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I'd like to take this moment to try and lay out my arguments for why I feel like changing the requirements so that we can try to reach a point of potential understanding.

I personally feel like citizenship should be something you work towards getting, that it should be easy to acquire and maintain but not something you can hold without being at least present in the community. Since we have moved towards an open legislature and all citizens are allowed to vote in all legislative referendum, having citizenship be too easy to maintain would lead to people who are not active in the community and contribute little to nothing in either cultural or other ways to participate and vote on things when they are not really members of the community. I do not want to exclude people, I want to incentivize people to participate in the community and I feel like mildly higher limits would accomplish that.

Furthermore, I personally believe it would be good for prospective citizens too. If you can join and gain citizenship through too easy a means, like just having a non-WA nation in the region, you don't really have an impetus to try to contribute beyond your own personal wish too, which will ebb and flow. But if you need to make a small effort to reach an activity goal, or you contribute by having a WA nation endorsing the delegate in the region, you have an incentive to participate. That participation will 1) lead you to ingratiating yourself in the community, making you more confident and making it easier to find your footing in the region, 2) will increase the chance that you find yourself enjoying the community and making you wish to stay because you enjoy it.

Now, I do agree that too high a limit will end up dis-incentivizing this but I also feel like our current limits of 5 forum posts and 50 discord posts are not high enough. I would like to find a happy middle ground that would be workable.

As for some of the other points made, such as Gerrick's point about 2.1 and 2.2, I would be more than happy to incorporate. I would like to hear from more people, I think a proposal like this should definitely have a vigorous discussion.

I'd like to take this moment to try and lay out my arguments for why I feel like changing the requirements so that we can try to reach a point of potential understanding.

I personally feel like citizenship should be something you work towards getting, that it should be easy to acquire and maintain but not something you can hold without being at least present in the community. Since we have moved towards an open legislature and all citizens are allowed to vote in all legislative referendum, having citizenship be too easy to maintain would lead to people who are not active in the community and contribute little to nothing in either cultural or other ways to participate and vote on things when they are not really members of the community. I do not want to exclude people, I want to incentivize people to participate in the community and I feel like mildly higher limits would accomplish that.

Furthermore, I personally believe it would be good for prospective citizens too. If you can join and gain citizenship through too easy a means, like just having a non-WA nation in the region, you don't really have an impetus to try to contribute beyond your own personal wish too, which will ebb and flow. But if you need to make a small effort to reach an activity goal, or you contribute by having a WA nation endorsing the delegate in the region, you have an incentive to participate. That participation will 1) lead you to ingratiating yourself in the community, making you more confident and making it easier to find your footing in the region, 2) will increase the chance that you find yourself enjoying the community and making you wish to stay because you enjoy it.

Now, I do agree that too high a limit will end up dis-incentivizing this but I also feel like our current limits of 5 forum posts and 50 discord posts are not high enough. I would like to find a happy middle ground that would be workable.

As for some of the other points made, such as Gerrick's point about 2.1 and 2.2, I would be more than happy to incorporate. I would like to hear from more people, I think a proposal like this should definitely have a vigorous discussion.

The main issue is, is that by making it harder to get Citizenship you are inherently excluding people from the region. Think of it this way: Someone who is new to NS and has little idea what to expect comes to Wintreath. They see Citizenship exists and that everyone who does things in the region has it, there is also some push to get Citizenship. So they go to do so and they are told they don't meet the requirements because they must spend time before they can fully join the region. They will likely leave, because they are being asked to participate in the community before they are allowed to fully participate. They will go elsewhere because there are other regions that are cultural focused that don't have the requirement. What if someone used to other regions come by and sees that there is an activity requirement to get and hold citizenship? They might very well bounce out because they don't know if they'll enjoy the community and don't particularly want to take the extra time that would be required (or tie down their WA Nation, esp if they have it elsewhere). What about people with anxiety issues, or people who might have trouble socializing initially? I can tell you I would likely lurk a lot more if I joined now, then when I joined the region years ago. Because years ago it was a lot less overwhelming to join the region, because there was less.

