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I think people are largely underestimating the intrest people might take in regional legislative action if the barrier to entry were removed. It would also help to explain the legislature its purpose and its authority to new members.

If it were an Open Assembly, then new citizens would have more exposure to the political process, so they would better understand it were they to run for elected office. Plus, they'd likely have an even better chance of getting elected if they were seen to have already gotten involved by voting on/discussing prior legislation.

I don't think there's a lack of understanding of the role of the lower chamber, our current setup mirrors the setup in most RL democracies so it's quite intuitive in that respect. Removing the need for citizens to campaign takes away the need for them to cohere a set of ideas about what to do while in office, and prevents those ideas from being subject to any scrutiny. You have more people who nominally a part of the body, but their contributions (if they even want to make any) will be of a lower quality on average.

What we have right now is an Underhusen that creates and presents law, an Overhusen who approves or vetoes in the Monarch's interests... and a Citizen's Platform, where every citizen has the opportunity to discuss Bills on the Underhusen floor and propose Bills for consideration to be taken forward.

It is my suggestion, then, that we look at ways of codifying the role of the Citizen's Platform to allow for as much engagement as our citizenry would like. This leaves the majority of our mostly well-functioning, time-tested legislative system intact whilst adding another layer that is already a proven method of engaging a wider audience of our citizens in political discourse.

I think that an active Citizens' Platform is a perfect place for new members to start with the legislative system, debating regional issues, and of course we get to lobby Skrifa to vote for or against legislation, I'm just not sure what formalising that relationship in law would achieve? I think we're seeing right now that the current system can work and is working.

The legal hack I literally just thought of is this: amend the Default Seats of the Underhusen act such that instead of 5 seats being the default, the default is, oh, 35 (a number roughly equal to the number of total voters we had in the last election), or even, like, 1001 (a number grossly over the present population of the forums).
That then effectively means that everyone eligible 'wins' a UH election by walkover and gives us a de facto OA without actually having to change anything about the operation of the UH (and thus needing to reimagine how the UH Officers would operate in an OA context).

I also had this idea, but still it would require a ratification to amend the Fundamental Laws as Section I.2 states that the UH must be comprised of 4-7 skrifa.

I don't think there's a lack of understanding of the role of the lower chamber, our current setup mirrors the setup in most RL democracies so it's quite intuitive in that respect. Removing the need for citizens to campaign takes away the need for them to cohere a set of ideas about what to do while in office, and prevents those ideas from being subject to any scrutiny. You have more people who nominally a part of the body, but their contributions (if they even want to make any) will be of a lower quality on average.

I think that an active Citizens' Platform is a perfect place for new members to start with the legislative system, debating regional issues, and of course we get to lobby Skrifa to vote for or against legislation, I'm just not sure what formalising that relationship in law would achieve? I think we're seeing right now that the current system can work and is working.

Then you'd be surprised at the number of new citizens we get/have who have no idea what the Storting (let alone the UH) does. And I'd think more people giving even a tiny bit of input would be better than not giving any input at all (as we have no reason to believe the same few people who give higher quality contributions would stop doing so).

While, yes, an active Citizens' Platform is a great place to get involved, there has been no evidence to show that new citizens do get involved there. And I think we have different definitions of a system working if the only way new citizens get involved is if they happen to win a seat in the UH (and even then, they often still don't know what they're doing).

The legal hack I literally just thought of is this: amend the Default Seats of the Underhusen act such that instead of 5 seats being the default, the default is, oh, 35 (a number roughly equal to the number of total voters we had in the last election), or even, like, 1001 (a number grossly over the present population of the forums).
That then effectively means that everyone eligible 'wins' a UH election by walkover and gives us a de facto OA without actually having to change anything about the operation of the UH (and thus needing to reimagine how the UH Officers would operate in an OA context).

I also had this idea, but still it would require a ratification to amend the Fundamental Laws as Section I.2 states that the UH must be comprised of 4-7 skrifa.

I don't think there's a lack of understanding of the role of the lower chamber, our current setup mirrors the setup in most RL democracies so it's quite intuitive in that respect. Removing the need for citizens to campaign takes away the need for them to cohere a set of ideas about what to do while in office, and prevents those ideas from being subject to any scrutiny. You have more people who nominally a part of the body, but their contributions (if they even want to make any) will be of a lower quality on average.

