I’m still supportive of a WA requirement for citizenship either way, but I’ll second the requirement for the Assembly and for senior members of the Executive.
That’s wrong. Somebody that came here with intent to damage the Coalition will have a WA available. Time and time again, history has proven this. FaeBae was an infiltrator and had their WA nation in TSP, and plenty of other examples exist across the NSverse (for example, Funkadelia and Lamb Stone, who used their WAs in both Lazarus and The East Pacific).
I was Prime Minister 5 times, MoFA twice, MoD/MoMA twice, all while having a floating WA that was not always used for TSP or TSP-adjacent things. By that logic, my literally years of Cabinet service weren’t “meaningfully involved” in the region.
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This is why I’d still support a waiver system for case-by-case instances! However, I do not intend to support the WA requirement for legislators or executive governance if such a waiver system cant be agreed upon. I’d rather have the status quo on that front than lose talented and longstanding members of our region.
A “waiver system” would allow us to keep our existing talent but would do nothing for the future generations of potential TSPers you would exclude for no valid reason whatsover.
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I skimmed through the discussion and also read some of the posts, but admittedly did not look at the numerous links to previous discussions. Maybe this is the reason, why I still have questions.
What I’m seeing here personally is, that we just make up a role that introduces a third level. Now you can distinguish between members, legislators and people in between we’ll call “citizens”, that basically only have an active voting right. And as far as I understood it, that’s supposed to be better, because people can ignore the votes on legislation and therefore don’t drop out of the game and thus as talents for the region as quickly?
If that’s really how recruiting is supposed to work: Good night.
I agree, that maybe we don’t need a WA membership necessarily anymore, if we have regular check ups, on whether citizens/legislators/etc. act in good faith for TSP.
I also agree with the notion, that we maybe shouldn’t force people, that are “only” legislators, to keep an eye out on legislation and debate threads, that simply do not interest them as much. Therefore I welcome the fact, that we only take away the legislator status from people absent for more than two-thirds of at least three votes in a month without requesting a leave of abscence.
I just don’t see though, how from a point of view of recruitment and binding people to TSP, the introduction of bureaucracy through a new level of members, whose status need to be checked regularly, makes sense.
Also, as in real life, I am not amicable to the concept of tying a supposed interest in democracy to the hurdle of having to register for elections. If we want to do that, the legislator position is already enough of a hurdle. If we want to get rid of it, why not open the electoral processes to every member by default and only exempt people from it, if they show, they’re acting in bad faith or if there are enough indicators, they could be a danger to TSP’s security?
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I agree that the less bureaucratic our government is the better, but I would draw a line here because it generally is not in our interests to open voting to everyone without first subjecting them to a cursory security check to ensure they aren’t coming in bad faith. Otherwise we open ourselves up to opportunists and ill intentioned individuals who could gain voting rights with as simple a step as moving a nation to the region.
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That’s all fair. I just wanted to stress the point, that if we agree, we need security measures to let people vote in elections, we can keep the current structure and maybe loosen it up a little in terms of WA membership or activity requirements, but do not need to introduce a new TSP membership tier 
Honestly, I think this is closer to loosening our activity requirements than it is to creating a new “tier” of members — people who are not interested in legislation will no longer have to check in every few days in order to have a say about who our elected officials are, and people who are interested in legislating will be able to opt into joining our legislature.
I’m not really sure why you’re so skeptical of this? I don’t think it’s unreasonable for someone to be interested in our executive government (and our elections for the Prime Minister, who leads it) while not being so interested in actually writing and debating specific pieces of legislation, for example. Different members of our community have different interests, and I don’t think those of us with particular interests in government are somehow indicators of shortcomings in our recruitment.
In fact, I don’t think of it very differently from other aspects of our community. Just as someone can be interested in our executive but not our legislature, someone can also be interested in our roleplay but not our politics, someone can be interested in Pacifica but not A1-0 or Aurora, someone can be interested in our cultural events but not our foreign affairs. I don’t think any of this means our recruitment isn’t working, that it has to somehow interest only those with a broad range of interests. The issue here is that someone who wants to vote in our elections, but who isn’t interested in legislating, has to be a legislator to vote. If anything, we’re incentivizing people to just show up and abstain (or, worse, cast an aye/nay and sway a vote that they don’t actually care about) so that they can participate in our elections.
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Then why are you proposing that people who are interested in legislation but not the WA be forced to me members of the later?
Yes, there are many scenarios where someone with intent to damage the Coalition via infiltration will make their WA available for the purpose of running an op to gain access to info or be elected to positions of power and information access.