Also there is the fact that external rewards can decrease intrinsic motivation[1]. While, yes, the situation is a bit different here, I firmly believe requiring activity to maintain citizenship would, more than likely, see an overall decrease of activity for many people -- especially newer people than would be offset by the requirement. Someone's activity is generally spurred by intrinsic motivation and if we required it, it would likely damage it and make people who are not already a part of the community not want to participate as much. Furthermore, should activity go up it would likely incentivize low effort engagement and activity, which I believe is not helpful and can very well be overall harmful to the community, because what's the difference between someone posting once a day in a non-spam topic with a few sentences, and actually participating in events, actively posting on the RMB, and being more generally active elsewhere in the community. Also, I wish to point out that the last time there was any activity requirement to become a Citizen, Citizenship applications just stopped and people didn't really stay around. The last requirement was 5 posts. I have little reason to believe that a change back to this would be any different anyways.

As for being a WA nation, sure it's a somewhat inactive way to keep citizenship, however there are still issues with it that are necessarily harmful. A new person may very well have issues in joining the WA or may not want to join the WA because they don't know or understand it. Maybe they want to RP their nation and they don't want WA decisions to impact them. A person in NS might be WA Immobile, might participate in R/D, or might not be able to join the WA for one reason or another. None of these are as convenient, easy, and accessible as having a nation in the region. Furthermore, it would be a likely be a violation of our constitution, Article V, Section 4 and Section 6.

Finally, I personally think our issues are a mix of two: There is too much presented to a new person and We push people towards citizenship. For the former, think of it this way: A new person joins and may have no idea what they want to do here. They got a telegram and decided to check out the region. When they join the Discord they have access to myriad channels with different topics, and while none of them are extremely active, it can be overwhelming. Especially because there's a decent amount of upfront reading. When they join the forums things are organized and compartmentalized, and they are not sure where exactly to start. The RMB itself is particularly active and also has RP on it. There's also WARP which a new person probably sees, and has no idea what exactly it is or how it fits in. Where exactly does a new person begin? Sure they can say hi, but how does a new person figure out where to go, what to do, and how to try out new things? I legitimately do not know if we have any resources for this, but if we do I would say we could probably make these resources even more widely known, so that anyone can greet and help out a new person in our region. There is a lot to do in Wintreath, but this is a double edged sword.

As to the pushing people towards citizenship, to my knowledge, if you want to do more than just participate in events, it's at least somewhat expected that you become a citizen. And to some extent, I have little issue with certain things requiring Citizenship -- like voting in elections and participating in the Landsraad. However, if you want to participate more deeply, if you want to run a Werewolf game, if you want to do an event, it very much seems like you need Citizenship to do so. To an extent, I can understand this, however this fundamentally means that Citizenship is required if you want to do more than just hang out. So long as this is the case, Citizenship should be as easy to get so that people can easily join and start trying out their ideas. New people coming in, and proposing new things and new ideas can do so easily, as it helps those new people to get invested into the region. If these requirements do not exist, then we should explicitly state as such to make it easier for new people to understand. If it got to the point where Citizenship wasn't nearly as needed, I might begin to agree that maybe we should make Citizenship more restricted, but as of now, I personally don't think we should.

[1] Deci, E L et al. “A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation.” Psychological bulletin vol. 125,6 (1999): 627-68; discussion 692-700. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.125.6.627

I would like to point out, Chanku, that you seem to be labouring under the impression that we do not currently have an activity requirement in our citizenship laws. We do. It works exactly the same way as it would under my proposed legislation, as an either-or. A WA nation requirement is, to be entirely frank, not so big an ask in my opinion. As far as I am aware, many other regions have WA requirements to at least obtain citizenship. 

To your point about your concern about activity being exclusionary, I just disagree. I just do not think requirements like these will have the catastrophic effect you think it will because we already have similar requirements and we don't have this problem. 

To your point about its constitutionality, I looked at the Article you mentioned, section 4 just requires that constitutional amendments need a referendum, and this would not amend the constitution, it would amend the Citizenship act and, well, there's no section 6 so I don't know what you're talking about. The Fundamental Laws

As to your point about integration, why not do both? I don't think we can't do both, so why not do both?