I think that an active Citizens' Platform is a perfect place for new members to start with the legislative system, debating regional issues, and of course we get to lobby Skrifa to vote for or against legislation, I'm just not sure what formalising that relationship in law would achieve? I think we're seeing right now that the current system can work and is working.

Then you'd be surprised at the number of new citizens we get/have who have no idea what the Storting (let alone the UH) does. And I'd think more people giving even a tiny bit of input would be better than not giving any input at all (as we have no reason to believe the same few people who give higher quality contributions would stop doing so).

While, yes, an active Citizens' Platform is a great place to get involved, there has been no evidence to show that new citizens do get involved there. And I think we have different definitions of a system working if the only way new citizens get involved is if they happen to win a seat in the UH (and even then, they often still don't know what they're doing).

Use me as an example. I'm a part of the legislature and I still have very limited knowledge of its function. I never got involved in the Citizens platform before becoming a member of the UH because I didn't comprehend what it was even for.

I'm told to go read a bunch of old topics to understand things but largely I don't have the time to do that. My voice here largely would've been muted if Lau hadn't nominated me to run and I just yeeted a campaign out for fun.

Now I'm taking this seriously and I think the lower legislature needs to represent the views and opinions of all her people not just the select few lucky enough to get elected to it. Usually the same people with maybe one new member.

We cam amend my suggestion for how to balance this with OH reform but largely I think the current setup represents only the views of a few not the whole and it should give everyone a voice.

Then you'd be surprised at the number of new citizens we get/have who have no idea what the Storting (let alone the UH) does. And I'd think more people giving even a tiny bit of input would be better than not giving any input at all (as we have no reason to believe the same few people who give higher quality contributions would stop doing so).

While, yes, an active Citizens' Platform is a great place to get involved, there has been no evidence to show that new citizens do get involved there. And I think we have different definitions of a system working if the only way new citizens get involved is if they happen to win a seat in the UH (and even then, they often still don't know what they're doing).

Use me as an example. I'm a part of the legislature and I still have very limited knowledge of its function. I never got involved in the Citizens platform before becoming a member of the UH because I didn't comprehend what it was even for.

I'm told to go read a bunch of old topics to understand things but largely I don't have the time to do that. My voice here largely would've been muted if Lau hadn't nominated me to run and I just yeeted a campaign out for fun.

Now I'm taking this seriously and I think the lower legislature needs to represent the views and opinions of all her people not just the select few lucky enough to get elected to it. Usually the same people with maybe one new member.

We cam amend my suggestion for how to balance this with OH reform but largely I think the current setup represents only the views of a few not the whole and it should give everyone a voice.

Surely the issue being flagged here is an integration one rather than a constitutional one? Regions like Europeia have been active for longer than some NS players have been alive and have found consistent success with representative democracy.

Then you'd be surprised at the number of new citizens we get/have who have no idea what the Storting (let alone the UH) does. And I'd think more people giving even a tiny bit of input would be better than not giving any input at all (as we have no reason to believe the same few people who give higher quality contributions would stop doing so).

While, yes, an active Citizens' Platform is a great place to get involved, there has been no evidence to show that new citizens do get involved there. And I think we have different definitions of a system working if the only way new citizens get involved is if they happen to win a seat in the UH (and even then, they often still don't know what they're doing).

You'd be surprised at the number of people who have been here for months or even years and don't know what the Storting does or how to get involved with it. The question is, why is that?

Part of it is certainly integration, as Charax says...we have the basic government guide, but it doesn't really go into detail about what the Storting can actually do, and in some ways I think that's because a lot of it is still undefined. As time goes on we find more things for the Storting to do, at least on paper, such as granting honorific titles and managing social clubs (once that gets off the ground). Part of it is also because the Storting isn't a very prominent part of Wintreath...it's not as promoted as the forum games are, for example. Even now, you only have a handful of people participating in a discussion that could lead to the most drastic change in regional government since the Fundamental Laws was adopted. Why is that? Is it lack of knowledge that this discussion is going on, or lack of interest?

And finally, there's the role of the Storting itself in modern Wintreath...when the regional government was adopted, we were strictly a NationStates region, but what role does the Storting have in the growing portion of Wintreath outside of NationStates? The Minecraft server, the forum games, the three Discord servers, the RPs, not to mention the games we're developing ourselves. I think at some point in the future the Storting's entire role in relation to Wintreath as an organization is going to have to be re-evaluated, but as it is I wonder if the growing issue makes the Storting seem more irrelevant than it once was.

