While I will be posting a summary of the issues found so far (as soon as I manage to read all pertinent forum threads! Please bear with me...), here is very rough historical overview of the role of these groups, as far as my memory doesn't fail me.
Current citizenship is established by owning at least a parcel in one's own name in any of the regions of the CDS. But historically this was not always the case: when the CDS was started, land was technically group-owned by the CDS group, and citizenship was defined by the willingness to join the group and contribute tier to it. Each member had a vote, no matter how much tier was contributed. Some citizens, being Basic Accounts, did not contribute tier but were still considered full citizens.
As we moved out of Anzere to the old region of Neualtenburg — later renamed to Neufreistadt — the role of the CDS group changed. It was meant mostly to be a way to keep in touch with all citizens — and, later, with 'Friends of the CDS', a special role created with limited powers, to allow non-citizens to get informed about our events.
Initial building had already been done — the Lindens copied all content over — but we moved from a 1/3 of a region, which was all that had been allocated to us in Anzere, to a full region. That meant landscaping the valley area, and adding more roads and forests. It also meant parcelling the land to allow citizens to buy plots. As a result, a new group was created — Land Verwaltung ('land management' in German abbreviated to LV) — which included a building role. Originally, the CDS had three branches, but no executive; instead, there was a loose association of builders, scripters, and artists that fulfilled some of the roles that the current Executive has, but it was completely differently managed. That branch — the Artisanal Branch, also known as 'Die Guilde' or 'the Guild' in English, managed the LV group. Since admission to the Artisanal Branch was free — any citizen could join — this meant that most citizens were also in the LV group. Most, in fact, helped out with the extra building (we weren't that many!).
With the increase of the number of citizens, many of which were not interested in building (or were unable to do so), the role of the LV group changed and evolved over the years. First, membership in the Guild became more restricted and subject to a slightly more bureaucratic procedure of admission. Secondly, there was a special group of Guild members who were responsible for 'cleaning up' the public spaces, specially after events and similar things, which might have left a few stray prims around. These were the Janitors (later, these became part of the civil service, under the Chancellor). Surprisingly, all RA members were automatically Janitors, too (the logic being that at least the RA members would meet at least once every week — which was the usual schedule those days — and be around to clean up stray prims if needed).
In those days, the Artisanal Branch was formally responsible for maintaining the look and feel of the whole city, specially the public spaces, and, in fact, many were constantly tinkering with it — more notably Kendra Bancroft, but other members of the AC would do the same, too. We already had Covenants, but the AC was responsible for enforcing them, so, as long as nobody would do dramatic changes, constant tinkering was part of the CDS' daily life.
When we started to build Colonia Nova, a new group was created just for the initial building of Colonia Nova — people building there were actually not exactly the same as the ones building on Neufreistadt (they disliked the Bavarian theme). It was actually expected that at some point, when Colonia Nova was finished, a new group for maintaining both regions would be formed — call it the 'CDS Janitor Group' — and both groups would be dissolved after all public land was turned over to that new group.
This never happened. In fact, most members of the LV group also became members of the CN group, specially the Janitors, which had to be in both. A few members of those groups were also 'promoted' to Estate Managers to help to assist the Estate Owner with her duties.
In the mean time, the CDS became more complex. We created an Executive branch and dissolved the Artisanal Branch. The Executive inherited most of the roles and responsibilities of the old Artisanal Branch. However, the Chancellor heading the Executive was not expected to be a builder or to bring a team of builders to work on the Executive; they had now far more tasks to deal with. As such, they appointed Janitors to aid them with the roles strictly pertaining to maintaining the regions (e.g. cleaning up stray prims, claiming land, and so forth), which required, at least, membership in the LV/CN groups, and often Estate Manager privileges as well. But a new role was also put in place: the Executive would now also deal with public notices on the CDS group, through the PIO. Nobody else was allowed to post public notices.
Things naturally became even more complex as we expanded further and started to re-do old buildings. There was a 'new Guild' in place — the second organisation bearing that name — which had an official status as an advisory board to the Executive related to all building issues. The Executive would work closely with the Guild to deal with new buildings and remodelling old buildings, while still keeping the duty of 'cleaning up' stray prims, fixing things, claiming land, and so forth, which meant that the Janitors were part of the Executive, while Guild members were completely independent. The Chancellor was considered to have a 'permanent seat' at the Guild meetings; but remember that the Guild was an official advisory body during those days (and the Chancellor was elected by the RA acting as a collegial body, not universally elected by all citizens), and, while not truly 'part of Government', it had some special duties established and recognised by law.
Janitors were appointed by the Executive for a full term, like all civil servants, with a few exceptions — the RA Archivist was appointed by the RA; the SC Archivist by the SC; the Treasurer and Estate Owner were specially appointed — and that meant that the Chancellor would revoke the rights of former Janitors and appoint new ones.
However, things soon became very messy. Chancellors tended to be re-elected often, and new Chancellors were also often former members of the Guild, the RA, or previous administrations. Thus, often the same Janitors served under different administrations. Guild members might be employed for doing some specific public works, but they 'forgot' to leave the LV/CN groups — often without malice, just neglect — and Chancellors would not constantly evict LV/CN members who happened to be in the Guild, since sooner or later they might get employed again on further public works. To make things even more confusing, former RA members, at the time they were expected to act as Janitors as well, also retained membership in the LV or CN groups, and often in both.