Overall, I think this will be worthwhile and I just don't think these changes are either the massive shift that you think it is, its as best a slight revision, and I don't think it would have the effect you think it will because the law as is already works like this. I just don't think its as big a deal as you make it out to be, Chanku.

On a separate note, for my own clarification, is there anything that non-Citizens can’t participate in in Wintreath other than voting, running for office, being an ambassador, and I think Rollspelkra (though that doesn’t exclude them from roleplay otherwise)? 

I have yet to find a policy that bars folks from participating in or hosting any of our games (I would also like to note that non-citizens can and have participated in my ministry in the past). As far as I can tell, non-Citizens can enjoy every event we have available to them culturally without Citizenship. 

I would like to point out, Chanku, that you seem to be labouring under the impression that we do not currently have an activity requirement in our citizenship laws. We do. It works exactly the same way as it would under my proposed legislation, as an either-or. A WA nation requirement is, to be entirely frank, not so big an ask in my opinion. As far as I am aware, many other regions have WA requirements to at least obtain citizenship.

To your point about your concern about activity being exclusionary, I just disagree. I just do not think requirements like these will have the catastrophic effect you think it will because we already have similar requirements and we don't have this problem.

To your point about its constitutionality, I looked at the Article you mentioned, section 4 just requires that constitutional amendments need a referendum, and this would not amend the constitution, it would amend the Citizenship act and, well, there's no section 6 so I don't know what you're talking about. The Fundamental Laws

As to your point about integration, why not do both? I don't think we can't do both, so why not do both?

Overall, I think this will be worthwhile and I just don't think these changes are either the massive shift that you think it is, its as best a slight revision, and I don't think it would have the effect you think it will because the law as is already works like this. I just don't think its as big a deal as you make it out to be, Chanku.

Apologies, I meant Article III. I was apparently looking in the wrong place.

And yes, we do have activity requirements now, I am under no illusions that Activity is not also a way to maintain your Citizenship, however it is not exclusive to other methods that are much more welcoming to newcomers and those in other regions. When you remove those, you leave activity as the only real method, because let's face it, almost no one new will maintain citizenship or get citizenship because they have a WA Nation in Wintreath endorsing our delegate.

The issue is not that I think it won't have a catastrophic effect, it's that I KNOW it will. I was here the last time people were calling for citizenship to be more exclusionary, for citizenship to require activity to practically get. Because the last time when I said this would backfire, that it would keep people out of the region, people who voiced the same concern -- were ignored. I'm not going to be silent when people are trying to make the same mistakes again for almost the same reasons. I can almost guarantee you that in a few months we will be back here and undoing that change if we go through with it, much like last time. If I manage to be wrong, then I will apologize and admit it, but you have shown me no evidence this won't be like last time.

If you keep people out, it is by definition exclusionary. However, if we make it harder to get citizenship it will inherently be exclusionary, because it will keep people out. You can say it is not all you want, it does not change the fact that it is (even now, our requirements are technically exclusionary, however I for what citizenship entails I think the level that we have now is good enough). However this proposal will keep certain groups of people out, groups of people that I believe have a space in Wintreath, and not the people you seek to keep out. If this was the law when I joined, I wouldn't have joined Wintreath at all. It would have driven me away. And I highly doubt I am the only one that would've been driven away by this.

On a separate note, for my own clarification, is there anything that non-Citizens can’t participate in in Wintreath other than voting, running for office, being an ambassador, and I think Rollspelkra (though that doesn’t exclude them from roleplay otherwise)?

I have yet to find a policy that bars folks from participating in or hosting any of our games (I would also like to note that non-citizens can and have participated in my ministry in the past). As far as I can tell, non-Citizens can enjoy every event we have available to them culturally without Citizenship.

Sure they can participate in events, but participation in events is not what I am particularly talking about. Also keep in mind if it's not explicit, people will rely on context clues to determine what they can do, so if it is not written down that you don't need Citizenship to do X, and the only people that do X are those with Citizenship people will necessary assume they need Citizenship to do X.

