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What is the Regional Stability Squad?
It’s come to our attention that there’s some confusion about what the Regional Stability Squad is. That’s understandable. The RSS was founded soon after the departure of many in our community, at a time when the situation was confusing and when it wasn’t clear what direction Wintreath was going to go in, or if it would even continue. With the hindsight of over a week of work, we can provide some clarification of what the RSS is in the hopes that we can work better with the community to build a better Wintreath.

An Emergency Government
Currently, the RSS is Wintreath’s provisional governing body, tasked with managing the remaining day-to-day IC and OOC policies of the community. It essentially has the authorities of the former Cabinet and the Joint Moderation Group in determining policy. However, it is not a moderation team. The Discord ops team is still providing direct moderation as needed.

And a Convention for the Future
The overarching role of the RSS is to oversee the building of a new foundation for our community, both by coming to a deeper understanding of the events that led to the recent departures and by determining the sort of community the remaining members of Wintreath would like. Based on its conclusions, and in consultation with the community, the RSS is empowered to take broad actions to build the structures, systems, and roles required to create this community. At this point, Wintreath is a blank slate that can be reformed however we (the community) need and want it to be, and the RSS is empowered to drive those changes.

Some issues that the RSS can explore:

• Community Standards: What community standards and principles should exist to promote the sort of community we want? What do we need to do to create a community where people feel safe and comfortable sharing their whole selves? The RSS has started to explore this topic, as seen in Discussion Summary #1, where as an example the RSS committed to go beyond previous standards of “minimum expectations of civility or a simple ban on outright bigotry or prejudice”.
• Community Governance: How will our community be led and managed? What sort of IC and OOC governance would best promote a community of friends. I have stated some of my personal feelings on this matter in my recent personal statement, as the person who both carried the burden of being Monarch and Founder for nearly 10 years and the person whose unintentional mishandling of those powers have greatly harmed our community. But what system of governance would be best able to provide stability for the community, most likely to appropriately respond to issues where the last system failed, and allow the community to feel safe in voicing dissatisfaction with their leaders?
• Community Moderation: As a community of friends, Wintreath is a casual community, but events over the years have shown that at times even a casual community needs professional moderation. This means selecting moderators who have proven they have the traits necessary to best work with people; providing them the knowledge and training  to best do so successfully; and providing the community a process where they can comfortably air grievances when they feel moderation has erred in a way that will create positive change instead of inflaming situations.

Leading Action for Change
To build a better Wintreath, the RSS is empowered to take a number of actions within the confines of the current regional Constitution. It can redraft our principles, change and clarify community rules, adopt resources and training materials for moderation, and redraft our Constitution (with the approval of current Citizens). We’re basically refounding Wintreath and figuring out what we as a community want to do, perhaps entirely from scratch.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that the RSS will do all of them, only that it could. As we continue exploring these topics, the extent of the changes needed will become clearer.

In Summary
Simply put, the role of the RSS is to shepherd Wintreath from where it was the moment our community split to where it needs to be to prevent conflicts and tensions from ever getting to that point again. That doesn’t mean it will make all the decisions and then shove it down the community’s throat. We want to work in collaboration with everybody who wants to make Wintreath the community it should have been all along.

If you have thoughts, ideas, or opinions about anything that’s being discussed or proposed, please feel free to post them in the Compendium on the forums or the Snowfall Action Summit on Discord, which has been opened to all Citizens. If you’re not able to be on the forums or Discord, feel free to post on the region page or telegram a RSS member. We’ll make sure your thoughts are added to the discussion.

An Emergency Government
Currently, the RSS is Wintreath’s provisional governing body, tasked with managing the remaining day-to-day IC and OOC policies of the community. It essentially has the authorities of the former Cabinet and the Joint Moderation Group in determining policy. However, it is not a moderation team. The Discord ops team is still providing direct moderation as needed.