If it's irrelevant, then I don't see why we shouldn't just make it open and see what happens.

And finally, there's the role of the Storting itself in modern Wintreath...when the regional government was adopted, we were strictly a NationStates region, but what role does the Storting have in the growing portion of Wintreath outside of NationStates? The Minecraft server, the forum games, the three Discord servers, the RPs, not to mention the games we're developing ourselves. I think at some point in the future the Storting's entire role in relation to Wintreath as an organization is going to have to be re-evaluated, but as it is I wonder if the growing issue makes the Storting seem more irrelevant than it once was.

In which case, there is cause for a comprehensive overhaul of the function of the Storting to make it fit for purpose in modern Wintreath. Under the FL, the Storting is simply tasked with overseeing the legislative and judicial aspects of our region - but what can it legislate on? Now that we're more than a NationStates region, does legislative authority extend to the Minecraft server, the Discords, the RPs and forum games?

Precedence here is... somewhat murky. PNG declarations have resulted from actions taken on the forums AND on the IRC/Discord. We've had a Regional Holiday discussion on-going this term from matters that involved the forums AND the Discord server. How do we resolve this when the FL states that

VI. Administration
...
2. The Winter Nomad shall have the sole authority to appoint subordinate administrative officials on any official Wintreath property, and invest in them any administrative powers as he or she believes is necessary.
...
5. The Winter Nomad and all subordinate administrative officials shall also be responsible for the maintenance, organization, security, and technological development of all official Wintreath properties. No government official shall be empowered to make decisions in any of these areas.

Food for thought.

@Weissreich: I've always thought that in the future the Storting could take a role similar to EVE Online's Council of Stellar Management, which is a body elected by the players that works with the developers on administrative matters. I know Pengu once suggested making the Storting into a RP body, and I thought that idea had merit too. I think that in the future the line between administrative development and the government will blur further in general. We might even have to re-evaluate Citizenship...how does one become a Citizen if they're mostly on the MC server, for example? Does the concept of Citizenship even make sense at that point?

But we're not there yet. NationStates is still our largest, most active component, and it accounts for 95% of our new arrivals. This is more thinking about where our journey seems to be headed to rather than where we are today.

If I may, I think the Storting's biggest problem is that it is, for the most part, unable to weigh in on the thing that has the biggest impact on the region: Its actual governance. The Riksråd does the government work, and doesn't need to consult the Storting on anything, leaving the body with little to do at the end of the day. I must admit Wintermoot, we've been talking about Wintreath moving away from Nationstates for years now, but we have never gotten close to actually doing that. We are, at our heart a Nationstates region, and if anyone feels like leading us away from that, they haven't popped up yet.

The blurring line between administrative development and government is a direct result of the Monarch appointing the Riksråd. At the end of the day while we may elect Thanes, the Jarls are the ones who generally do the heavy lifting and the citizens have no direct say in the matter. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it leads to many of the problems we've talked about for so long. What is the point of being politically engaged when the most important politics happens at a level inaccessible for most people? In other regions you might be elected into a similar position, or be appointed by an elected official, but here you are appointed by the Monarch until you either decide to resign or someone else is appointed. Thus there is no clear way for anyone who may be interested in say, leading foreign affairs, to ever actually get to that place. They can at best serve as a Thane and hope.

I am overall hesitant to further strip the region of positions they may obviously strive for, unless they are being replaced by something else. I will say I have never seen non-RP open assemblies go well though.

People keep saying how unimportant the role of the Storting is, and yet they still fear an open assembly. It doesn't make any sense to me.

People keep saying how unimportant the role of the Storting is, and yet they still fear an open assembly. It doesn't make any sense to me.

Personally I just fear it being even more inactive then the current system and less adept at dealing with the crises the legislature can deal with.

@Weissreich: I've always thought that in the future the Storting could take a role similar to EVE Online's Council of Stellar Management, which is a body elected by the players that works with the developers on administrative matters. I know Pengu once suggested making the Storting into a RP body, and I thought that idea had merit too. I think that in the future the line between administrative development and the government will blur further in general. We might even have to re-evaluate Citizenship...how does one become a Citizen if they're mostly on the MC server, for example? Does the concept of Citizenship even make sense at that point?

But we're not there yet. NationStates is still our largest, most active component, and it accounts for 95% of our new arrivals. This is more thinking about where our journey seems to be headed to rather than where we are today.

