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

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

#91

Post by zodPod »

Agentlien wrote: post #63
noir_lord wrote: post #3

They should run with it, the positive PR now and in the future when the RSS Boaty McBoatface docks would be worth it. It would also show a sense of humour and make it something fun.

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 probably going to have my foot in my mouth pretty quickly about this but how bizarre is the Swedish language that "entrails" and "in-river" could be the same word? lol

Is it a slang term of some kind?

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

#92

Post by mpnordland »

Agentlien wrote: post #63
noir_lord wrote: post #3

They should run with it, the positive PR now and in the future when the RSS Boaty McBoatface docks would be worth it. It would also show a sense of humour and make it something fun.

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…

Are there any good Batman jokes involving Gothenburg Sweden? Seems like there should be.

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

#93

Post by xingxiong »

zodPod wrote: post #91
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 probably going to have my foot in my mouth pretty quickly about this but how bizarre is the Swedish language that "entrails" and "in-river" could be the same word? lol Is it a slang term of some kind?

No more bizarre than Ent Rails (you know, railways for Tolkien Ents) is the same as entrails in English.

Just as you can't actually say inriver and pretend it means something in the river in English, you can't say inälv and mean something in an älv in Swedish. But as a pun it is okay, everyone gets the word play.

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

#94

Post by soneil »

smcl wrote: post #19
noir_lord wrote: post #3

They should run with it, the positive PR now and in the future when the RSS Boaty McBoatface docks would be worth it. It would also show a sense of humour and make it something fun.

There was a similar situation a few years back - some local Hungarian government were running an online poll to decide the name of a new local bridge and more importantly you were able to submit your own proposal. Some internet community got wind of this and mobilised to vote the name "Stephen Colbert Bridge" until it was at the top of the standings. Even though they never went with the name (they elected to use "Meg…

This happened in Slovakia too, a couple of years ago. They had a public poll to name a cycle bridge over the Morava. Chuck Norris won, but they opted to call it Freedom Bridge (Cyklomost Slobody) instead.

Funnily enough, Chuck was also the fore-runner for Megyeri Bridge before Colbert got involved, too.

It's all good fun though - and good publicity. Do you think anyone would be talking about a new arctic research vessel if it wasn't for this?

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

#95

Post by noja »

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…

Direct democracy doesn't mean democratic micromanagement of everything.

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

#98

Post by arien »

Here's a entertaining/embarrassing story from Spain, related to this.

A few years ago (2008), the Spanish organisers of the Eurovision contest thought it would be a great idea to allow the public to decide who should represent the country in the Eurovision contest. Amongst all songs entered was this silly parody from a comedian, playing a fake musician called Chikilicuatre [0].

So well... After some heavy campaigning/trolling by the TV channel that 'created' this character and song, it came out as the winner. You can imagine the organisers' face after this! But they sullenly accepted it and let him join the contest [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodolfo_Chikilicuatre

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRQhZtbm97I

P.S. They learned their lesson and changed the voting system so it could not be exploited again.

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

#99

Post by masklinn »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #87
masklinn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Pillar of Autumn is one of the runner-up votes, and it is widely speculated that the original Halo was heavily influenced by the Culture books. http://marathon.bungie.org/story/halo_culture.html

That doesn't have the classic "lack of gravitas" of Culture ship-naming conventions though. It reads more like a Morthanveld or Zihdren-Remnanter ship name. Unless there's a joke I'm missing in there.
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