Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Online Voters Name British Vessel 'Boaty McBoatface' (telegraph.co.uk)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the whatever-floats-your-Boaty dept.

Britain's Natural Environment Research Council conducted an online poll to select the name for their new advanced polar research vessel. Though it cost more than 200 million pounds and represents their fleet's largest and most advanced research vessel, when the voting closed yesterday the clear winner, was the name 'Boaty McBoatface'. The name received over 124,000 votes, while the nearest runner-up -- Poppy-Mai -- received just 34,371, and the fourth-most popular suggestion, "RRS It's Bloody Cold Here," received just 10,679 votes. "I am grateful to everyone who has participated in the competition," Britain's science minister told The Daily Telegraph, though he added "You won't be surprised to know that we want something that fits the mission and captures the spirit of scientific endeavor." The Telegraph takes this as a signal that the ministers "were unlikely to endorse the result."

8 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. My Kingdom for a "Facepalm" Icon by TheEyes · · Score: 4, Funny

    Oh, Internet...

  2. Iain M Banks by Oxygen99 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Can I say the RRS It's Bloody Cold Here has the ring of a Culture ship and would make a nice epitaph for one of the finest science fiction authors of the last fifty years. Given the poll options though, I'd like to suggest the GCU Experiencing a Significant Gravitas Shortfall instead.

    --
    I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
  3. This is why we can't have nice things! by rmdingler · · Score: 4, Funny

    And you wonder why the American primary votes are only taken under advisement.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

  4. Re:Internet democracy by alvinrod · · Score: 5, Funny

    But sometimes the results are rather amusing.

    Boaty McBoatface is hardly the worst that the internet could have put forward. If you don't want to accept the possibility of a silly name winning, why bother to have the poll at all?

  5. Re:Internet democracy by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 4, Funny

    Well, in a previous era, they named the formerly known planet Pluto after a cartoon dog.

  6. Goaty McGoatSe by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Funny

    Let's vote to rename slashdot.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  7. My guess: by Hartree · · Score: 3, Funny

    They may go with the number three pick, Henry Worsley (Recently deceased South Polar explorer) and name one of the lifeboats Boaty McBoatface.

    But, that would be the intelligent thing rather than the bureaucratic thing, so who knows?

  8. Re:Par for the course by meerling · · Score: 4, Funny

    Then it would be all Reich ?

    Before anyone spazzes out, I truly despise those scum, but I have no problems making fun of them, and neither did Monty Python. :P