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Online Voters Name British Vessel 'Boaty McBoatface' (telegraph.co.uk)
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."
Oh, Internet...
To the world this ship will always be Boaty McBoatface. Whenever it's in the news, whenever people speak of it the actual name will be ignored.
It might not be christened Boaty McBoatface but that's what its friends and family will call it.
You'd have voted for HMS Pompous?
I think Boaty McBoatface is the best name they could have received. Do they understand how many kids will be attracted to that name? I could see this being a great way to get kids interested in polar science. It will always be Boaty McBoatface to me!
Stephen Colbert won a vote to name a bridge after him in Hungary...naturally, the govt said no.
The boat people will pick a name that had some votes AND is respectable.
This.
(Yeah, that's all.)
Row row row your boat...
Seriously though, this either became a joke long before the poll closed, or it's another poll effected by a person having a scripted laugh.
So... just like the outcome of all popular elections.
Yes but the poll just officially closed and the people in charge just commented that it probably will not be named this after all.
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
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
NASA discovered the hard way after the ISS / Stephen Colbert fiasco that the way to do this is make up a dozen or so of your own, reasonable suggestions, and allow public voting on just those.
Hey, if "Of Course I Still Love You" and "Just Read the Instructions" can be valid boat names (they're the names of SpaceX's landing/recovery ships), then the "It's Bloody Cold Here" is perfectly cromulent.
Bureaucrats, no f*cking imagination or sense of humour.
-- Alastair
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?
You never know, maybe "Boaty McBoatface" in Gaelic will be something that in English sounds dignified and/or cool.
several days ago Blas de Lezo was in second position
Well, in a previous era, they named the formerly known planet Pluto after a cartoon dog.
Also, I decided to call my steel steed "Bikey McBikeface".
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
A very long time ago (the Internet was new, so this was a paper poll), UCLA polled for a replacement name for a bookstore/cafeteria/recreation area on the north end of the campus. The responses nearly all varied from snide to obscene. The name selection ended with retaining the working name "North Campus Facility".
See these other trollish hits... http://imgur.com/gallery/gaJxp
Silence is a state of mime.
They officially confirmed they would not use the winning name before the poll closed as well.
Learn to love Alaska
Please tell me that link is real, awesomest thing I've seen all day lol
Read TFA. The poll just closed and the officials are saying this name probably won't be selected.
Given we're talking about the internet here, they got off easy. It could have easily been the RSS Hitler Did Nothing Wrong.
Learn to have some fun. Go with it, and enjoy the laughs.
Reminds me of the dwarf planet and its moon originally named "Xena" and "Gabrielle". Great names relevant to current culture. But nooooo... the old sticks-in-the-mud decided they had to use long dead Greek gos names. So officially they became "Eris" and "Dysnomia". How many people do you think know those names today? -- I know about them and still I had to look the names up *again*.
:T:R:A:N:S:
Let's vote to rename slashdot.
Table-ized A.I.
Why can't scientists have any damn fun these days?
Giving it such a silly name would actually likely attract attention to what it does, purely because it is such a silly name.
Even the "It's bloody cold here" would go a treat.
Silly names attract attention. Some of it will be interested attention.
They'd read up on it, and maybe a small number of those people would have some interest in it.
It might even inspire some of those people to get interested in the industry(-ies) on some level.
So just go for it.
Give it a silly name! FOR SCIENCE!
I hate this prudish boring country.
Everything is PC, everything is tame, everything is boring, everything is non-excitable and PROFESHUNHUL, sterile and emotionless.
FUCK professional. I'd rather off myself than be such a boring twat.
Everyone know the correct name should be Shippy McShipface.
For a non native speaker, it is not obvious why this name is wrong. Is there a pun, or a reference to a cultural item unknown to me?
A wild guess is that it looks like child talk. Is that all?
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?
It's real, but it happened several years ago. That particular entry was only sold online through eBay, but apparently the people who had pushed for it actually bought up all of the run so it was sort of successful. Shit, I'd probably buy it if it were on the store shelves for no other reason that it makes much chuckle.
The ministers need to take the stick out they ass.
You are welcome on my lawn.
With this little experiment in democracy working out as a dismal failure, they might as well go back to monarchy. Oh wait, they already are a monarchy!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Alas Kraft once plucked a product name from an internet poll. A week later they held a second poll selecting "Cheesybite", which is almost as bad.
Vegemite for people who don't like Vegemite... FFS, in destroying a national icon they even had vegemite-flavoured chocolate bars.
Hey they want "You won't be surprised to know that we want something that fits the mission"
It's an arctic mission and one of the suggestions was "RRS It's bloody cold here"
Done and Done.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
1998, and People Magazine wanted to make it's presence known on the newfangled internet.
Leonardo Dicaprio was supposed to win. But 230,169 of us nerds bitchslapped them, and voted Hank in.
People Magazine, being the ethical rag that it is, declared DiCaprio the winner, even though he came in 3rd.
Nerds FTW https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Sad to say, Hank is no longer with us.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
NASA discovered the hard way after the ISS / Stephen Colbert fiasco that the way to do this is make up a dozen or so of your own, reasonable suggestions, and allow public voting on just those.
At least NASA had a sense of humor and sent the Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill to the ISS.
Whatever they name the ship it will suffer the same fate as the Thunderbolt II. What's that? Oh the Warthog...
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Oh so that's what all those people in the credits do. I suppose Executive Producers actually cook the food themselves.