From everything that I've read so far, and seeing how the "debates" for lack of better words are evolving, I've noticed a trend: prioritizing numbers vs valuing citizenship. For those who see greater value in citizenry numbers, they see additional requirements for citizenship as stifling to the growth of the community. However, those who oppose the value of citizenship numbers see the elimination of citizenry requirements, or even maintenance of the status quo, as threats to the quality of the Wintreath community and the value of earning a citizenship within. At least, this is how I've digested what I have read thus far.

As for me personally, I agree more with the "valuing citizenship" school of thought. The whole point of citizenry, in my opinion, is a privilege for those who have dedicated themselves to our community. What would it mean for those who have earned this privilege if all requirements for citizenship were dropped and anyone, even those who have shown no interest via participation, could become a citizen? I genuinely believe that keeping --or even increasing-- our current requirements of citizenship would be exclusionary to only those who didn't value Wintreath in the first place. The idea of granting someone a citizenship without any participation or effort from an applicant seems very backwards to me. 

For those that have gained citizenry, but have since been absent, I think there's further discussion we could have on this front. On some level, I believe there should be a no-questions asked grace period for anyone who disappears for a certain amount of time. At the same time, if someone is gone for a long time without any Paragonhood or intent to return, then we should not be reserved from removing their citizenry; they have clearly shown that they are no longer interested in the community. I'd like to hear more thoughts on this front.

Though this point has nothing to do with the bill, I want to mention that while I fundamentally disagree with Chanku, I do agree with her observation that we push for citizenship really hard. When I first came to Wintreath, I applied and got my citizenship, but I was hesitant to actually participate on the site, simply because I hadn't had enough time to process everything. It certainly did not preclude me from eventual participation, but I needed time. In short, I think we should let prospective citizens come to us, not the other way around. That way, their interest in the community is without question and they've had enough time to process everything to truly become dedicated, involved citizens.

With regards to the WA membership question, we currently have 53 citizens on the forum, 70 WA nations endorsing the delegate and, by my count, 125 WA nations in the region. Forgive me, but I don't find your argument that 'almost no one new will maintain citizenship or get citizenship because they have a WA Nation in Wintreath endorsing our delegate' to be unpersuasive when we have more WA nations endorsing the delegate than we have citizens, Chanku. 

You make a fair point about constitutionality, though. I would argue that since a viable alternative exists, meeting the post requirements, you would not be required to do so, it would be one of two ways to meet the citizenship rules and, thus, would not be required because you can reasonably not do so if you choose too. However, I recognize this is a question of interpretation and law, which is in the hands of the Monarch, so we'll have to ask that question later.

Finally, I do not think this is a fair comparison to the Citizenship Integration Act, that had a post requirement as the only route to citizenship, this has more routes, routes that I think I have just demonstrated are at least more practical than you seem to believe. Ultimately, though, I do agree with Svipjoth that this seems a disagreement on principle, not policy. I have made my case, you have made yours, and I think its fair to say that we both want what we think is best for the region. Whatever happens next with this proposal, I do think our democratic traditions are stronger for the debate.

I wouldn't say that I value numbers over citizenship but rather the ability for anyone to easily become and remain a citizen, especially people who have been active members for a significant time but have taken a step away for whatever reason. So in that way I do value citizenship, just not that it should be any more exclusionary. 

But I suppose we can always try out having higher standards and see where we are after a certain amount of time after. Then we can change it back if we find out that increasing requirements has adverse effects.

But yeah as it stands, I'm most likely going to be voting against the bill it sounds like this is shaping up to be. And that's just a disagreement on this issue, which is fine to have. Always interested in this type of discussion. 

I've made some of the changes suggested in this thread to the proposal, I've also lowered the requirements, especially for maintaining citizenship. Until the constitutionality question is answered, I've removed the requirement for a WA nation and returned it to its original, non-WA nation requirement. What does everyone think?

