I feel like we should move this to a vote.
I’m calling the separation of powers police.
Nah, I don’t think we’re there yet. It’s not a great rush, we can wait for Welly, plus we haven’t really talked about Coltranius’ addition.
Alright then, @ me when we do.
I don’t like that part. Mainly because it is the High Court’s responsibility to assess whether the legal process was actually respected.
With this language, it seems to me that it is up to the High Court to assess whether the CRS’s justifications for the suspension make sense, which I do not agree with, as it falls outside the scope of the High Court’s function.
Bumping this.
If it’s a problem that the High Court would decide whether the suspension was justified or not, we could go with Pronoun’s idea of combining citizenship suspensions and proscriptions.
Thank you for the bump. I fully agree we should get back to discussing this important proposal in earnest.
There’s a lot to comment on here, but before going in much deeper, I’m curious to hear the @citcomm 's views on the below provision, which really seems to be the heart of this proposal. The goal is to speed up the processing of citizenship applications and ease the burden on CitComm. Could the current CitComm provide their views on whether operating under the below standard actually accomplish that goal? On it’s face, it seems like it would. But I’m curious if CitComm would effectively have to go through the same steps to determine if an applicant is “conspicuously ineligible” for citizenship as they currently do to determine if an applicant is eligible. In other words, would this just lower the standard for the ultimate decision, without reducing the amount of back-end work necessary to make that decision? I’m not asking for CitComm to reveal any confidential processes. I just want to know if operating under this standard would actually make those processes run faster or allow them to be trimmed down. Because if not, then we should figure out what language will effectuate that change before moving on to the rest of the proposal.
I’ll suggest something that may or may not be controversial, but unless CitComm identifies an applicant who is clearly evading a ban or blatantly lying in their application then the person should be admitted without further review or investigation into them. I think any risk is massively outweighed by the drawback of people losing interest due to long wait times. Basically, deem people admissible unless a superficial review (emphasis on superficial) reveals something to the contrary.
So yes, Roavin is onto something.
I think that’s precisely the point of conspicuous ineligibility (along with, like, not having a nation in the South Pacific).
In my opinion, it would reduce the time physically needed to process an application, but not particularly impact the tedium.
Ideally (and this might be the intention already), conspicuously ineligibility would be a sufficiently low bar that we don’t really need a second set of eyes on anything. That would be the main reduction in the time it takes.
As for the tedium, I’ve already automated some of it with regards to the forums (though I unfortunately overestimated how easily someone who doesn’t write computer programs for fun can install that tool, so I don’t think Griff uses it). But Discord is harder to automate — I don’t think there’s any law that actually requires us to grant citizens access to the citizen-only areas on Discord, but I imagine it would be unpopular if we stopped. And telegrams are impossible to automate, and unfortunately also the most tedious, but I don’t know if there’s any appetite to drop the requirement of sending a telegram notification for each accepted application.
Cutting the number of reviews of each application from 2 to 1 strikes me as a significant savings in time and effort. So I’m satisfied that this language would accomplish the desired goal.
Now on to consider the rest of it . . .
Just for reference could we have a simplified bullet point list of the application process? That is, what does CitComm do from their reception of an application to its full conclusion, including any non-judgement issues such as sending notifications?
Nope, I do not.
Sure; here is the more or less version of what CitComm does:
- Applicant fills out a (ideally) truthful application.
- Application Received - CitComm will respond that the application has been received and is being processed. This message will also include a Discord link. CitComm, in practice, will only note an app as “received” when we begin to do our internal processing (it keeps apps from falling through the cracks).
- Whoever gives the receipt message will copy the application to Discord, where we begin filling in an internal application card.
- The application card is the beef of the application and contains things to check, such as:
- Whether the nation(s) they provided are in-region/WA
- Whether they are on Discord
- What their recent activities on each platform look like
- If there are any recent nation moves/WA switches, etc (suspicious or otherwise).
- IP Checks against the ban list (or duplicate forum accounts)
- Giving a preliminary decision (Accept/Deny) on the application based on the information gathered.
- Thereafter, a (minimum) 12-hour clock begins where other members of CitComm can provide feedback and/or ask questions about the pending app. Generally, this is dead time since most apps are non-sus. The sus apps will sit here until we agree on the next steps (typically an applicant interview with the questions we need answers to).
- If the app is good and there are no objections, then CitComm (either the same person or someone else) can finish processing the app and grant citizenship. If there are lingering questions or issues, then the interview I mentioned takes place.
- If, at any time during this process, a nation is unresponsive to an inquiry (or the nation leaves/CTEs), then the application is denied. If the response given is satisfactory then we Accept the application.
- If the application is to be denied, then we post a log internally for audit purposes and inform the applicant of the denial on the forum app and the NS Nation. The app will be tagged denied on the public app.
- If the application is to be accepted, then we post a log internally for audit purposes and inform the applicant of the acceptance on the forum app and NS Nation. The app will be tagged accepted on the public app, and the applicant will be masked as such on the forums/discord as appropriate. CitComm will then add their forum/nation name to a citizen list.
All in all, at least for me, if I am on a roll, I can process about one apps internal processing every 10-15 minutes and the acceptance/denial portion in about 5 minutes. However, the hard part is admittedly working up the willpower to process apps. This is why I also tend to process apps in batches of 4-5 (ideally), as I honestly find one at a time more inconvenient than a small batch.
My suggestion would be to reduce the process to the following:
- Resident fills out an application.
- CitComm confirms the reception of the application.
- CitComm checks that:
- The nation(s) they provided are in-region/WA
- IP checks against the ban list (or duplicate forum accounts)
- CitComm gives a 12-hour period for other members and CSS to express concerns but unless a specific concern is raised then no investigation into the applicant’s activities or nation moves should be done.
- If no objection is raised, CitComm grants citizenship and records that on the application thread. If the an objection is sustained, CitComm also records that on the application thread.
I would honestly do away with multi-platform notifications and detailed internal logs beyond that is strictly necessary to ensure smooth operations. I understand we want to reach people and make things thorough but if we as a government develop a robust integration and retention programme then CitComm should focus simply on ensuring that no “conspicuously ineligible” citizens are admitted rather than conducting detailed investigations or keeping detailed internal logs.
…I don’t think anybody here has actually argued against that?
I never said anyone had argued against that.