An Overview of the History of the Ombudsman

[Jack]

Please note, this is still a WiP!


I am the foremost authority when it comes to the Ombudsman and it's history. What makes me so knowledgable about the Ombudsman position and it's history? First hand experience. I was friends with Mystake, FreeSpirit, Agapooka and Tok'ra during the inception of the Ombudsman role. I was friends with Smooshable, Mystake and Tok'ra during the reign of the first Ombudsman(Mystake). I have had long conversations with the second Ombudsman(Eros). I was the third Ombudsman. Being appointed so quickly after Eros' removal, I was able to see the aftermath of his time as Ombudsman while the bodies were still warm. I went on to be the first Ombudsman to serve for more then 6 months. I was the one that paved the way for 6 month terms. Before my tenure, the Ombudsman term was a mere two months. Then when I left and Bill(Pianomutt) took over, we became good friends and I stayed close to the Ombudsman office. That is my qualifications for my claim as being the foremost authority on the position and history of the Oms. The second most knowledgeable person is FreeSpirit, second primarily only because he was never Ombudsman and I was. =P


Anyway... I am sure that there will be those out there that will criticize me, accuse me of lying yadda yadda. However I have something they don't. I have proof; posts and witnesses. FreeSpirit will be able to collaborate everything I say. Now without further ado...


The Creation
It all started back in like September or October of 07 I think, Tor'ka was stirring up ruckus and no one was happy. Everyone was convinced that there was rampant bias on the forums. So eventually Tok'ra and AdminJason got together and discussed how to "fix" or improve the forum, the result? The Ombudsman. Yes, that's right, Tok'ra is the sole reason for the existence of the Ombudsman. What was the Ombudsman's job? It was to work with the staff to help improve the forum by making suggestions to the admin for various things to change and being a voice of the people, the vox populi. The reason for this was because at the time there was only one Admin and most users felt neglected with their concerns. The admin needed someone to shift through all the tripe and find the slivers of good ideas, suggestions and legitimate complaints. The Ombudsman was in a way a secretary but not really. Again, he was there primarily to facilitate communication between the forum staff and users and secondarily to provide feedback for the staff from the viewpoint of a normal user.


The First Era
Mystake was appointed(not voted in) to the Ombudsman's office. This was done by Jason. But this appointment was only supposed to last a month, instead it lasted for two months. Mystake did his duty and did it well, making all kinds of suggestions and working with the staff. Quite a few of his suggestions were turned down. Then there were some that were accepted and implemented.


The Scandal
Come the end of December/beginning of January elections were held to find Mystake's replacement. Eros nominated himself and received something like over 75% of the vote all by himself, the other candidates included myself coming in at second place and Semper coming in at a close third. I can't remember the other candidates but that doesn't matter now. In his first day as Ombudsman he had a a pretty nasty fight with the mods, where he mistakingly accused one of insulting him. This was not the case, the mod in question was simply PC to a fault. Truth is, in his attempt to try and not insult offend anyone, someone got offended. XD Anyway moving on... This was not the only issue that cropped up. You see Eros was under the impression that he could boss mods around and do things like overturn warnings without Admin approval. He was also under the false impression that he did not answer to the admin. He was mistaken, and subsequently removed do to his insane ramblings and paranoia.


The Second Era
With the untimely removal of the previous Ombudsman, the forum needed a replacement. Since I was the second place candidate, I was approached and asked if I wanted the job, so I accepted it. While I was Ombudsman, I was granted a tenure, meaning my term did not have an expiration date. Instead of my term expiring, I was promoted to supermod over misc and archives. During my time as Ombudsman it was abundantly clear to me that I did not have the ability to make any changes to policies or warnings/bannings on my own, that if I felt something needed to be changed that I had to go through the mods and admin first.


The Second Election
With my promotion, the forum once again needed an Ombudsman so once again elections were held. The way the second election was set up the users nominated someone, or they could nominate themself, they gave a reason for their nomination. The admin then went over the nominations, got feedback from the mods, then narrowed the nominations down to a few candidates. These few candidates were then put up for vote, the voting style was the way they vote in Aus, weird like lol. Pianomutt won that election.


