[Discussion] Citizenship Act (October 2018)

[Sheepshape]

Sorry for the delay on my end, life's been a bit lately.

(that's a hurricane joke)

Alrighty, getting down to business, starting with the Preface:
 

In order to make provision for the acquisition, maintenance, and removal of citizenship, this Act shall codify the formal membership of the citizenry in Lazarus.

I think the wording on this could be improved:

This act codifies the regulations around the acquisition, maintenance, and removal or loss of citizenship in Lazarus.

For Section 1, I've added a mention of residency as well as citizenship; this would allow us to reference residents in future laws/policies (like for defining an endo-cap, or allowing residents, not just citizens, to determine the delegate's WA vote, etc).

I also moved some other clauses around for better flow.
 

Section 1. [b]Residency and the Acquisition of Citizenship[/b]

(1) A resident is any person with a nation in Lazarus.

(2) Any resident may apply for citizenship by submitting an application in a designated area of the forum and swearing the following oath:

From this time forward, I voluntarily without mental reservation or purpose of evasion, pledge my loyalty to Lazarus and her people, whose community ideals I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey.

(3) In addition to the oath, the application must include the applicant's:
a. nation in Lazarus;
b. World Assembly nation, if applicable;
c. current or previous affiliations to foreign entities, extending no further back than 12 months prior to the application;
d. current or previous identities, extending no further back than 12 months prior to the application;
e. criminal record, if applicable; and an
f. oath of membership.

(4) Off-site property administration has one week to refuse to approve an application based on risk to the security or safety of off-site property or its users, or violation of terms of service.

(5) The Delegate may refuse to approve an application if the applicant has:
a. not met the criteria for eligibility;
i. the Delegate may, at their discretion, issue a waiver in instances where the applicant has not met the criteria;
b. not satisfactorily completed the citizenship application;
c. violated community standards through their out-of-character activities;
d. been rendered an adverse security threat by the Delegate or the Council of Lazarene Security; or
e. engaged in conduct with the intention of attaining multiple accounts.

(6) The Assembly may overturn the Delegate’s approval of an application by three-quarters vote.

(7) The Delegate may not approve an application during the period in which a confirmation vote is occurring in the Assembly. 

Alright, so I have some concerns about clauses 3-7 of this section, which I will lay out. I've color-coded them because it helps me keep things straight. Sorry not sorry.

(3) In addition to the oath, the application must include the applicant's:
a. nation in Lazarus;
b. World Assembly nation, if applicable;
c. current or previous affiliations to foreign entities, extending no further back than 12 months prior to the application;
d. current or previous identities, extending no further back than 12 months prior to the application;
e. criminal record, if applicable; and an
f. oath of membership.

Yes to nation in Lazarus. But... no to everything else. Honestly, we don't need someone to tell us their WA nation. If it's a well-known nation we'll probably already know it, and if it's not a well-known nation, it isn't going to help anything. This question also prevents anyone who wants to join Lazarus honestly, but who is engaged in certain areas of R/D (sleeper missions, espionage against an enemy group) or is already undercover on behalf of another region in which they are a member (like if I'm known to be a member in TWP, but my WA is undercover in TEP to ferret out a suspected coup plot), from doing so. They'll either have to lie, or they'll have to stay away. Personally I don't feel like those are great choices to force someone to make. And given how Section 2 is phrased, the implication is that even if I'm an innocent regular tagger/detagger and update my WA multiple times a day, if I don't keep Lazarus updated on exactly what it is at all times, I might be failing to fulfill my eligibility requirements and subject to losing my citizenship. And, y'know, that *is* a choice a region can make... but I don't think Lazarus has the activity to spare to make that a smart choice. We should be making it as easy and straightforward as possible for people to join us and get involved, not wrap them up in legal requirements. All Lazarus needs to know is whether someone's citizenship/residency nation is or is not WA for the purpose, if desired, of determining WA voting. It doesn't need to know what their WA nation is if it's not here.

I feel similarly about requiring affiliations and identities. It forces anyone who is engaged in certain areas of gameplay or of R/D to lie or to stay away, even if they have no ill intentions toward Lazarus. Additionally, those aren't really very clear-cut terms. If I raid occasionally on the side with a raider group, but am not a member and don't have a nation in their region, is that an affiliation? Or is affiliation only citizenships I hold? What if one of those citizenships is under false pretenses, so I don't *really* consider myself affiliated with the region? As for identities, is that just names I generally go by or also other nicknames people might have for me? Do I need to list all of my puppets, any one of which might be in the WA at any given time? Or are those not really separate *identities*? What exactly is the point where a name becomes an identity and needs to be included? And if I leave a region and abandon a name I used there, do I then have to go back and take that identity off the list to retain my citizenship?