The constant hopping between roles in Government and Guild meant that soon there were far more people in the LV/CN groups than necessary, a few of which also had Estate Management powers. Simply put, once someone acquired that status for necessity (i.e. because they participated on some building), it was rare that their privileges were revoked, unless they voluntarily left the group(s). The sole exception was when events were hosted by non-citizens; then they would get temporary LV/CN status to be able to deploy their items on public land, and immediately expelled from the group once the event finished. But many citizens hosting events were also invited to the LV/CN groups and would not be asked to leave it afterwards — specially because many might hold regular events after the first one.
In the mean time, the CDS group also strayed a bit from its purpose. When it became hard to keep the count of citizens who were part of groups owning land in the CDS — without having land of their own — a popular choice to keep track on who was a citizen and who wasn't was simply to ask them to join the CDS group and give them the 'Citizen' role. Alas, this meant that the CDS group had always to be checked manually to see who had the 'right' to be in the Citizen role — there were many groups set up that way, and it meant regularly going through them (at least before any election!) and see who should join the CDS group that way.
I don't remember the year when a new issue popped up. During a campaign, some candidates wanted to announce their platforms via the CDS group notice mechanism. They would have to go through the PIO or Chancellor. But in some cases, the PIO might take some time to post their announcements — meaning nobody would be informed in time about campaigning events. In some cases there were allegations of bias — PIOs would allow access to some, but not all, candidates. Then citizens wished to announce their own events through the CDS group as well; although the PIO is supposed to announce all events in the CDS, sometimes they would only announce Government-sponsored events, sometimes not. At the end of the day, it was felt that a PIO could be too biased to be the sole person responsible for announcing events, so every citizen was given the right to post notices. This lead to new issues: spamming, trolling, and all sorts of abuse.
Right now, as the LV/CN groups stand, as well as the Estate Manager powers, they are seen as a 'merit badge'. Do something nice for the CDS, and you get invited to a privileged group that allows you to change the way the CDS looks like — in exchange, you're expected to help out new citizens, fix things when they're broken, remove stray prims, etc. Do even more nice things for the CDS, and you get granted the much-valued Estate Manager role, where you can even start claiming land from fellow citizens or reboot regions. New Chancellors were expected to work with this group of 'privileged citizens' who, because of their past work benefitting the CDS, have special roles — and might refuse, for whatever reason, to work with the Executive, but rather act as a counter-power to a too-ambitious Executive, by blocking them access to roles in those groups/powers. I think we have reached a saturation point where the majority of members of those groups actively oppose the current Government and refuse to relinquish their 'rights'; the usual claim is that this is made in the name of 'stability' and that Chancellors have to 'learn to work with elder citizens', instead of opposing them.
Thus, what first started as merely a technical issue — to be able to build on group-owned, public land you need to be part of that group — now became something much more subtle: a meritocracy of unelected members, 'earning their right' to say how the CDS should be managed, because they have been doing that for so long that they know best how to address the many issues of land management.
The main problem is not how the group members view themselves. The main issue is indeed a lack of legislation. Within the boundaries set by our constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we ought to adapt existing legislation to fit better to the current way of doing things, or, if that way goes far beyond what is permissible and sensible within the spirit of a democracy as established by our constitution, move to legislate to organise things and clearly define checks and balances to prevent abuse.
Here are, off the top of my head, a few questions that I would like this commission to answer:
Should the LV/CN groups, as well as the Estate Manager power, be a privilege granted to 'worthy citizens' who have worked hard over the years to create the CDS? In that case, who grants that privilege? (RA? SC? Executive? All together?) How can we revoke the privilege? Who oversees the privileged citizens to see that they do not abuse their powers? Where should a list of all privileged citizens, and the reasoning behind their appointment, be publicly listed? (e.g. 'Jane Doe is granted the privilege of being a LV/CN member because she did an awesome job remodelling building X')
Or should, by contrast, those groups be merely administrative/technical? Who should be in charge of them? Who is supposed to be able to invite citizens to those groups and set their roles? How can a decision be appealed — or does it not make any sense to appeal that, if the groups are under control of the Executive, and, as such, all 'privileges' are automatically removed when the Chancellor loses office and appoints a new staff? How can we prevent that people are appointed to such a group without having the required skills and qualifications for being there? How do we, the citizens, control abuse of powers? Who is responsible for those persons, and what are the limits of their responsibilities — and what happens if they neglect those responsibilities, for whatever reason?
What roles should exist in those groups and what purposes are they supposed to serve? Who is responsible for creating new roles/deleting old roles and assigning people to them? If the wrong person gets assigned to the wrong role, who is responsible for the mistake?
How do we fit in the need for 'temporary' group membership, e.g. events? Who is responsible for checking that the person abandons their membership/special role after they finish their event?
What difficulties are there in merging the many land management groups into a single one? Is that even advisable?
Regarding the CDS group, who should be responsible for notices? Is the language is group chat to be moderated? Who does the moderation; how do they get appointed and removed from office? What are the consequences of being 'kicked out' of the group?
How can we automate the process? Is it advisable to do so? What resources do we need for that?
I'm sure there is quite a lot more to ask, and after I finish reading the appropriate threads, I hope to add a few more questions. In the mean time, please help me by pointing out what worries you most about the CDS/LV/CN groups, and how you propose to deal with your issue.
Thanks all in advance!