The Third Era
With Pianomutt first took office he was very balanced in his approach, working with the mods and users alike to make suggestions for improving the forum. But after a while he started to shift to only working with user complaints against mods. Besides that, he also made a crapload of suggestions regarding user complaints. Some suggestions were absolutely detested by the mods and admins for the insane amount of red tape that they would create. One specific suggestion he made was the pardon system, for users that had been permabanned, it was a way for them try and get a second chance. This idea was obviously accepted and implemented. Somewhere along the way, because of Pianomutt's approach, people started to forget the true purpose of the Ombudsman. Although, I think it can also be said that they never truly understood it, as was proven by Eros.


The Third Elections
Under the new admins, the election process had changed. This time users merely voted for whoever they wanted, there was no nomination process. Manetheren won the election and Zeek became his understudy.


The Fourth Era
- UNDER CONSTRUCTION -

[caesar2]

ok, you should delet your acount Jack

[Mordack]

ok, you should delet your acount Jack

lol, why?

[Clarkey]

Jack you have waaaaaaaaaay too much time on your hands.

[Cole]

Wasn't the mod who "insulted" Eros, Spacey?
I might be mistaken, but I think it was him, the leader of respect...as if respect leader would insult an ombudsman (or anyone).
That's what made it even more ridiculous.

[Jack]

Not really, that took me like 4 days to type.

Wasn't the mod who "insulted" Eros, Spacey?
I might be mistaken, but I think it was him, the leader of respect...as if respect leader would insult an ombudsman (or anyone).
That's what made it even more ridiculous.

Spacey didn't insult Eros. He merely suggested changing the title "Ombudsman" to "Ombudsperson" for the sake of being politically correct because future Ombudsmen could be women. Spacey is an extremely PC guy, he goes out of his way to avoid insulting people. THAT is why he was the leader of the respect group.


I'm quite disappointed in you, Pops. You of all people should know that Spacey would never intentionally insult anyone for anything, as it was he that was always defending you from our mockery.

[Cole]

Not really, that took me like 4 days to type.

Wasn't the mod who "insulted" Eros, Spacey?
I might be mistaken, but I think it was him, the leader of respect...as if respect leader would insult an ombudsman (or anyone).
That's what made it even more ridiculous.

Spacey didn't insult Eros. He merely suggested changing the title "Ombudsman" to "Ombudsperson" for the sake of being politically correct because future Ombudsmen could be women. Spacey is an extremely PC guy, he goes out of his way to avoid insulting people. THAT is why he was the leader of the respect group.


I'm quite disappointed in you, Pops. You of all people should know that Spacey would never intentionally insult anyone for anything, as it was he that was always defending you from our mockery.

The use of inverted commas is always intentional....
Not to mention, the post was obviously stating that insinuating Spacey would insult someone, was ridiculous.

[Jack]

Sarcasm detector fail.

Didn't realize you were being sarcastic, Pops. Sowwy!

[Juliette]

Sarcasm detector fail.

Didn't realize you were being sarcastic, Pops. Sowwy!

It wasn't too obvious, due to the :rolleyes: -placement..



Anyway.. the story is a little.. onesided. Ombudsman history from an ombudsman/mod point of view? Not the most objective poster. So.. I encourage others (who have been around that long) to post their view on the history of the ombudsmen, so as not to fail to present a more full and varied perspective on the history of the ombudsmen.

[Jim]

Sarcasm detector fail.

Didn't realize you were being sarcastic, Pops. Sowwy!

It wasn't too obvious, due to the :rolleyes: -placement..



Anyway.. the story is a little.. onesided. Ombudsman history from an ombudsman/mod point of view? Not the most objective poster. So.. I encourage others (who have been around that long) to post their view on the history of the ombudsmen, so as not to fail to present a more full and varied perspective on the history of the ombudsmen.