I can get behind asking if people are members of certain specific regions or organizations that Lazarus has determined might be a threat. Like, if we fight off a coup attempt by TRR, I think it's reasonable to then pass a law saying nobody can be a citizen of both TRR and Lazarus, that anybody currently with both citizenships must choose which one to keep, and that future applicants must answer whether they are citizens of TRR in their application. But that's all. We don't need to know all of their NS business - it really doesn't benefit us in the slightest. Liars and would-be coupers are gonna lie regardless, and honest people will just get tripped up.

And finally... criminal record? Please, please no. This is such a useless semi-factoid. Different regions, different governments, and different time periods all have wildly different standards for what counts as criminal, what's found criminal, what's punished. For example, TNP is notoriously prone to not convicting even obvious criminal behavior over technicalities and legal complexities, such that even Durk doesn't have a "criminal record" for his coups there. Meanwhile, I personally have been convicted of espionage by The Pacific and sentenced to burning at the stake, aka, a permanent ban, in a show trial that lasted something like five posts. (The permanence of my ban was later revoked...)

Not only are there different standards in how and who to convict, different regions also have entirely different sets of crimes to choose from. Some regions prosecute OOC behavior as a crime. Some regions have deeply complex legal codes, while others are simple and go just for the biggies. Some regions consider a particular act a major felony; for others it's a minor misdemeanor.

Sure, ask if they've ever been convicted of a crime in Lazarus. But nothing else gives us any valuable information about that player as a risk. It's just... idk. Dredging up old wounds.

So, I strongly feel this section should be changed to:

(3) In addition to the oath, the application must include:
a. the applicant's nation in Lazarus;
b. whether the applicant has ever been convicted of a crime in Lazarus, and if so, what they were convicted of;
c. affiliation with any region, organization, or group which has been declared a threat to Lazarus, her people, or her government.

 

(4) Off-site property administration has one week to refuse to approve an application based on risk to the security or safety of off-site property or its users, or violation of terms of service.

For this one, I just wanted to comment on the small change I suggested. In general I think placing a time limit on processing applications is important. It's not fair for people who want to join to have to wait indefinitely until administration decides whether or not to let them in, particularly because there are times that admins might be backlogged or dealing with bigger problems. I'm not strongly settled on one week to review; a bit longer would probably also be fine, but I wouldn't want to go longer than about 2 weeks.

I don't think adding this limit indicates any real increased threat to the forum - if admins realize after someone's been approved that actually they are Notorious Forum Hacker PhishMan254, it's entirely their prerogative to step in and ban them from the forum at that pint. Admin jurisdiction doesn't end when citizenship begins - this is just a preliminary look on the way to citizenship and government participation.

I'm glad that you specified the security of offsite property, rather than the security of the government itself - one is a political matter, the other an administrative one, and I appreciate you capturing the distinction.
 

(5) The Delegate may refuse to approve an application if the applicant has:
a. not met the criteria for eligibility;
i. the Delegate may, at their discretion, issue a waiver in instances where the applicant has not met the criteria;
b. not satisfactorily completed the citizenship application;
c. violated community standards through their out-of-character activities;
d. been rendered an adverse security threat by the Delegate or the Council of Lazarene Security; or
e. engaged in conduct with the intention of attaining multiple accounts.

So, some of these I like and some of these I don't.

Firstly, I'm not actually sure about the Delegate being the one to approve or deny applicants. Not that they don't have a role to play, but the Delegate has a ton of work on their plate and this is pretty easily one that can be farmed out to another official. It could be the Speaker, or a minister created specifically for that role, or we could invent a separate office for appointment/confirmation ("Immigration Specialist" or something like that maybe) - anything to a) take work off the Delegate's busy busy busybusybusybusy hands and b) spread that work, that activity, around to other members of the community. The more people we can get involved and doing things, the better this community will function.

