I essentially fully agree with the stances that Chanku and Gerrick have espoused throughout this thread. I'm honestly dismayed to see such broad support of increasing exclusivity within our community.
For a recap of my thoughts on citizenship changes, I'll just quote my previous post on the previous citizenship proposal:
One of Wintreath's core values is openness. That anyone can come in and instantly make great impact as a full member of the community is really important.
Creating a three-tiered, seniority-based citizenship system creates artificial barriers to entry. Think to just a year ago, when we were struggling to get any new members, even those who had been around in the RMB for years, to integrate into our forum and Discord community. It was a monumental effort for many of our newer members to finally join this part of Wintreath - with further restrictions I wonder if such things would even happen. Getting people to commit to such a long process, especially when they're new to the community, is very difficult, and many would simply not bother or get too stressed about it and go elsewhere.
In my experience running clubs and other social organizations, there are two ways to grow and maintain a community. Being exclusive makes people want to stay because they feel like they are in a special club, but inevitably people leave and then there's nobody to replace them because everyone else has been alienated by the exclusive recruitment process. Or, you can be incredibly opening and welcoming of everyone and anyone. Most people won't stay for long, but the ones who do will be self-selecting to be well-suited and enthusiastic for the community, and are drawn from a wider talent pool.
Citizenizing new members is fast and easy and I see no reason why this is a problem. The more people are accepted and welcomed into our community, the more will stay. On the other hand, bans should require more careful consideration. Exile from a community, particularly one which prides itself in its openness, should not be taken lightly.
Furthermore, mentorship systems in Wintreath (and pretty much everywhere else I've been) are prone to inactivity and disinterest from both ends. Tying citizenship to such a long stint with the mentorship system would be concerning as a result, especially if (as outlined in this proposal) this leads to backlogs/waitlists for even starting on the citizenship process. In my experience, interacting with the existing community on equal footing tends to produce better results. That said, we could always beef up our mentorship system, perhaps by expanding the Hearthkeepers into a more prominent role.
There are some advantages to mentoring now compared to before. Explaining our system of government is easier now than ever, with the convoluted Storting system long-gone. We just have a set of senior appointed Jarls and junior elected Thanes that specialize in specific community work. And if there's something you want to do in Wintreath you can do it yourself no matter your position, and others will help if you want. These are not complex points to get across - the difficulty is getting people interested. The better approach is not to force people to do work if they want to get citizenship, but rather to foster a strong enough sense of welcoming and community so that people want to help out and give back.
Finally, if citizenship were to be changed in such an intrinsic way, so that it is so deeply tied to active community participation, then the only way to maintain citizenship while being inactive should be through Paragonhood. Monetary contributions can and should be honored through many other means. But if citizenship is tied to active civic participation, then donations are a fundamentally different kind of contribution that should be celebrated and rewarded in a different way. Citizens should be equal before the law, and should not reflect real-world class differences and hierarchies.
We are a community of second chances, of working to make members feel as welcome as possible. This is why efforts for community building need to err on the side of openness.
As Gerrick said, both sides here place great value on citizenship and what it means; rather, this seems to be a fundamental disagreement on what citizenship should represent and how that reflects our community's values. Making citizenship more open and easy to obtain does not devalue its meaning, but rather strengthens it. The best way to act and codify our welcoming and open nature is to welcome newcomers as full citizens and provide them with full rights and protections under the law. By contrast, we cannot pride ourselves in our community's welcome and open nature if our system works directly against it.
It is indeed the case that the only barriers that citizenship explicitly poses are in the realm of voting and leadership positions. However, the optics of the situation are probably far more important. If a newcomer arrives and sees all these hoops they have to jump through to become citizen, and then compare to other regions where there is no such thing (and I know it's not much, but seeing all these various conditions and possibilities can make it
seem convoluted), they will in all likelihood not bother. They are not invested in any one community at that point and are blessed with nearly infinite choice. Similarly (as Gerrick pointed out), if an old citizen returns and sees they have lost citizenship, they may no longer feel welcome. Returning to a community after a long absence is already a difficult prospect even without additional challenges, and that sort of demotivation simply works against us when it's already an uphill battle.
We have already learned this when we imposed a 5-post requirement. Even minuscule barriers to entry drive people away unnecessarily. We're now in a prosperous time for Wintreath when it comes to new and dedicated members, but this was not always the case and may not be the case in the future. The current wave of newcomers to Wintreath government (I say newcomers but granted, y'all have been here for a while) have arrived and flourished under the inclusive model of citizenship. I worry that we have forgotten the lessons of the past, and am concerned these changes may encourage stagnation as newcomers are more discouraged from joining, potentially create yet another divide between us and the Resident/RMB community, and encourage us toward a culture of exclusivity. I strongly believe that our efforts should not be on restricting citizenship in any way, but rather the opposite: we should create and maintain stronger pathways for entry into our community.
