you know.
