Boaty McBoatface: What You Get When You Let the Internet Decide

Post by epimetheus » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 2:04 PM UTC

staticelf wrote: post #72

Agentlien wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from Gothenburg, Sweden, which is a city known for its bad puns and where most larger buildings are usually referred to by silly nicknames. Last year, there was a competition to name the new swimming pool by the harbor which they put there to keep people from swimming in the rather filthy water of the nearby river. As expected, most of the names which received a lot of votes were silly puns and, you know what? Th…

I'm from Stockholm and would like to denounce that Gothenburg is known for its bad puns. Gothenburg is only known as a fisherman village.

Post by to3m » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 2:22 PM UTC

kagamine wrote: post #74

kgabis wrote: post #43

There's a Obi-Wan Kenobi sreet in Poland [0]. [0] http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ulica_Obi-Wana_Kenobiego

There's an Incognito St. in Oslo, Norway.

Post by chiph » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 2:26 PM UTC

noir_lord wrote: post #7

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally this. And it would be brilliant for kids.

Indeed, if they spent some money on artwork they could do "The Adventures of Boaty McBoatface" and work in it's research activities.

Post by Eric_WVGG » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 2:29 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #15

KineticLensman wrote: post #2

To be clear, the U.K. Govt website [1] allows people to submit suggestions, and the NERC are not obliged to use the highest ranking suggestion. Although personally I liked 'what iceberg' as a name Edit: added link [1] http://www.nerc.ac.uk/press/releases/2016/10-ship-naming/

> Although personally I liked 'what iceberg' as a name That's a very Culture ship name.

Post by SpeakMouthWords » Tue, Mar 22, 2016, 2:35 PM UTC

slazaro wrote: post #59

golemotron wrote: post #56

Although these pranks are funny they highlight a something very serious - the failure case of direct democracy. When minor issues come up for vote not everyone cares. The people who do care enough to vote can easily be trolls. As an example, imagine that a vote comes up for raising tolls from $1 to $2 on little used street. It's one of 1000 votes a month in a direct democracy. There's little chance of getting attenti…

I always thought that a direct democracy where you can by default delegate your vote to one of the elected politicians, but you override whenever you want, would be the best of both worlds (representative democracy and direct democracy). That wouldn't necessarily work on this kind of votes (names for stuff), but I think it would work well on the regular issues that politicians make decisions about.