I wasn't aware the RSS wasn't a moderation team, nor that it was responsible for IC stuff either. I was wondering who was on the ops team and on the discord only you and Michi have the operator role. If the RSS isn't a moderation team, we should make it clearer to people who deals with moderation ig. Given the activity levels of the RSS and how disconnected they feel from what goes on in NS (at least to me) I dislike how they're responsible for IC things. Reading this, combined with he knowledge that they are basically an interim government meant to remedy the collapse of whatever government existed before I joined, I understand why this came to be and it's perfectly understandable. However, I would like to see a lot of IC stuff moved out from the jurisdiction of the RSS and into the hands of citizens as a whole.

And a Convention for the Future
The overarching role of the RSS is to oversee the building of a new foundation for our community, both by coming to a deeper understanding of the events that led to the recent departures and by determining the sort of community the remaining members of Wintreath would like. Based on its conclusions, and in consultation with the community, the RSS is empowered to take broad actions to build the structures, systems, and roles required to create this community. At this point, Wintreath is a blank slate that can be reformed however we (the community) need and want it to be, and the RSS is empowered to drive those changes.

Some issues that the RSS can explore:

• Community Governance: How will our community be led and managed? What sort of IC and OOC governance would best promote a community of friends. I have stated some of my personal feelings on this matter in my recent personal statement, as the person who both carried the burden of being Monarch and Founder for nearly 10 years and the person whose unintentional mishandling of those powers have greatly harmed our community. But what system of governance would be best able to provide stability for the community, most likely to appropriately respond to issues where the last system failed, and allow the community to feel safe in voicing dissatisfaction with their leaders?

Leading Action for Change
To build a better Wintreath, the RSS is empowered to take a number of actions within the confines of the current regional Constitution. It can redraft our principles, change and clarify community rules, adopt resources and training materials for moderation, and redraft our Constitution (with the approval of current Citizens). We’re basically refounding Wintreath and figuring out what we as a community want to do, perhaps entirely from scratch.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that the RSS will do all of them, only that it could. As we continue exploring these topics, the extent of the changes needed will become clearer.

I like the idea of minimalist governance that has been put forward and would like to see whatever government replaces the RSS (partially or fully) be founded on the idea of distributing power onto the citizens, rather than concentrate responsibilities onto elected or appointed offices. I think it would also be an interesting experiment/idea to try and avoid votes. I feel votes often end up being for legislation a few individuals who set the opinion on the proposal and a lot of people simple follow the majority opinion. I've certainly been guilty of this before. For elected offices, this often becomes worse with the votes effectively becoming a popularity contest. When we chose who to hold the delegacy we had four candidates at the start, two of which dropped out, and me and Aportistopireistan went to a vote as tow candidates. I won the vote on discord in a landslide, mostly because I'm a lot more active and well known. Activity is certainly a major thing to consider in who you want as an elected leader, but there are plenty of cases across NS where someone who would do the job poorly is elected over a better choice simply because of popularity. I'm not sure if it's possible to pursue a democratic way of electing the delegate without voting, and relying on people dropping out is not a reliable method, but I think it's good to think about.

@The Age of Utopia: I'm sorry, that post is very old and out of date...made just three weeks after the split. I had completely forgot about it.

The RSS is no longer involved in IC matters, beyond whatever individual desire they may have to be as Citizens and people who have been part of Wintreath for a long time. I couldn't tell you when exactly this changed, since it was a gradual thing, but I've been handling IC entirely fully for a long time, which has mostly consisted of posting on the RMB, running polls, and handling FA as needed (when it hasn't intersected with OOC stuff).

More recently, I've started having discussions to explore how to best return a lot of IC stuff to Citizens in a way that I'm comfortable with and that fits my vision (minimal governance, a community that resembles a virtual home, consensus-based decision making, etc.). I have no desire to do it all myself, and I think Wintreath would thrive better if others were involved and invested in the community. Plus I don't want to return to the days when Wintreath was a full-time job for me. But I guess I'm not going to let go either...I have too much of myself invested for that.