1. Title
  1.1 This act shall be cited as the Citizenship Reform Act of 2022.

2. Citizenship Act Reform
  Section 2 of The Citizenship Act shall be amended to read as follows:
  2.1 Any individual wishing to obtain citizenship must either:
    2.1.1 have a NS nation within the region,
    2.1.2 make twenty (20) non-spam posts on the Wintreath forums,
    2.1.3 make twenty (20) non-spam posts on the Wintreath NationStates RMB,
    2.1.4 or make seventy (70) non-spam posts on the Wintreath Discord server in order to qualify for citizenship.
  2.2 Citizens may maintain their citizenship through one of the following means:
    2.2.1 Keeping the nation that is associated with their citizenship within the region. Should a citizen wish to designate a new nation as their citizenship nation, they must inform the person (or government agency) empowered to accept or reject citizenship applications in accordance with relevant law of a change in citizenship nation.
    2.2.2 Making ten (10) non-spam posts on the Wintreath forums during the previous calendar month.
    2.2.3 Making fifty (50) non-spam posts on the Wintreath Discord server during the previous calendar month.
    2.2.4 Making ten (10) non-spam posts on the Wintreath NationStates RMB during the previous calendar month.
    2.2.5 Making a financial contribution to The Winter Nomad of at least $5 (USD) during the previous calendar month.
  2.3. The Landsraad, through the Chancellor, reserves the right to exempt any Citizen from the provisions of section 2.2 of this Act due to an extended leave of absence from Wintreath under extenuating circumstances for up to six (6) months.
    2.3.1. Circumstances can include, but are not limited to: natural disasters, severe illness, extended hospital care, military training or deployment, extended stay in a remote rural area, or loss of a main source of income.
    2.3.2. A Citizen must hold Citizenship for at least thirty (30) days and declare intent to return to Wintreath in order to qualify for an exemption under this section. Compliance with these requirements is determined by the Landsraad, through the Chancellor.
    2.3.3. Exemptions may last no longer than six (6) months from the initial date of absence, as determined by the Landsraad, through the Chancellor.
    2.3.4. Any Citizen with an exemption under this section must return to compliance with section 2.2 of this Act within seven (7) days of their return to Wintreath.
  2.4 The Monarch of Wintreath reserves the right to exempt any Citizen from the provisions of section 2.2 of this Act due to an extended leave of absence from Wintreath under extenuating circumstances, as laid out in section 2.3.1 of this act, for periods of time greater than six (6) months at their discretion.
  2.5 The Monarch of Wintreath shall have the authority to revoke citizenship from any person, so long as the Monarch makes a public announcement explaining the reasons for doing so.
  2.6 The Landsraad shall have the authority to revoke Citizenship from any person by a two-thirds supermajority vote, so long as the legislation revoking the Citizenship contains the reasons for doing so. Persons whose Citizenship has been revoked by the Landsraad may appeal the decision to the Monarch, who can restore Citizenship by decree.
    2.6.1 A two-thirds supermajority shall be counted from the citizens who cast ballots in the relevant vote, not from the wider electorate including citizens who did not cast ballots in the relevant vote.
  2.7 The Monarch, or any subordinate official appointed by the Monarch, shall have the authority to grant or deny citizenship to any person who applies.

Thinking about it now, if we keep the nation citizenship maintenance option as is then there will be none of those random zombie citizens cut since they're all currently maintaining their citizenship through NS nations. This bill will essentially only increase the requirements to gain and maintain citizenship for people who aren't on NationStates. So yeah I don't think this really solves the problem stated.

Personally I don't think having one of the options be that a NS nation has to be in the WA is against the Fundamental Laws since there are other options to earn and maintain citizenship. But idk maybe I'm wrong. 

I kinda like how 10KI does it.  There's the regular citizen, which are folks which basically just say they want to join, have a nation in the region, and send a TG on NS to one of the nations for the higher ups confirming who are on Discord for that masking.  They have access to most areas except for normally election based ones (I think they have access to voting, but can't run for office) for ministry areas essentially similar to our Thaneships.  They also don't have access to applying for TITO iirc, and possibly Ambassadorship...but don't quote me on that latter one.

But outside of those areas, they have pretty full access to everywhere else both on the forums and off.

