Discussion/Proposal: Major Overhaul to Citizenship System

The Magisterium
21

— Begin quote from ____

Making every resident a citizen by default is a security flaw and granting WA residents voting rights is open to abuse. Anyone Conclave banned would be able to come back and influence votes by creating a puppet with WA. I am deeply conerned about that.

If you want more resident rights then I would love to see ideas but I believe that it alone doesn’t merit an overhaul of the citizenship process. I agree with VW that privacy concerns are overblown.

I still don’t understand what problem we’re trying to solve. If we don’t have a problem to solve then how are we trying to help TEP? And what brought this to our collective attentions now rather than a month ago or a month later?

— End quote

I disagree as WA residents can not vote – they would need to become registered voters (currently citizenship thread). Anyone Conclave banned can come back right now. They can avoid the forum. They can fool the admins. Has happened in the past. Will always happen. But as long as they only get one vote is all that matters to me.

The only more rights we can give is the same rights as citizens at this point. I’m honestly tired of seeing ideas for the last few years. Just let’s get it done already, remove some division from the RMB/Forum, and bring some new life into a systems that’s nearly 20 years old.

And why does it have to be a problem? Is it broken? No. It is a great system? No. But we should always find ways to bring more engagement to the overall community. And what brought it to this point? I did with this the OP. As a citizen it’s my right to. That’s all.

22

— Begin quote from ____

So we could go from Residents and Citizens to only Citizens. Depending on your WA status would determine if you can vote in Delegate Elections and Referendums. With WA verification it would then eliminate the need to do IP checks for anyone with a WA nation (as they would need to TG us from that nation). Why would we need to do an IP check for someone that is in the WA? Let the NS Mods handle that. You go from WA to Ejected from the WA due to rule violations then we should proscribe that nation IMO. I changed my opinion.

— End quote

Okay. I like that part. If it would work. Let NS do the IP checking for us, by only accepting WA members as Citizens. However WA membership is not a requirement now, and changing that would require an overhaul of the Concordat. Doable.
However, this system means that with every application we will have to check the WA status of all current Citizens because if one of them dropped their WA status, it would be possible that that new application is a puppet of the former one.
And having to check the WA status of every Citizen during each application seems like a lot more work than doing just one IP check during every application.

— Begin quote from ____

NS will never tell but it likely is something related to IPs and people get ejected all the time because they are violating NS game rules. They accepted that when they joined. I said we should proscribe those nations that do get the kick above. Thinking on it – no bar them from voting – no WA = no vote.

— End quote

I believed NS catched users when multiple nations get WA membership but use the same IP address. However, they state they have more advanced techniques.

— Begin quote from ____

  • I only have one WA nation but my brother has one and he sometimes uses this computer.

Unfortunately that’s asking for trouble. We try to identify WA cheats accurately, but we have no way of telling exactly whose fingers are touching the keyboard at any given time. So unfortunately if you don’t want to run the risk of being ejected from the WA (or worse), you shouldn’t let anyone else operate WA nations from your computer, either.

Sharing a network or IP address is usually fine. The game does not rely on any single method of identifying WA cheats, but combines data from many different methods to calculate the likelihood that multiple WA nations are operated by the same person.

— End quote

If this is true, then I stand corrected. I know they use sessions and such, as I 've sometimes run into trouble annoyances when having multiple tabs of NS open in my browser. So, okay, I now believe their WA checks are more than what I believed they were.

But still. Denying every Citizen in TEP that has their WA in another region will not be received well by them. And we would still need to constantly monitor the WA status of all Citizens. It would work if we had a stable reliable program that constantly monitored the WA status of all Citizens. But without that …

23

— Begin quote from ____

— Begin quote from ____

So we could go from Residents and Citizens to only Citizens. Depending on your WA status would determine if you can vote in Delegate Elections and Referendums. With WA verification it would then eliminate the need to do IP checks for anyone with a WA nation (as they would need to TG us from that nation). Why would we need to do an IP check for someone that is in the WA? Let the NS Mods handle that. You go from WA to Ejected from the WA due to rule violations then we should proscribe that nation IMO. I changed my opinion.