As for moderation, on the Discord Michi, Wuufu, and I are operators. Wuufu is very busy, but I know he's reliable if nobody else is around. On NS, I'm a mod insofar as I have border control authority. On Minecraft, taulover is a mod by virtue of being the server owner. With the community becoming more active, we're getting closer to the time that we need to bring on new mods, especially on the Discord. I'll have to admit though, I have fears...we've had so many incidents involving moderation in the past, and other bad things like ops + Cabinet becoming a sort of ruling clique that developed an us vs them attitude. The current ops team areas are pretty inactive except in the rare case where something's going on, and I don't think that's a bad thing. It's not something I want to change as we bring on new people.

@The Age of Utopia: I'm sorry, that post is very old and out of date...made just three weeks after the split. I had completely forgot about it.

The RSS is no longer involved in IC matters, beyond whatever individual desire they may have to be as Citizens and people who have been part of Wintreath for a long time. I couldn't tell you when exactly this changed, since it was a gradual thing, but I've been handling IC entirely fully for a long time, which has mostly consisted of posting on the RMB, running polls, and handling FA as needed (when it hasn't intersected with OOC stuff).

More recently, I've started having discussions to explore how to best return a lot of IC stuff to Citizens in a way that I'm comfortable with and that fits my vision (minimal governance, a community that resembles a virtual home, consensus-based decision making, etc.). I have no desire to do it all myself, and I think Wintreath would thrive better if others were involved and invested in the community. Plus I don't want to return to the days when Wintreath was a full-time job for me. But I guess I'm not going to let go either...I have too much of myself invested for that.

As for moderation, on the Discord Michi, Wuufu, and I are operators. Wuufu is very busy, but I know he's reliable if nobody else is around. On NS, I'm a mod insofar as I have border control authority. On Minecraft, taulover is a mod by virtue of being the server owner. With the community becoming more active, we're getting closer to the time that we need to bring on new mods, especially on the Discord. I'll have to admit though, I have fears...we've had so many incidents involving moderation in the past, and other bad things like ops + Cabinet becoming a sort of ruling clique that developed an us vs them attitude. The current ops team areas are pretty inactive except in the rare case where something's going on, and I don't think that's a bad thing. It's not something I want to change as we bring on new people.

I want to join!

@The Age of Utopia: I'm sorry, that post is very old and out of date...made just three weeks after the split. I had completely forgot about it.

The RSS is no longer involved in IC matters, beyond whatever individual desire they may have to be as Citizens and people who have been part of Wintreath for a long time. I couldn't tell you when exactly this changed, since it was a gradual thing, but I've been handling IC entirely fully for a long time, which has mostly consisted of posting on the RMB, running polls, and handling FA as needed (when it hasn't intersected with OOC stuff).

I was going to the FA discussion and saw this, since it was at the top I assumed it was recent and didn't realize it was pinned lol

As for moderation, on the Discord Michi, Wuufu, and I are operators. Wuufu is very busy, but I know he's reliable if nobody else is around. On NS, I'm a mod insofar as I have border control authority. On Minecraft, taulover is a mod by virtue of being the server owner. With the community becoming more active, we're getting closer to the time that we need to bring on new mods, especially on the Discord. I'll have to admit though, I have fears...we've had so many incidents involving moderation in the past, and other bad things like ops + Cabinet becoming a sort of ruling clique that developed an us vs them attitude. The current ops team areas are pretty inactive except in the rare case where something's going on, and I don't think that's a bad thing. It's not something I want to change as we bring on new people.

I think it's probably good to have a few mods/ops who are distant from the modern Wintreath. It allows for certainty of an unbiased opinion should things get messy. 

