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Hello everyone,

As per my campaign promises, I wanted to dedicate a space to discussing the current citizenship laws and possible changes to this law. I myself am not sure if I as a legislator will seek to draft and propose a bill addressing citizenship, but I would be more than happy to see someone who is more passionate about this subject seek this endeavor.

For now, some discussion questions:

• Why should the citizenship laws be changed, or why should they not be changed?
• If the change is necessary, what should be changed? What will be added, deleted, modified?
• How can this change benefit the Wintreath community? Or how does the current system benefit the Wintreath community?
• Should citizenship in Wintreath be linked to WA membership? Why or why not?

If you have other questions, please feel free to throw it in the mix!

Well, personally I feel like we do have an issue with things like Zombie citizens. I also feel like our citizenship laws should try to incentivize activity in the region. I also support the idea that citizenship should be maintained through some active means, be it a post minimum or WA membership.

However, I also know that there are some good arguments against both means so I would prefer to see something of a compromise or marriage of the two, an either/or deal. Either you have a WA nation in the region or you meet a post minimum. It would allow people who need their WA nations for other regions a means to maintain citizenship and allow people who need to go inactive for a time a way to as well.

Finally, I also want to recognize that there might be fluid situations that require separate considerations, maybe someone has their WA in another region, does not have time to or cannot move it here and will be absent for some time. I want a mechanism that will allow an authority, in my view the Monarch, to grant exemptions on a case-by-case basis as needed for specified periods of time. I feel like this would allow the government to address fluid situations as they arise.

So, to summarize, I feel like there is a bit of a problem with zombie citizens and I would like to try and incentivize activity in the region. I would like to draft legislations that would do the following:

1. Reform the way to maintain citizenship to need either a WA nation or an activity minimum (specifics would have to be discussed)
2. Create a means to grant exceptions in fluid or unusual circumstances.

What does everyone else think?

Aren took the words right out of my mouth. I particularly appreciate the compromise for situations in between because it wasn’t something I had previously considered (excluding Paragons and existing special circumstances) because I’ve always been of the opinion that if you have time to be on NS enough that your WA is gridlocked, you have the time to check in periodically and maintain your activity- but that isn’t always going to be the case and I’m that someone had that consideration. 

It’s a solid place to start- it’s courteous but preserves Wintreath’s meritocratic values. 

I think if you just have activity requirements low enough then exemptions and such shouldn't be necessary. That way if you have RL stuff going on and disappear for a little bit, you can just come back to where you were without having to make some formal request to keep your citizenship beforehand (because sometimes you don't know how long you'll be gone) or have to recreate a NS nation or reapply when you get back.

Or perhaps if you've made a certain number of posts on the forums (probably 100) and have thus proven yourself to the community then citizenship maintenance requirements are just automatically waived (or automatically given reduced activity requirements).

That doesn’t solve the issue of zombie citizens- in fact that just goes harder in the opposite direction imo.

We currently have means of requesting time away (or being granted it by the Landsraad otherwise as far as I can tell) via points 2.3 through 2.3.4 of The Citizenship Act without fear of our citizenship being revoked and that has provisions for up to 12 months. If you’re planning on being away for over a calendar year, I don’t believe it’s unfair to request you reapply for citizenship, especially since lacking citizenship doesn’t bar you from anything in Wintreath other than office and voting- something I believe you should at least be semi-present and aware of what’s happening within the region to do effectively.

I agree that a whole year should be more than enough if requesting it, but I guess I just don't see the point in having to request it. But then again I guess I just don't see zombie citizens as much of a problem.

We currently have 23 citizens who haven't logged in to the forums over the past month. Of those, 8 have over 100 posts: Red Mones, Elbbsas, Barnes, HannahB, Commander Zemas, Hugsim, Ogun, and Moondrop. Barnes is active on Discord, but the rest would lose citizenship if the only ways to maintain citizenship were activity or having a WA nation. Chopping those with under 100 posts is fine by me since they obviously have no intention of coming back, but I think that the people who have invested time into our community should have the benefit of the doubt with regards to keeping citizenship.

And sure citizenship is only really related to voting, but it's also symbolic of being a member of our community. I don't know, coming back to see you're no longer a citizen could seem a bit like you're forgotten and no longer belong and could disincentivize you to jumping back in. I can think of multiple instances where a member whose citizenship had lapsed and came back did not want to have to go through the trouble of regaining and maintaining citizenship even though they were now active again, and who knows how many have come back to being a former citizen and then just perhaps silently lurked but left again (check out some of those people here). You might say "well they don't deserve it if they're not willing to do the bare minimum," but regardless they're still members of our community and should be accepted as such, no matter how many applications they will or won't submit. And even if they're not currently present and active, they're still members of our community.

Anyway, that's my two cents on the issue. It's not a huge deal, but I'd err on the side of letting those people keep citizenship than chop a bunch so that we have fewer zombie citizens.

Paragonship exists for those who have contributed meaningfully but are unavailable to be active at this time. It doesn’t suddenly make you less of a member for losing your citizenship for inactivity- furthermore it is an issue when certain legal motions require a certain percentage of the citizen community to sign off on it to be seen or to vote positively on it to be put into action- abstentions notwithstanding as that only helps with half of that issue.

If recognition of major members of the community that is no longer active is your concern, perhaps the Landsraad should be pushing for more recognition and Paragon placements in the future.

I can't find anything that says votes will take into account the entire electorate, and past referendums only took into account the people who actually voted, so zombie citizens are again not an issue there. 

Fair enough that we should use the role of paragon more, but I think if we just give it to so many people then that kinda defeats the original purpose of it. 

I think Aren is 100 % correct, I hate to see some new member waltz right in, get citizenship, and then just disappear.
I rest my case.