— End quote

Okay. I like that part. If it would work. Let NS do the IP checking for us, by only accepting WA members as Citizens. However WA membership is not a requirement now, and changing that would require an overhaul of the Concordat. Doable.
However, this system means that with every application we will have to check the WA status of all current Citizens because if one of them dropped their WA status, it would be possible that that new application is a puppet of the former one.
And having to check the WA status of every Citizen during each application seems like a lot more work than doing just one IP check during every application.

— Begin quote from ____

NS will never tell but it likely is something related to IPs and people get ejected all the time because they are violating NS game rules. They accepted that when they joined. I said we should proscribe those nations that do get the kick above. Thinking on it – no bar them from voting – no WA = no vote.

— End quote

I believed NS catched users when multiple nations get WA membership but use the same IP address. However, they state they have more advanced techniques.

— Begin quote from ____

  • I only have one WA nation but my brother has one and he sometimes uses this computer.

Unfortunately that’s asking for trouble. We try to identify WA cheats accurately, but we have no way of telling exactly whose fingers are touching the keyboard at any given time. So unfortunately if you don’t want to run the risk of being ejected from the WA (or worse), you shouldn’t let anyone else operate WA nations from your computer, either.

Sharing a network or IP address is usually fine. The game does not rely on any single method of identifying WA cheats, but combines data from many different methods to calculate the likelihood that multiple WA nations are operated by the same person.

— End quote

If this is true, then I stand corrected. I know they use sessions and such, as I 've sometimes run into trouble annoyances when having multiple tabs of NS open in my browser. So, okay, I now believe their WA checks are more than what I believed they were.

But still. Denying every Citizen in TEP that has their WA in another region will not be received well by them. And we would still need to constantly monitor the WA status of all Citizens. It would work if we had a stable reliable program that constantly monitored the WA status of all Citizens. But without that …

— End quote

I’m of a worldly view. I didn’t say that we would be denying anyone. WA Nation Anywhere. It’s in a BFE UCR? Great. Another GCR? Amazing. Just have a puppet in TEP and TG verify your nations. The only people that would loose the ability to vote in the two major votes we have would be the 100% Non-WA.

24

Yikes this is going crazy,

Honestly, after reading this thread, it seems to me the simplest solution might be rebranding: everyone is a “Citizen” but only “Registered Voters” can vote, and in order to join the govt, you need a “background check”, which can be denoted by a “[BC]” before the title.

25

— Begin quote from ____

Yikes this is going crazy,

Honestly, after reading this thread, it seems to me the simplest solution might be rebranding: everyone is a “Citizen” but only “Registered Voters” can vote, and in order to join the govt, you need a “background check”, which can be denoted by a “[BC]” before the title.

— End quote

Yes. That’s the tldr of what has been said. But background checks?

26

Is background check just another term for The Public Disclosure Form?

27

— Begin quote from ____

I’m of a worldly view. I didn’t say that we would be denying anyone. WA Nation Anywhere. It’s in a BFE UCR? Great. Another GCR? Amazing. Just have a puppet in TEP and TG verify your nations. The only people that would loose the ability to vote in the two major votes we have would be the 100% Non-WA.

— End quote

Okay I didn’t think of that. But also, that doesn’t change that we’d have to check every current Citizens WA status for each application.

One person has WA on nation A in another region and moves nation B to TEP and gets citizenship on that. Now he moves his WA to nation C and places nation D to TEP, requesting Cit. And now they have two citizenship nations in TEP.

Now I assume you’re gonna say that that is okay, as neither B nor D can vote due to not having WA membership. Well, I think we will not get such a change to pass. But let’s assume a change like that passes, would Citizens B or D be allowed to vote if they moved their WA temporarily to B and D? If so, we would stil have to check nations A, B, C, and D for any overlap. Or are we going to create a list of citizens that are allowed to vote by doing a WA status check simultaneous for all citizens right before any vote (for instance by using NationStates’ latest daily dump file)?

28

— Begin quote from ____

I disagree as WA residents can not vote – they would need to become registered voters (currently citizenship thread). Anyone Conclave banned can come back right now. They can avoid the forum. They can fool the admins. Has happened in the past. Will always happen. But as long as they only get one vote is all that matters to me.

— End quote

I feel as if I’ve misunderstood your original post, my bad. Could you clarify what you mean by registered voter, citizen, resident, and unregistered voter?