This is the way in which I envisioned things developing in the future, with the Storting gradually evolving into an administrative low-level decision-making chamber across all facets of the region. I also agree that Citizenship needs to be re-evaluated in the not-too-distant future as I see a lot of faces on the Discord and Minecraft channels that I don't see here on the forum.


This does, however, raise the most important question of all.


At the end of the day, no matter how much we as citizens and members enjoy and contribute to Wintreath, it remains a one-man-band. Sure, there's an OPs team and Trader runs the Minecraft server and AJ BLarg is intimately involved in the Discord server, but the region exists at the convenience of you, @Wintermoot.

I have the utmost respect for the energies and efforts you've put into the region, the time you've sunk into keeping the forums running and implementing changes (and the many changes you're making on a week-by-week basis that we rarely even hear about). You've consistently been a level-headed and approachable individual in my experience, and from second-hand information I know that you've also had instances where friendships have been lost and perhaps running the region was more of a burden than a blessing.

The fact remains that through all of this - you're it. The buck stops on your desk.

We've had discussions about altering how the Storting functions before, we've talked about moving away from Nationstates as Crushita has mentioned, we've democratised the Thaneships (a solid move in my eyes)... but all of this is at your whim.

If we're serious about shaking up the legislature, if we're serious about considering the future of the region as a more diversified entity beyond NS, if we want to encourage Citizenship via the Minecraft server and through Discord activity (as well I think we should), we need to know - and more importantly, you need to know - how far you're willing to devolve responsibilities from the Monarchy.

I'm not putting pressure on you to make a decision now, but I think assessing the future of the region as you see it needs to go hand-in-hand with a re-evaluation of the legislature as our citizens desire it. The two will, ultimately, be intertwined as time goes on.

If I may, I think the Storting's biggest problem is that it is, for the most part, unable to weigh in on the thing that has the biggest impact on the region: Its actual governance. The Riksråd does the government work, and doesn't need to consult the Storting on anything, leaving the body with little to do at the end of the day. I must admit Wintermoot, we've been talking about Wintreath moving away from Nationstates for years now, but we have never gotten close to actually doing that. We are, at our heart a Nationstates region, and if anyone feels like leading us away from that, they haven't popped up yet.

I think that the reason it feels that way is because people assumed it would be a quick route of adopting other multiplayer games like NationStates and then suddenly we're not just a NS region anymore. The truth is that it's actually been a much slower route of building up and developing our own stuff that may eventually attract people from elsewhere. We recently had a tease of what that might look like with the last Werewolf game, but in general of course we're not there yet. This is just my perception of where it feels we're going, it's not anything written in stone. But I will say there are several areas of Wintreath that have come a long way in the last year and could potentially be promoted on their own in the future.

I feel the need to point out that even if it did work out like that, it's not so much moving away from NS. Over the last few months I've put in some effort to give our region page more attention and build interest in things like the WA, and I know others have been doing that too. I think that no matter what happens, we'll continue to be a strong, vibrant NS region. It's just that we could potentially be other things, too.

The blurring line between administrative development and government is a direct result of the Monarch appointing the Riksråd. At the end of the day while we may elect Thanes, the Jarls are the ones who generally do the heavy lifting and the citizens have no direct say in the matter. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it leads to many of the problems we've talked about for so long. What is the point of being politically engaged when the most important politics happens at a level inaccessible for most people? In other regions you might be elected into a similar position, or be appointed by an elected official, but here you are appointed by the Monarch until you either decide to resign or someone else is appointed. Thus there is no clear way for anyone who may be interested in say, leading foreign affairs, to ever actually get to that place. They can at best serve as a Thane and hope.

I am overall hesitant to further strip the region of positions they may obviously strive for, unless they are being replaced by something else. I will say I have never seen non-RP open assemblies go well though.

I will say that FA thanes have access to virtually all the same FA discussions within government that I have access to, and the same with Culture thanes and discussions. Jarls definitely do a lot of work, and we're fortunate to have some great Jarls who are amazing at what they do, but I like to think we're empowering our Thanes as well...we're doing a much better job of that than we were a few years ago, at least.

Personally I just fear it being even more inactive then the current system and less adept at dealing with the crises the legislature can deal with.

When I was reading through the old Constitutional Convention the other day, I noticed you had posted that this happened in Ainur...that the open assembly did little more than elect a Speaker every so often.