I'm not stoked about the delegate being able to issue a waiver for citizenship; I think that runs the risk of the delegate being able to politicize things by stacking votes. For example, if the Delegate doesn't like a mandate amendment but it looks like a majority of citizens support it, they could bring in their RL friends who have no nations, give them waivers from having to have nations, and get them all to vote it down. The delegacy is a powerful role but it shouldn't be able to completely subvert things just to win every disagreement.

As for out of character activities, IMO that's on forum administration to decide, not the delegate. The delegate could be swayed by political factors, like "Yeah this person was accused of bad things, but they would make such a great Speaker, so I want to just let them in and appoint them." Whereas forum administration is supposed to be above such considerations, and able to just say "No, this person was accused of bad things, we've seen the evidence from the region where it happened, this is NOT acceptable, GOODBYE." Also it would already be covered under representing a threat to Lazarus' users.

Finally, with multiple accounts, I'd prefer to clarify the wording to specify that it refers to multiple citizenship accounts - it's not impossible we could allow people to have multiple accounts on the forum that are not for citizenship. These reasons could be "I want to RP with two nations and keep their posts separate" or they could be "I, an admin, want my political role to be fully separate from my administrative role" or they could be "I, a citizen and a diplomat from another region, would like my domestic and foreign roles to be fully separate from one another". They could even just be innocent, like "Oh I made an account yearrrrrs ago and forgot the login info before I made this one."

Oh, and I think there should be a time limit on this one as well - otherwise someone could be "soft denied" just by the delegate ignoring them indefinitely, and that's not a great state of affairs. New citizens are the lifeblood of the region.

One final thing - I don't think discretion in denying in certain cases is good. If someone doesn't include an oath, I don't think the Citizenship Official should be able to admit them anyway. So I added in some firmer language and split things apart a bit. And I made the person who does the IC-security stuff the Vice Delegate, since they run the CLS and security is their jam. Spreading the wealth around!

So, here's my suggestion for how to reword this clause:
 

(5) The Vice Delegate has one week to evaluate an applicant to determine if they represent a security threat to the region or government of Lazarus and may refuse to approve any applicant who is a threat. Anybody who has been declared to be a security threat by the Council of Lazarene Security will automatically be refused approval.

(6) Some Other Official must refuse to approve an application if the applicant:
a. has not met the criteria for eligibility;
b. has not completed the citizenship application, or completed it incorrectly;
c. has been declared a security threat by the Vice Delegate or the Council of Lazarene Security; or
d. has already become a citizen under another name on the forum.

 

(6) The Assembly may overturn the Delegate’s approval of an application by three-quarters vote.

Moving on! I'm not enamored with this clause. For one thing, it has no end date - hypothetically, the Assembly could decide after years that they don't like someone, and vote to overturn their approval. At minimum, it needs to be time-limited. Something like "The Assembly may initiate an overturn of an approved citizenship within two weeks of its approval."

But even then, I don't love it. I think if the admins don't object, and the CLS and Vice Delegate don't see a threat, it's risky to allow the Assembly to self-police who gets to be a citizen. That's a road to homogenous memberships and a lack of healthy dissent and debate. The Assembly is stronger and better when there are competing ideas, competing talents, and a diverse set of views.

I would prefer this clause simply be removed. In an ideal world I'd want the Assembly to overturn refusals, but I think they are going to be rare enough that this isn't really necessary. If we start to have problems with the CLS being overly restrictive, then I think we can look at amending this to allow the Assembly to push back.
 

(7) The Delegate may not approve an application during the period in which a confirmation vote is occurring in the Assembly.

Last clause in this section! Hooray! I don't see the point of this one. It's so much easier to just say that people can't vote if they weren't a citizen when the vote was opened than to require a moratorium on accepting people while a vote is going on. The former is super easy to track with a simple spreadsheet of citizens and join dates (and I can help set one up if the Speaker is interested in that); the latter can grind things to a halt for a while in some cases. Like, if there's a vote for Speaker, and then after that ends but before the Citizenship Officer can get back to work, a new one opens to replace a Minister, and then one to add someone to the CLS... it's not implausible that things could jam up all together and then citizenships get behind.

So I suggest this:

(7) Citizens will not be eligible to cast a vote in confirmation hearings, legislative procedings, or other business of the Assembly when the vote on those items opened before they gained their citizenship.

The wording on that could still be cleaned up a bit I think, but it's a better approach.

I think I'm going to cut this off there and move to another post to continue - I'm worried about this getting too long!!!