— Begin quote from ____

The only more rights we can give is the same rights as citizens at this point. I’m honestly tired of seeing ideas for the last few years.

— End quote

In my opinion, it’s better to wait to see some ideas rather than introducing sweeping reforms.

— Begin quote from ____

Just let’s get it done already, remove some division from the RMB/Forum, and bring some new life into a systems that’s nearly 20 years old.

— End quote

I don’t see how divisions are going to be lessened since this proposal targets the citizenship process. People refuse forums because they’re forums. The RMB isn’t going to join the forums becase we gave them a new citizenship process.

— Begin quote from ____

And why does it have to be a problem? Is it broken? No. It is a great system? No. But we should always find ways to bring more engagement to the overall community. And what brought it to this point? I did with this the OP. As a citizen it’s my right to. That’s all.

— End quote

Sweeping reforms can, in my opinion, only be justified of they fix a sufficiently large problem or help out in a significant way. Reforms for the sake of something new isn’t something I support. We can agree that the process isn’t broken, so if it isn’t broke why fix it? Engagement is better done through cultural events, games, activities, the types of things that people want to do. Overhauling the citizenship process isn’t going to engage new people.

I’d like to hear what concerns about the citizenship process you’re trying to address so we can better understand the “why” part of this proposal.

29

— Begin quote from ____

I feel as if I’ve misunderstood your original post, my bad. Could you clarify what you mean by registered voter, citizen, resident, and unregistered voter?

— End quote

As someone who thought this out, I’ll try to explain.

First off, the Resident-Citizen system will be removed. Instead, people will be known as either Resident Citizens, or Registered Citizens. Both get the full rights as per given by the concordat.

Resident Citizens cannot vote, however Registered Citizens can. To become a Registered Citizen, you have to apply for it. You need to have a WA nation, however it doesn’t have to be in TEP.

That should be about it. I’ve thought out the process, but the reason still escapes me. I need more sleep.

30

— Begin quote from ____

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I’m of a worldly view. I didn’t say that we would be denying anyone. WA Nation Anywhere. It’s in a BFE UCR? Great. Another GCR? Amazing. Just have a puppet in TEP and TG verify your nations. The only people that would loose the ability to vote in the two major votes we have would be the 100% Non-WA.

— End quote

Okay I didn’t think of that. But also, that doesn’t change that we’d have to check every current Citizens WA status for each application.

One person has WA on nation A in another region and moves nation B to TEP and gets citizenship on that. Now he moves his WA to nation C and places nation D to TEP, requesting Cit. And now they have two citizenship nations in TEP.

Now I assume you’re gonna say that that is okay, as neither B nor D can vote due to not having WA membership. Well, I think we will not get such a change to pass. But let’s assume a change like that passes, would Citizens B or D be allowed to vote if they moved their WA temporarily to B and D? If so, we would stil have to check nations A, B, C, and D for any overlap. Or are we going to create a list of citizens that are allowed to vote by doing a WA status check simultaneous for all citizens right before any vote (for instance by using NationStates’ latest daily dump file)?

— End quote

I’m quite confused how one person would have two WA nations? Or you lost me.

Under my proposal everyone that is in the region is automatically citizen. Not in the region then citizenship automatically goes away.

Everyone that wants to be really involved would put in an application. If we’re still doing TG verification then simply click from the TG and check. We would still keep a sheet with eligible voters. During elections we simply make sure they still have their TEP and WA nation active. And the IP is cutting out going to another website. Keeping it all on NS. I feel that would save time. Sometimes I feel new people don’t get engaged enough from waiting — even a few days — they’re used to signing up to a website and being set free. I keep getting the idea of “same-day approvals” stuck in my mind.

31

— Begin quote from ____

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I disagree as WA residents can not vote – they would need to become registered voters (currently citizenship thread). Anyone Conclave banned can come back right now. They can avoid the forum. They can fool the admins. Has happened in the past. Will always happen. But as long as they only get one vote is all that matters to me.

— End quote

I feel as if I’ve misunderstood your original post, my bad. Could you clarify what you mean by registered voter, citizen, resident, and unregistered voter?

— Begin quote from ____

The only more rights we can give is the same rights as citizens at this point. I’m honestly tired of seeing ideas for the last few years.