The Top Gear incident was an example of the Public School Bully, another great British institution.
You're right manu0601, Boaty McBoatface is a childish name because of the repetition of Boat and the nonsense words Boaty and Boatface. It would be a silly name even for a toy boat.
It is an entirely inappropriate name for a full-sized, serious, scientific vessel and that's why the British sense of humour decided that it's the right name.
Tastes like chicken lmao! Those are brilliant, i definitely would have bought the priiiiiillll one
Or the winner would have been: "RRS It's Bloody Cold Here".
And Ian Banks was british btw and he is worth to be honoured with a ship named like that.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Dont you mean Smeggy McSmegheads?
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Why bother run an open poll to name the boat, if you're going to refuse the winning name?
Well, I guess they raised awareness about ... umm ... the fact that they have a boat.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I would've voted for Bi-Polar Express. But no, the voting didn't work.
Then it would be all Reich ?
:P
Before anyone spazzes out, I truly despise those scum, but I have no problems making fun of them, and neither did Monty Python.
I dunno. Maybe they thought there were some people out there that have passed puberty...
I suspect some basic education would work wonders on that issue, but the way the politicians in our country are going, they seem to want to drive the education level in the USA to pre-K levels.
Boaty McBoatface was one of the original suggestions put on the list to seed it. Given that its inclusion generated a lot of interest in the ship (and I've seen suggestions that there should be an educational kids TV show on Arctic discovery using the name) it seems to have been a PR masterstroke.
Did they actually say they'd use the poll chosen name no matter how stupid and childish it is, or did they ask for suggestions?
So the hijacking of an internet name poll with preschool humor based names isn't nerdy enough for you?
Or maybe that a group of pranksters have orchestrated turning a request for public participation in the naming of a new science vessel into a complete farce for lols?
Oh well, it's not like the tech savvy are the majority around here anymore.
Apparently you mean your dictatorship, which they won't accept. Look up Tyranny of the Masses. You might learn something.
The RSS SS!
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
OK, his title should have been "My Kingdom for Slashdot unicode support".
we voted to name a bridge. We named it "The Chuck Norris bridge"... It won't surprise you it's now called "The freedom cycling bridge"
Only because it was a local radio presenter that made the initial suggestion. If a Daily Mail journalist had got the idea first it could very well have been just that.
The "It's Bloody Cold Here" is a much better name for a North Seas research vessel.
I may be a stickler but I think if you put up a poll that allows the public to name something, or something similar, you should follow through and act in accordance with the public's wishes. If the result of the poll was HMS Fuck It, then that's what it should be named. On the other hand, you probably shouldn't put things like that up for a public polling. That's just dumb and how you get Boaty McBoatFace. But they did do it and they should stick with that name.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
"Members of the British scientific community cast their votes on what to call members of the general population. The winning choice by a long margin was 'Retard McFatFucks'."
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
So it looks like they are planning to name it something else...Morons
This whole Boaty McBoatface thing has been a publicity goldmine. Seriously, who here even knew there was a UK National Environmental Research Council before this? But the whole circus goes away about 2 weeks after they refuse the name.
If they actually name the ship Boaty McBoatface, the publicity will effectively live as long as the ship does. Interest will tapir off, sure, but the name is such a grabber that any time there's a chance to put Boaty McBoatface in a newspaper story, it will be there.
The Marketing people at the NERC seriously need to tie the "suits" up in a closet for a few weeks until they can get Boaty christened and launched. Its for the good of the organization. Throw enough gin and vermouth in there for a few martinis and they'll be fine.
The easiest way to have both public involvement and keep the idiots from hijacking the poll is probably to have a first round of _submissions_ which are handled privately, winnow out the stupid ones and allow public voting on the subset remaining.
If the result of the poll was HMS Fuck It, then that's what it should be named. On the other hand, you probably shouldn't put things like that up for a public polling. That's just dumb and how you get Boaty McBoatFace. But they did do it and they should stick with that name.
"RSS Hoisted by Our Own Petard"
"RSS Viral Marketing Backfire"
"RSS We Deserve This"
Except I do think it's the right name for the boat and while we're at it, Jeremy Clarkson should be renamed Twatty McTwatface, possibly with a bottle of fizz swung at his prow.
And I suppose you think sophisticated books and films are an oxymoron.
I hope they do that! Make it the best lifeboat on there, and give it a big smiley face paint job!
Give it it's own champagne christening and I bet there will be more photo ops with Boaty that boring old Worsley...
You think Hitler was bad?
Wait for socialism.
lol. I bet you see the dark hand of 'socialism' all over the place.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
A better response for these AC posts complaining about how old the news is, might be to just respond:
"Where was your submission a month ago?"
Slashdot doesn't generate news, Slashdot reports news that other's have submitted (most of the time...).
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
APK, don't act like you won the argument, you are still using the same arguments you always do, and I have already responded to them. When you are ready to act like an adult and admit your mistakes, maybe you might have a productive conversation with people.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
A tantrum? Such as you searching every post I make to try and dig up dirt, then posting on many of my comments completely unrelated to the original conversation? I see no tantrum on my side, just me rightfully putting your lies in their place.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Yup, keep dreaming. We'll all wait for your meds to take effect. You are the only one who cares about these things, and you are the only one who believes what you type.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Well, yes, and offensive, too, as it's obviously Not a boat. It's a Ship. The name clearly should be Shipy McShipface.