Then there's WA citizens, which are those who are in the WA and have that WA nation in the region.  They have all the access that normal citizens do, but also access to areas such as running for the different positions as they pop up...and they also are able to join TITO and other areas that require that WA membership.

I've always liked that system because while it seems like a barrier, it's really not since WA membership is extraordinarily easy to get, and it's much more about whether the person wants to be a WA member versus whether they can be if they're a WA member in another region (which iirc 10KI completely discourages the idea of multi-regional positions).  Essentially you're not really actually barred from anything not being a WA member...but if you're ready to take the step and actually devote yourself to the region, having that WA membership is seen as a step to show that...and I actually like that idea.

I've always liked the idea of some sort of secondary level as well to give new people something to work towards and cement themselves in the community, but it still doesn't solve the zombie citizens issue. It does have the "citizenship should mean something extra" bit, but I think this whole conversation stems from wanting to get rid of zombie citizens. 

I suppose I might be comfortable with having a very low mandatory activity requirement for all citizens regardless of NS nation. Like you have to make at least 5 forum/RMB/Discord posts in a year low. That'll cut those people who just have a NS nation in the region but do literally nothing else while still allowing people to disappear for large chunks of time but still keep citizenship. 

In all honesty, if we're focused on completely oblitering zombie citizens it's going to be absolutely impossible since even folks who go through any hurdles or added steps have the potential to go silent at any point.

We should be more focused on thinning the concept by providing incentives to be active, rather than focusing on the impossible task of eliminating them completely...unless we just want to talk about revoking the idea of nation-based auto residency, in which case that idea will be met with a lot of resistance.

But that's also why I generally look at that 2 level citizenship...so that even if we get quiet folks who remain in that first level...it's much less that we're losing a lot by them staying there versus the potential to gain more by having them take that next step into becoming a WA member and becoming more involved.

But yeah, no matter what zombie citizens will always be an issue unless we remove both the donation and NS nation upkeep types or add the Forum/Discord post types as secondary requirements...and I don't know about you, but I'd much rather focus on those incentives to keep folks interested rather than forcing them to pop on forums/Discord once every few months to make a post.  By that point, we'd absolutely be creating an unnecessary barrier that would turn more folks off from wanting to stay...not to mention, that's definitely much more of a bandaid to the big problem and they'd still be by all rights a zombie citizen if all they have to do is pop in once every two months, literally say something as inconsequential as "hi" and then disappear until two months later.

FWIW I'm kinda ehh towards the two tiers of Citizenship idea, although I will note that I have an idea that is similar, but I won't be proposing at this time because the time is not yet right.

Sorry for the delay in response...it has been a crazy week all around, and I have to admit the thought of going through all these posts was daunting.

With regard to requirements based on post content instead of count, I don't know how to do that because it's such a subjective thing. We can do non-spam posts on the forums because all the spam is in one forum. I don't exactly go through posts elsewhere to determine whether they're quality posts or not...you could argue that What Are You Listening To is spam, even though it's not in the spam forum. To some extent it's a subjective thing where post counts are not.

With regard to The Fundamental Laws, III.6 specifies that "Citizens shall not be required to join the World Assembly or to participate in any inter or extra-regional bodies". I don't believe the WA nation option violates this because it's just that...an option for maintaining Citizenship among many others. If the Landsraad were to pass a law that says all Citizens most maintain a WA nation and didn't provide any other options, then that would violate the Fundamental Laws because it would force Citizens to either join the WA or lose Citizenship. This does not do that, therefore it doesn't violate the Fundamental Laws.

With those things said...what if we're putting the cart before the horse when it came to Citizenship? Instead of pushing new members to become Citizens, what if we instead got them to join some of the guilds and clubs (I want clubs, damnit!), and then when their activity justified it we would invite them to consider applying for Citizenship. Not necessarily take away the option if somebody discovered it and wanted to rush to it...just not promote it to new members. Then if we can get them involved in some of our groups, they'll presumably gain the knowledge necessary to be an active part of the community, have the activity to justify Citizenship, and we'll have the opportunity to get to know them in the process. It's almost like a more subtle version of my original initiate idea.