— End quote

In my opinion, it’s better to wait to see some ideas rather than introducing sweeping reforms.

— Begin quote from ____

Just let’s get it done already, remove some division from the RMB/Forum, and bring some new life into a systems that’s nearly 20 years old.

— End quote

I don’t see how divisions are going to be lessened since this proposal targets the citizenship process. People refuse forums because they’re forums. The RMB isn’t going to join the forums becase we gave them a new citizenship process.

— Begin quote from ____

And why does it have to be a problem? Is it broken? No. It is a great system? No. But we should always find ways to bring more engagement to the overall community. And what brought it to this point? I did with this the OP. As a citizen it’s my right to. That’s all.

— End quote

Sweeping reforms can, in my opinion, only be justified of they fix a sufficiently large problem or help out in a significant way. Reforms for the sake of something new isn’t something I support. We can agree that the process isn’t broken, so if it isn’t broke why fix it? Engagement is better done through cultural events, games, activities, the types of things that people want to do. Overhauling the citizenship process isn’t going to engage new people.

I’d like to hear what concerns about the citizenship process you’re trying to address so we can better understand the “why” part of this proposal.

— End quote

I was using terms to help clarify. Let me try to explain it again.

Resident/Citizen System what we have now would convert to Everyone that is in TEP is automatically a Citizen.

You can put in an application to become a voter (Zuk has proposed make this a voter registration and government app and I think that’s fine. Kills one existing app to an all-in-one).

You do nothing? That’s fine. You’re protected under the law. The same protections and rights for everyone.

I don’t know about waiting for more ideas. 3 years is a long time. Personally would prefer to see something before it hits half a decade.

Perhaps I see the division from my longevity in the region. It’s going on 4-5 years now. I’ve done what is possible to end the forum RP and RMB RP from fighting. For example. No one is better than the next. Especially in this gar—game site. Put everyone on the same legal protections and no one is better than the next. A user that registered to vote, sure has a upper hand in make decision for the region, but that’s quite normal for me being IRL American. We have registered and unregistered voters. One can vote. One can’t. We could careless about that different because legally we’re equal in all other regards.

Sweeping reforms that could knock down some walls can lead to more engagement.

Perhaps I don’t have a “why?” That will satisfy anyone. Why? Literally just became I’m a citizen that has an idea and feel it would be better.

32

[spoiler]
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I’m quite confused how one person would have two WA nations? Or you lost me.

— End quote

I’ve lost you. One person can have multiple nations, say A, B, C, and D. They have WA membership on one of them, let’s say on A which resides in another region. They move B to TEP and apply for citizenship, saying B is their nation in TEP and A is their WA nation in another region. When we check, we find that to be true. They get citizenship. (Note, they have not mentioned nation C or D.)  After a period of time (minutes, days, months, doesn’t matter) they resign from the WA with their nation A and after another period of time, they apply for WA membership with nation C and are accepted. Now they move their nation D to TEP (or it was already there) and apply for citizenship saying that D is their nation in TEP and C is their WA membership nation in another region. This checks out and they are granted citizenship. (Note they haven’t mentioned nations A or B here.) Now this single RL person has two citizenships, which we might have found out if we would have done an IP check.
I hope this clarifies my point. They have only one WA member at a time, but we don’t know that the person behind nations A and B is actually the same person that is behind nations C and D. And I haven’t even mentioned nations E through Z yet.
[/spoiler]

— Begin quote from ____

Under my proposal everyone that is in the region is automatically citizen. Not in the region then citizenship automatically goes away.

— End quote

I like this idea because I don’t see why we should deny a nation the right to appeal against an ejection (for instance), just because they haven’t applied for citizenship.

— Begin quote from ____

We would still keep a sheet with eligible voters. During elections we simply make sure they still have their TEP and WA nation active.

— End quote

This was the part that I was missing. This is where my nation A or B will fall through as only one of them will hold WA membership. Doing audits before elections will take more time, as we will now have to check up to two nations (when ones WA nation is different from their TEP nation).

— Begin quote from ____

And the IP is cutting out going to another website. Keeping it all on NS. I feel that would save time.