Outside of NS, in places I moderate, I always like to leave some sort of message if I do or change something, and I think a policy of mods recording all changes they make is a good thing to have. This has to be more than an automatic audit log (although you should have an audit log to check this against), forcing mods to write down changes they make discourages abuse and misuse of power.

The problem of cliques forming is a reason why I like your idea of a minimalist government. To lack positions and instead distribute their responsibilities and powers among all citizens reduces the ability of a clique to form. This is a problem that could arise with ops/mods, but having ones that are distant from the community and ones that frequently engage with the entire community and are well known and reachable by everyone are likely good ways to help reduce any cliques forming there.

More recently, I've started having discussions to explore how to best return a lot of IC stuff to Citizens in a way that I'm comfortable with and that fits my vision (minimal governance, a community that resembles a virtual home, consensus-based decision making, etc.). I have no desire to do it all myself, and I think Wintreath would thrive better if others were involved and invested in the community. Plus I don't want to return to the days when Wintreath was a full-time job for me. 

I think it would be good idea to lay out the areas of importance in IC governance so that way we can address and draft ways to put them cleanly in the hands of the citizenry. To enact the decisions of the citizenry (eg. opening and closing embassies, setting up polls, changing the flag or banner for events idk its mostly just embassies) the power could either be done by you as monarch, whoever is the delegate at the time, or a non-elected appointee (possibly a list of volunteers that gets rotated through). Such powers would only be allowed to be used to enact decisions made by the citizens as a whole if given to rotating appointees or the delegate.

The problem of cliques forming is a reason why I like your idea of a minimalist government. To lack positions and instead distribute their responsibilities and powers among all citizens reduces the ability of a clique to form. This is a problem that could arise with ops/mods, but having ones that are distant from the community and ones that frequently engage with the entire community and are well known and reachable by everyone are likely good ways to help reduce any cliques forming there.

I would like to chime in here with a small word of warning. Although (as an anarchist at heart when I'm feeling idealistic) I love open minimalist flat hierarchies, in practice these tend to lead to informal cliques and hierarchies forming which are even more difficult to navigate because they are even more unspoken. The best high profile case study of this is probably Valve.

I agree with you that we need to be intentional about placing people in positions of power from a diverse set of the community and encouraging them to interact and work together to discourage these problems from happening.

I would like to chime in here with a small word of warning. Although (as an anarchist at heart when I'm feeling idealistic) I love open minimalist flat hierarchies, in practice these tend to lead to informal cliques and hierarchies forming which are even more difficult to navigate because they are even more unspoken. The best high profile case study of this is probably Valve.

I don't think that such informal cliques are going to be a problem like you see there. Unlike your example of Valve, people aren't being paid and there's no obligation to do stuff. The goal of our IC government is not to constantly be doing stuff, but to be able to handle stuff when they come up or when people want something. Unlike a company we don't need to be constantly outputting product.

I would like to chime in here with a small word of warning. Although (as an anarchist at heart when I'm feeling idealistic) I love open minimalist flat hierarchies, in practice these tend to lead to informal cliques and hierarchies forming which are even more difficult to navigate because they are even more unspoken. The best high profile case study of this is probably Valve.

I don't think that such informal cliques are going to be a problem like you see there. Unlike your example of Valve, people aren't being paid and there's no obligation to do stuff. The goal of our IC government is not to constantly be doing stuff, but to be able to handle stuff when they come up or when people want something. Unlike a company we don't need to be constantly outputting product.

We are definitely not a company, but from personal experience a lot of purely volunteer-based organizations, both in-person and online, fall into this trap when they adopt flat hierarchies as well.

I would like to chime in here with a small word of warning. Although (as an anarchist at heart when I'm feeling idealistic) I love open minimalist flat hierarchies, in practice these tend to lead to informal cliques and hierarchies forming which are even more difficult to navigate because they are even more unspoken. The best high profile case study of this is probably Valve.