In another scenario, individuals with true loyalties to broader ideologies or regions outside of TSP will try to maintain the appearance of involvement in both regions, as if there’s no potential issues with their involvement in both. Based on the interpersonal good will they accumulate by just being friendly and having free time to dump into NS, everyone is told “oh, X and Y are actually good, kind, friendly folks who really like us” which then hides their actual motives.
Trust me, I’d like to believe that people are operating in good faith in multiple regions, and many are, but playing the game of deciding “is this person good faith or not” is impossible, and the only objective standard is “are you committing your WA membership to us”.
You’re ignoring the “if” in what Henn said. If you were asked to, and you wanted to be meaningfully involved, then you would’ve willingly put your WA in service to TSP. At the time, we didn’t ask that, so there’s no reason you felt you needed to.
Them not being dedicated to TSP is actually a huge reason
Because their “interest in legislation” inevitably will invoke questions of bad faith, which are impossible to resolve. A WA nation requirement is the only objective standard.
This is true, and is honestly my main concern about the proposal. After this, it’ll actually be easier to become a citizen and vote in elections than it was before, not harder. Arguably, that’s the point, but imo it needs to be coupled with a separate activity requirement and/or a WA exclusivity requirement, otherwise it loosens our protections rather than strengthening them.
I think that various opinions of the WA requirement are well-known by now. Indeed, I said over a month ago that it felt like we were just talking in circles, and that it’d be more productive to look for a compromise. At this point, I’ve already taken a compromise position on the WA requirement, and it seems like you haven’t. I take it that you’re not interested in compromising, which I mean, is your right. But I’m still not actually sure how you feel about the rest of the proposal — are you also opposed to that, or are you interested in creating a competing draft without any WA requirement?
I think I agree. I mean, if there’s someone really interested in harming the TSP, I believe that joining the WA is not difficult at all. By the way, there are also people who wouldn’t want to be in WA for whatever reasons, so I don’t think it’s fair to force them into it. Although it’s not something I’m too concerned about whether or not to include.
As for the rest of the proposal, I think it’s good, I like the idea.
I must admit I’m curious about what exactly WA membership is supposed to prove, how it’s proof of any sort of commitment to the region, or how it fits with our general values of individual freedom and self-determination.
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A WA membership demonstrates “this is a thing I only have one of and it belongs with the South Pacific”. If we don’t ask for WA membership, it’s exceedingly easy to apply for citizenship in 20 regions with TSP being one of them, and then fiddle around with our elections to fulfill foreign agendas. If, mechanically, there was another way of saying “this is my primary commitment”, then I’d be all for using that instead, but the reality is that WA membership is the only somewhat objective way of doing that. It’s also highly relevant in the context of mechanical gameplay, where WA endorsements are the main mechanic (both in raiding/defending as well as in defense of our own region), and thus by putting your WA in TSP or SPSF, you’re making a commitment to this region’s well-being and interests over those of other regions that is exclusive with using your WA to promote foreign interests.
It doesn’t impinge on members’ freedom or self-determination. There is no freedom to have foreign affiliations. People have free thought and free speech and free expression, but not free association when it’s at the expense of the South Pacific itself. None of this restricts members’ freedom or self-determination within TSP, which is where those rights exist and do matter.
I will have to disagree with the idea that WA membership is proof of any commitment to the region, but most of all with the idea that we should expect TSP to be anyone's "primary commitment". We are one community out of many and people will naturally have multiple interests and a desire to venture out and explore them. Perhaps someone wants to join a foreign military, or be the WAD of a smaller region, or simply doesn't care about having a WA nation, but they also want to be a legislator here or be appointed to higher office. Is their interest any more legitimate than others' just because they have their WA nation elsewhere? I don't think it is.
I guess it’s worth asking this question to the others here who are posting or reacting in opposition to a WA requirement. It still seems like most of us have already formed our opinions as to that particular clause… so I mean, like, has nobody gotten around to putting out an alternative proposal with that one line removed, or is there opposition to the other aspects of the proposal as well?
To build on Pronoun’s question, I would be curious to hear folks’ views on the WA requirement for Cabinet members, which the current proposal includes. Much of the discussion thus far has focused on the WA issue with respect to legislator status. But I can’t tell if that is because there aren’t objections to an WA requirement for the Cabinet, or if the legislator requirement just seemed more important to focus on given that it would impact more members.
As you are aware I’m not a fan of anything in this proposal, but I don’t consider a WA requirement for serving in the Cabinet to be an attack on fundamental civil and political rights in the same way that requiring it for membership of the Assembly is.
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I am a tad bit late but as someone who is using my WA membership to protect the security of my region, I disagree with the WA requirement.
At this point, would we like to have a vote on this?
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