— End quote

Agreed this will save time. Anyone in TEP automatically has citizenship-light (i.e. without voting rights), so we don’t have to keep them all listed. That saves time. Only the ones wanting the right to vote, or needing a full citizenship-XL (or citizenship-plus) for an executive function, have to apply. As this group might be smaller than the current number of citizens, this might save time. We would have to store both their nation in TEP and their WA nation, and make sure there are no duplicates (i.e. two different citizens claiming the same WA nation), so that might take a little more time, but all in all I agree this probably will save time.

— Begin quote from ____

Sometimes I feel new people don’t get engaged enough from waiting — even a few days — they’re used to signing up to a website and being set free. I keep getting the idea of “same-day approvals” stuck in my mind.

— End quote

I disagree. I think that a majority of the users coming to TEP is bored with NS (and TEP) within a few days anyway. If they like NS, or TEP, or RP-ing, they will stay, regardless of any waiting time on citizenship. Granting them all the rights (except voting) just for having a nation in TEP might even give them less incentive to engage.  …which will lead to fewer registrations and thus saves time - but in this case that 'd be an undesirable effect.

All in all, I’m beginning to like the idea. Yet there are still a lot of questions that need to be answered. Like, how does a citizen-light (or a resident as they’re currently called but with all the rights of a citizen except the right to vote - maybe we should just keep the names resident and citizen) … how does a resident for instance appeal to Conclave if they don’t have a Forum- or Discord account?

33

I imagine if we were to give residents the right to trial, it would still have to be conducted on forums for organizational purposes.

However, I don’t think this is much of an issue. If we also give residents the right to representation, then theoretically anyone can appeal for a trial on the behalf of someone else.

34

So all residents are automatically non voting citizens and to be a citizen you need to prove your WA nation to the CitiCom?

Also, are referendums and elections conducted gameside?

35

— Begin quote from ____

Also, are referendums and elections conducted gameside?

— End quote

The need for a forum would diminish, I believe, though I personally would prefer to leave all official information (including referenda and elections) on the forum.

36

— Begin quote from ____

So all residents are automatically non voting citizens and to be a citizen you need to prove your WA nation to the CitiCom?

Also, are referendums and elections conducted gameside?

— End quote

37

I keep reading weird things. So maybe I can try to break it down a little by going over some processes. Some thoughts. Some opinions. Some examples.

These are the effected laws: Concordat Article E & F, Citizenship Act, Regional Message Board Regulation Act, Delegate Elections Act, The Regional Officers Act, and Criminal Code will all need to be updated.

Right now we have Citizens and Residents. What my proposal is – is to have a unified Citizenry. What does this mean to me? This means we will no longer have Citizens and Residents but only Citizens. This will grant everyone in the region equal rights. Does equal rights mean everyone can vote? No. (Just like IRL in America. You register to vote or you don’t register to vote. Your overall rights are the same) That doesn’t make sense from a security standpoint. Neither would holding them on the RMB or within Polls. Logistically that’s not going to work.

So how will a citizen get the right to vote? 1) They must have a WA nation (doesn’t need to be in the TEP), 2) They must have a nation in TEP, 3) They must formally ratify the Concordat (this will also serve as a government application (Zuk’s awesome idea) and naturally voter registration, 3) They must verify their nation(s) In-Game. Once they do all of that then they can vote on Delegate Elections, Referendums, Join the Magisterium, Go beyond a Executive Staffer and etc.

What if they don’t want to join the forum? What if they don’t want to go though that process but still want to be involved? Maybe they just want to RP? That’s 100% okay. It’s not our goal to force everyone to become a forum user. It’s to encourage activity overall in the community. RMB? Great. Discord? Great. Forum? Great.

But what will it cost them? They can’t vote. They can’t become a RO, Minister, Deputy, Magister, or any position of regional power. If they don’t join the forum they could miss out on a appeal/trial – unless as mentioned recently by Paki that the Conclave could hold trial for them in a password protected Conclave region and with dispatches for evidence presentation. This is a great idea actually. I like it. It’s different but still fair.