I don't think that such informal cliques are going to be a problem like you see there. Unlike your example of Valve, people aren't being paid and there's no obligation to do stuff. The goal of our IC government is not to constantly be doing stuff, but to be able to handle stuff when they come up or when people want something. Unlike a company we don't need to be constantly outputting product.

We are definitely not a company, but from personal experience a lot of purely volunteer-based organizations, both in-person and online, fall into this trap when they adopt flat hierarchies as well.

Again, an IC government would not be having the same productivity-requiring goal as other organizations might have. I'm not entirely sure how we would discourage them though if our vision of wintreath allows them to form. 

I would like to chime in here with a small word of warning. Although (as an anarchist at heart when I'm feeling idealistic) I love open minimalist flat hierarchies, in practice these tend to lead to informal cliques and hierarchies forming which are even more difficult to navigate because they are even more unspoken. The best high profile case study of this is probably Valve.

I don't think that such informal cliques are going to be a problem like you see there. Unlike your example of Valve, people aren't being paid and there's no obligation to do stuff. The goal of our IC government is not to constantly be doing stuff, but to be able to handle stuff when they come up or when people want something. Unlike a company we don't need to be constantly outputting product.

We are definitely not a company, but from personal experience a lot of purely volunteer-based organizations, both in-person and online, fall into this trap when they adopt flat hierarchies as well.

Again, an IC government would not be having the same productivity-requiring goal as other organizations might have. I'm not entirely sure how we would discourage them though if our vision of wintreath allows them to form.

Again, you seem to be assuming that such productivity-requiring goals are a prerequisite for the development of cliques, when in my experience that is very much not the case. I think your suggestion on being intentional on the makeup of ops is a good one which can also be extended in some ways to government.

Again, you seem to be assuming that such productivity-requiring goals are a prerequisite for the development of cliques, when in my experience that is very much not the case. I think your suggestion on being intentional on the makeup of ops is a good one which can also be extended in some ways to government.

Outside of moderation and ops makeup, what are ways we can hinder the ability of such informal hierarchies to form?

Again, you seem to be assuming that such productivity-requiring goals are a prerequisite for the development of cliques, when in my experience that is very much not the case. I think your suggestion on being intentional on the makeup of ops is a good one which can also be extended in some ways to government.

Outside of moderation and ops makeup, what are ways we can hinder the ability of such informal hierarchies to form?

I'm not sure, other than to be aware and mindful of the possibility. My initial comment was moreso to safeguard against an idealized notion of minimalist government, since it's common for people to think that it solves more problems than it actually does, imo. To be clear, I do like and support flat hierarchies, I just think that its proponents often ignore the flaws that it still can have.

At least online, I think there's two things that have helped us combat cliques in Wintreath, or at least a ruling clique.

The first is that we've minimized private spaces, especially private spaces concerning community governance. A lot of the conversations that used to just happen between the Cabinet and/or ops team now happen among Citizens in the Discord #governance channel or on here. I think in Old Wintreath, a lot of informal power was concentrated in people with access to those spaces by virtue of being in the 'room where it happened', which later on created a lot of unchecked opportunities for excess.

The second is to be as mindful as possible about what goes on in the remaining private spaces, especially when it comes to gossip about other members. It turns out that gossip is a powerful social tool for bonding people...gossiping about another person can give people a sense of intimacy, shared trust, and solidarity. But it comes at a cost, especially when it's happening among community leaders...in our case, it led to an insular mindset, an us vs them response to criticism, and a pervasive dismissiveness and defensiveness that made situations worse.

But is that alone enough? Will it be enough if and when Wintreath becomes more active again, as it seems to be becoming? Will it be enough if and when there's a major community dispute? Will it be enough if and when members split into the sorts of private friend servers that were pervasive during our worst times?

I don't know. I hope so. But I also know from experience how easy it is to unknowingly fall into those things believing that they're doing good. I suppose that's what I fear more than anything...how easy it is to fall into and not even be aware of it.