I think it would be helpful to start with a history of our Citizenship requirement law.

In the beginning (October 2013), there was only the NationStates nation requirement, because that was the Citizenship requirement for most regions including the one that most of us came from. It was kind of the default, and I don't think anybody gave that requirement a lot of thought when we were coming together as a region. But as years have gone by, the needs of the community evolved and our Citizenship requirements evolved with them. In 2016, we added the monthly forum post option because by then we had a number of Citizens who had left NationStates but was still part of Wintreath and didn't want the hassle of maintaining their nation. In 2020, we added an option for certain donators to remain Citizens as a thank you for their financial support. Then with the rise of Discord over the forums, we added a Discord activity option in 2021.

These additional options have followed the same trend...that Citizenship is maintained based on active contribution of some kind. I feel like reforming the original Citizenship requirement, especially in the way proposed by Arenado, follows that trend.

• A Delegate endorsement requirement would be helpful for our Delegate and to a smaller extent to our foreign affairs. Wintreath has historically had a low number of World Assembly nations and nations endorsing the delegate for its size. Improving this would give Wintreath a larger and more coveted voice in the World Assembly, especially when proposals are close enough at vote that a few hundred votes can make a difference. This may in turn create more opportunities for our community when it comes to foreign affairs, an area where we can quite frankly use all the help we can get.
• We've only recently developed the ability to track RMB posts, and beyond that recognized the RMB as a major platform in Wintreath. For years the RMB was looked down on as a bunch of kids and immature people who usually didn't want to be part of the Wintreath community, but improvements in RMB moderation and the rise of WARPP have turned things around. At this point a RMB post requirement option is something we can do and something that would benefit current Citizens.

I also agree that it's probably time to look at Paragons again. The last person who was made a Paragon was Point Breeze in 2017, a full 5 years ago. I'm not sure it's that relevant to this discussion given that Paragons tend to have already departed the community (the last time a Paragon posted was in 2020), but a lot has happened since then and there are without a doubt people deserving of the recognition.

Also agree that we should look at the leave of absence system. I doubt most Citizens are even aware that they can request a leave of absence, and a system that involves a full vote of the legislature is probably too bureaucratic for that purpose. A list of reasons a person can take a leave of absence is already listed in Section 2.3.1 of the Citizenship Act (natural disasters, severe illness, extended hospital care, military training or deployment, extended stay in a remote area, or loss of main source of income), and it seems to me it would be sufficient for someone like the Chancellor to accept requests for leave for those reasons.

But in terms of this discussion, we're not really dealing with historic members or Citizens facing hardship, but most likely with people whose interest in Wintreath has waned. After dropping Citizens for not meeting the requirements this morning, we have 13 of 71 non-Paragon Citizens who have not been active on the forum or Discord at all in the last 3 months. Not a single forum or Discord post. Some are people who are still online on Discord (like Zemas, Salorus Shron, and Shadowfang) and we should preferably reach out to them first to see if they had any issues or if there's some part of Wintreath they'd be interested in again. But some are people who haven't been around in years (like Augustus Anumia and LunaOfAnorithia), and you can't help but wonder if they really ever want to come back.

I don't think anybody joins the forums and applies for Citizenship intending to go inactive. When they do I think to some extent its because of our failure to mentor them and get them into the things they wanted to get into. That's why I'd like to see mentoring make a comeback in the region, so we're doing all we can to keep people from going inactive and being dropped. But at the same time, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that Citizens either demonstrate that they're still interested in being part of the community or explain why they can't be part of it. Citizenship isn't required for most of what we offer. In fact, we have many people who are active and have never applied for Citizenship, especially Werewolf players, but Citizens are now literally a part of our government and have a say in the governance of our community. I think we should expect them to make a minimal contribution to that community in turn.

Honestly, I'm fine with things as they are. I don't necessarily see a need to change Citizenship requirements. Looking at the figures Wintermoot provided, that means 18% of Citizens are not active at all, which is a little high, but not particularly concerning.

Roughly 1 in 5 citizens being *entirely* inactive isn’t concerning? And that number doesn’t even include members with incredibly reduced activity, that’s just who isn’t active *at all*. I’m going to have to disagree, I think it’s pretty disheartening that 1 in 5 members of Wintreath can’t be bothered to interact with it. 

Roughly 1 in 5 citizens being *entirely* inactive isn’t concerning? And that number doesn’t even include members with incredibly reduced activity, that’s just who isn’t active *at all*. I’m going to have to disagree, I think it’s pretty disheartening that 1 in 5 members of Wintreath can’t be bothered to interact with it.

It's not 1 in 5, that would be 20%. It's 9 in 50. Besides, I wouldn't be surprised if this was consistent across many Regions in NS -- at least in my experience --. If the rate was rather lower, then I would be concerned, however in my experience 18% seems about right. Also there is not necessarily any evidence that making it harder to become a citizen would actually do anything positive besides discourage people from joining at all, which is what happened last time we made it harder to join the region.

I do have to agree with Marz.  We're a region of currently 405 members.  At most we have maybe what, 25 active folks?  That's concerning for a region of our size.  We should be shooting for at the absolute least 100 active folks, at least...and not including puppet nations.  But even the new folks we get don't stay active for insanely long, and usually stay dormant in the NS region and either stick to answering issues or they leave for another region.

We should be making it so folks want to stay here and stay active.  We don't want to be a stale region that only a handful really keep alive.

Roughly. To be clear, I am aware that it is not perfectly 1/5. It is, however, quite close to that. Hence the way I phrased that. 

Citizenship laws aren’t going to be the sole solution is this issue however we need to start taking the necessary steps to incentivizing activity within the region and that starts with trimming down of folks who aren’t present, recognizing the lot of them that did make significant contributions, and actually attributing value to being an active part of the community.