Does this mean spammers/trolls/flamer and rule breakers get a trial? Are they doing it in the bounds of the law? Meaning are they trying to commit treason when the nation name is PoopyPooPoo123416547 and they’re posting 5 pages of song lyrics. Hmm. That’s a no. So? Ban. GHR. Record. NEXT! That’s business as usual. Yes? Appeal? Trial? Whatever. Sounds like another “that’s business as usual” line. Since I just mentioned the Conclave indirectly I wanted to mention that under this new system it will change the way we proscribe people. How? It should be where the Vizier’s vote and then they send it over to the Conclave for approval. Checks and balances.

Is security a concern? Always. We want to have a safe and fun community. In this case? Not particularly a concern. Any system is going to have vulnerable parts. The truth of the matter is that WA nations are more reliable for regional security than an IP check. You can have your home internet and you can have your cellular internet and suddenly you are two different people at once. 10 or more years ago you couldn’t even get citizenship with a wireless IP. That ended as times changed. You can’t deny anyone based on that due to some people don’t have access to home internet. As times change so did the region.

Now to the biggest thing people keep asking me: Why?

My literal reason is: I’m a citizen with an idea that I think would work better for the region. But even after saying that.

The question once again comes to me: Why? So now I must make up some.

  1. I’m a huge supporter of Resident Rights. Just because I don’t have all the time in the world to post on the RMB like in my heyday doesn’t mean I haven’t forgotten my roots. Sure we made some strides in giving more protections and rights. But that’s just not good enough for me. We can do better. It’s been a on and off again serious discussion for literally 3 years.

  2. I worry about the workload on people like Sammy and VW. Citizenship Commission is a burner. It burns people. They just happen to be forum staff and can do the current security checks. I’m simply in a unique position where I’ve seen it time and time again. So with this proposal it relies on NationStates rules of 1 WA Nation per User and their security checks. This will literally save them time by cutting out a step and an additional website. Keeps them on Forum and NS.

38

1… How/where do they ratify the Concordat, naturally voter registration, and verify their nations?

2… I’d be interested in a separate thread for the potential new way to hold trials.

3… So for spammers and stuff, we will be changing the RMBRA so that punishment can be appealed by anyone but no trials for anyone? I like that. Or am I misinterpreting it again?

4… Would we have a thing where people lose their voting status if they’re designated WA nation resigns? How would that work? Would there be a system for notification.

Apart from those four points, which are very little compared to my rants in FNR, I am emphatically in support of this new system. It is a step up for security and for the system in general. And aside from that…

IT MAKES EURI A CITIZEN HAHAHAHAH

39

— Begin quote from ____

1… How/where do they ratify the Concordat, naturally voter registration, and verify their nations?

2… I’d be interested in a separate thread for the potential new way to hold trials.

3… So for spammers and stuff, we will be changing the RMBRA so that punishment can be appealed by anyone but no trials for anyone? I like that. Or am I misinterpreting it again?

4… Would we have a thing where people lose their voting status if they’re designated WA nation resigns? How would that work? Would there be a system for notification.

Apart from those four points, which are very little compared to my rants in FNR, I am emphatically in support of this new system. It is a step up for security and for the system in general. And aside from that…

IT MAKES EURI A CITIZEN HAHAHAHAH

— End quote

I’ve been trying to stay out of this thread because I have made my opinions abundantly clear, I think, on discord, but this cannot be allowed to stand. It’s one thing to add some summary offenses for some things, but “no trials for anyone” should not ever be considered.

40

— Begin quote from ____

— Begin quote from ____

1… How/where do they ratify the Concordat, naturally voter registration, and verify their nations?

2… I’d be interested in a separate thread for the potential new way to hold trials.

3… So for spammers and stuff, we will be changing the RMBRA so that punishment can be appealed by anyone but no trials for anyone? I like that. Or am I misinterpreting it again?

4… Would we have a thing where people lose their voting status if they’re designated WA nation resigns? How would that work? Would there be a system for notification.

Apart from those four points, which are very little compared to my rants in FNR, I am emphatically in support of this new system. It is a step up for security and for the system in general. And aside from that…

IT MAKES EURI A CITIZEN HAHAHAHAH

— End quote

I’ve been trying to stay out of this thread because I have made my opinions abundantly clear, I think, on discord, but this cannot be allowed to stand. It’s one thing to add some summary offenses for some things, but “no trials for anyone” should not ever be considered.

— End quote

“No trials for anyone” for RMB offenses, not for all offenses, which is just adding Summary Offenses.