Agreed, that would be nice please . Was very useful to read and explained a lot but lack of objective view was amusing for a History student :D

[Spacey]

Wasn't the mod who "insulted" Eros, Spacey?
I might be mistaken, but I think it was him, the leader of respect...as if respect leader would insult an ombudsman (or anyone).
That's what made it even more ridiculous.

Spacey didn't insult Eros. He merely suggested changing the title "Ombudsman" to "Ombudsperson" for the sake of being politically correct because future Ombudsmen could be women. Spacey is an extremely PC guy, he goes out of his way to avoid insulting people. THAT is why he was the leader of the respect group.


I'm quite disappointed in you, Pops. You of all people should know that Spacey would never intentionally insult anyone for anything, as it was he that was always defending you from our mockery.

It's really quite scary how well Jack knows me...

*looks out his window to make sure Jack isn't taking pictures of him*

I agree with the points mentioned about me in regards to the stuff with Eros. One could call it one of my tragic flaws, if we were to follow Bill Shakespeare's lines.

I'm quite disappointed in you, Pops. You of all people should know that Spacey would never intentionally insult anyone for anything, as it was he that was always defending you from our mockery.

What the deuce? Cole is Apophis? What I say next is both of admiration, appreciation, and awe: you're written English got much better Apophis.

To the above quote: hmm perhaps I should have defended more sneakily? or perhaps I'm just that obvious?

but this thread isn't about me: it's about the history of the ombudsperson, who as it happens has been male, so far.

I think it was well written Jack. Good job.

K

[semper]

Sarcasm detector fail.

Didn't realize you were being sarcastic, Pops. Sowwy!

It wasn't too obvious, due to the :rolleyes: -placement..



Anyway.. the story is a little.. onesided. Ombudsman history from an ombudsman/mod point of view? Not the most objective poster. So.. I encourage others (who have been around that long) to post their view on the history of the ombudsmen, so as not to fail to present a more full and varied perspective on the history of the ombudsmen.

Lets see then...

I think... train Wreck describes it best. With maybe a little part where everyone thought they were going to live near the end when we went through part of Bill's reign. The drivers had been fed a lie, their employee's were generally delusional about their destination and the passengers would certainly complain to the driver about the service but the driver shifted from actually being able to fire and punish members of the board (anyone smell union?) to actually being put in his intended place.. that of a train driver.

The position was rife with corruption, taboo, misunderstanding but it did have a purpose, and it did perform it's job at points.

As for your official history jack. You missed the points out where I got to say "I told you so" about Eros, my great part in the ombudsman races for the second third and fourth. The fact I developed the basic system for choosing an Ombudsman in two of the elections. Oh, and how about I am the most successful bullet dodge of all time when it comes to this role? Having been nominated every time the role has been voted for and discussed but never having to have bitten the bullet.

Necessary? not really.. but I thought as we're pointing out it's history.. should probably have my contributions to it placed in there.

[Jack]

This is an overview, not a full history. The point is to show how the position evolved over the course of time.

[caesar2]

ok, you should delet your acount Jack

lol, why?

why not? is the right question

This is an overview, not a full history. The point is to show how the position evolved over the course of time.

So its just a part of whole history, an overwiev made by Jack? Ah, than its maybe not written as it should be...

[renegadze]

The history is all well and good, but it's amazing how people's perspective can be flipped to suit their needs!

The bit about you having to go through Mods and Admins to get things done is wrong...Admins I can maybe understand, the The Ombudsman should have to answer to the Mods (An Ombudsman would never answer to the people he was asked to "investigate")

A true Ombusman should not be seen to be friends with Mods/Admins and neither should they hold a vested interest on any group ingame. They are supposed to be totally impartial with decisions based on facts alone.

Eros was quite clearly short tempered, ever thought he was elected because people wanted someone that could rile things up? someone that actually would fight their corner! I do agree Spacey in no way insulted him, but he didn't need to be PC as Ombudman is the title regardless of who does it it's a body of authority and doesn't actually relate to the gender of the person carrying out the role.