If we're serious about shaking up the legislature, if we're serious about considering the future of the region as a more diversified entity beyond NS, if we want to encourage Citizenship via the Minecraft server and through Discord activity (as well I think we should), we need to know - and more importantly, you need to know - how far you're willing to devolve responsibilities from the Monarchy.

Quoting just this particular bit because this post is getting long enough anyways, lol.

You know, when the idea of starting a serious region came up, my only condition for leading it was that I would have final say over most aspects of it. It's not that I don't value the contributions of others or I think that I'm just the shit, it's that I have had a lot of experiences in the past where I had put a lot of time and work and soul into something only to have it destroyed or harmed because others wanted to push me out afterwards. Over time it's true that we've introduced more democratic elements as I've became more comfortable with them, such as doing away with the appointment of Speakers and of course elected Thanes, but I doubt I would ever be comfortable with not having the ability to intervene if I felt something fundamental was going wrong. In that regard my mindset hasn't changed much from 2013.

Maybe not the answer some were looking for, but it's an honest answer.

You know what? This UH discussion, Dawcreek's Medieval Risk game, and the recent familial house discussions has me thinking back on a while ago when we (perhaps in the private Cabinet area) were talking about developing a regional game for Wintreath. If we were to adapt Dawcreek's Medieval Risk to become that game, the Storting could (on top of what it already does now, which isn't all that much) be responsible for moderating the game.

game ideas

First, we could use the RP map of Wintreath and carve it up into a bunch of tiny provinces like in Medieval Risk. Then, each person could own one province (calling back to that citizen=freeholder discussion), but familial houses could own each of its members' provinces plus extra (as the sum is greater than the individual parts, plus to encourage joining/making a house). Perhaps Common Houses would have to pledge loyalty to a Noble House (aka make an alliance), but citizens who are unaffiliated would essentially be under the Royal House until they decided to join/make a house. The Royal House (headed by Wintermoot, of course) could either be an active player in this or a passive "everything not owned by a house is owned by the Monarchy" (or both) and would have ultimate authority (as this is a Monarchy, though the Storting would deal with the day-to-day).

Each province would earn a player certain resources each day/week/whatever (e.g. currency, food, troops, ships, arms, wood, stone, metal, etc., depending on how complex we want to make it), which would likely be tied to where it is on the map (e.g. provinces in the North aren't good at producing food, provinces with forests in them are able to produce wood, etc.). Each house could have a specialty to give a small bonus (e.g. House Burdock could have an Agriculture Specialty, so they produce extra food in provinces). Houses and Citizens could then trade/expand borders/battle each other. Then at the end of a certain timeframe (perhaps every three months to tie to the seasons), the game would reset, but the houses that had the most resource/provinces/whatever could have bonus starting resources in the next term. Maybe each season would give certain bonuses (e.g. extra food production in the autumn, attacks are more difficult in the winter unless your house is from the North).

And for players who don't really care to take part (whether that means ever or just for a couple weeks because of IRL stuff), they can just continue to own a province, which continues to produce resources to the Royal House (if unaffiliated) or their house (if in one), and not play. I'd imagine this game would not need to be as intensive as one of our regular forum games since resources would passively grow for everyone and turns would be the same length -- but you can be as involved as you want in the diplomacy/trading/war aspect of it or just idly let your resources grow.

The Underhusen could oversee trades to make sure newbies aren't taken advantage of, moderate wars and peace treaties, tax troops or goods, referee the game, etc. This would make UH seats more desirable as I'm sure houses would want a representative to make sure their interests are seen to. This would, however, likely make new players less likely to win a UH seat. An Open Assembly, however, would give everyone an equal voice.

Surely the issue being flagged here is an integration one rather than a constitutional one? Regions like Europeia have been active for longer than some NS players have been alive and have found consistent success with representative democracy.

I would have to agree here. This is an integration concern that I don't see it changing under an OA and which would require similar integration efforts to fix either way.

Switching to OA would open up the legislature to anyone who wants to participate, but it would also remove the structure by which new citizens get drawn into and involved with the legislature (i.e., elections). I would also expect it to run into the issue where if nobody has a position of responsibility, then people won't know to get involved or do things - this is something we see in the Civil Service, in our Culture areas, and (as Hapi aptly pointed out) on the Citizens' Platform. If people don't know what the Storting is or does now, then people still won't know what the Storting is or does even if they are allowed to participate in it.