Boaty McBoatface: What You Get When You Let the Internet Decide | Hacker News Reader

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

nytimes.com

165 pointspldpld146 comments

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.

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.

Books. Cartoons. T-shirts. Educational materials. They're short-sighted if they don't see the opportunity to leverage this for good.

Merchandise! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNZove4OTtI

They mentioned this on Radio 1 this morning. First thing the DJ said was 'where can I get a hat with Boaty McBoatface on it'.

A series of young adult adventure novels are easily possible:

"Boaty McBoatface drills for Deep Ice"

"Boaty McBoatface meets Pagophilus the Harp Seal"

"Boaty McBoatface vs. the Clathrates of Doom"

How do you think I found out about this? My 8 year old daughter bounded up to me and said "Dad, you won't believe this amazing thing! Guess what they called a boat!" (and I thought "what? oh alright, I'll go along with it") and I said "I don't know sweety, what did they call it?" - to which she took a deep breath and said "Boaty McBoatface!" and burst into laughter.

Now at the time I thought it was just a silly kid's story. Then I went to the BBC...

> They should run with it

Hell they should embrace it and have a good painter put a "thomas the train" face on it or something.

Agreed! much like the dogecoin racecar

https://consumerist.com/2014/04/28/the-dogecoin-race-car-is-...

I completely agree, the ongoing publicity would be enormous. There's even a very close precedent! https://twitter.com/Hants_fire/status/711962085320728576

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 "Megyeri Bridge") Hungary got a bit of a PR boost when the Hungarian Ambassador appeared on The Colbert Report to discuss the issue. Sadly I cannot find a video clip, but the wikipedia description captures the moment nicely:

" On September 14, 2006, András Simonyi—the ambassador of Hungary to the United States—announced on The Colbert Report that Stephen Colbert had won the vote. Unfortunately for Colbert, Ambassador Simonyi declared that under Hungarian law, Colbert would have to be fluent in Hungarian, and would have to be deceased in order to have the bridge named for him. However, after saying the rules could most likely be bent, he invited Colbert to visit Hungary and view the construction in person and gave him a Hungarian passport and a 10,000 HUF Bill, with an approximate value of, as the ambassador put it, 'fifty dollars, fifty good US dollars'. Colbert promptly tried to bribe him with said money. "

Edit: yikes, Hungary has had a rough few years - I just checked the fx rates and 10000 forint is worth only $36 nowadays.

video: http://indavideo.hu/video/A_Stephen_Colbert_hid_sztori_vege

It's a bizarre world where an individual has more PR sway than an entire country.

Scott Adams has been musing on this theme lately: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/141428843311/social-media-is-th...

I wonder if he actively realizes that the persuaders on Social Media are inevitably for sale to the highest bidder (albiet with veto power over things they may actually care about)? [I know how much it costs for Martha Stewart to send a tweet about your business... I don't love this world we live in.]

I'm reading between the lines, but I don't think he's advocating for social media becoming the government. I think he thinks he's merely observing what's already happening.

He writes a lot about Trump, but he explicitly says that he could deal with any of the current candidates becoming President. I have wondered if his logic is basically "Social Media is becoming the President no matter what so what 'meat robot' slots to the seat behind the desk in the Oval Office in matters little by comparison".

If you mean that it could in fact be worse than what we have now, you could model what we have now as still being essentially "media" driven, but with no way for anybody to break in the way social media does let some people now. Whether that's really a serious change once corporations do their second-order adjustments... dunno. I expect to still be chewing on these ideas for another few weeks.

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?

They should just use the most popular name which is not a joke and then stay silent. Don't add anymore fuel to fire of internet stupidity.

In all seriousness, the UK media have been reporting for years about a lack of young people being interested in science based degrees and this is an opportunity to get not only children but people of all ages interested in what this boat actually does. They should take the opportunity and run with it. Paint a face on it like HN user masklinn suggests, market it and sell it. Get it a guest spot in the Elias children's series (about a coastal lifeboat). Make the world a slightly happier, funnier place.

Funny how everyone assumes this is a hoax, i.e. people didn't really want this name. I think it would be a fine name. And for the more traditional/ceremonious types, maybe it will inspire them to pay attention and get involved next time. That's IMHO a better outcome than soliciting participation from the public and then overriding the result by fiat.

The sad (?) reality is that "serious" people are always, always outnumbered by 4chan types. Which is why exclusivity "is a thing" in pretty much all fields of endeavours.

Greenpeace ran a campaign to name a whale in 2007. "Mr. Splashypants" topped the polls, and since Greenpeace's goal was publicity and public engagement, they accepted it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Splashy_Pants

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? They did accept the winning entry. Which means the pool is officially named "Pöl Harbor" ("Pöl" meaning puddle in Swedish). I myself was very pleased with this, though I was unsure whether I preferred this name or the rather gruesome runner-up: "Inälvsbadet". This literally means "the entrails bath", though the word for entrails could also be interpreted as "in-river", hence the pun.

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.

A fishing village with over half a million people, and a metro area of nearly 1 million? Around these parts, that'd make it a city.

Relax, I think it's just friendly inter-city banter :)

I thought it was also known for melodeath metal?

In which case, Bath of Entrails would make a good band name.

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.

> Just as you can't actually say inriver and pretend it means something in the river in English

I think "in-river" is pretty acceptable in speech, and mildly so in writing. If you said there was an "in-river pool", I wouldn't bat an eyelash.

That said, the relation between the adjectivizing(?) morphemes "in-" and "at-" (e.g. "at-home bar") and their corresponding prepositions is weird and makes my brain hurt.

No, it's no slang. Entrails are, in plural, "inälvor". You can see the "in" there and "älv" is a Swedish word for river.

edit: I do not know the etymology of the Swedish word for entrails, but I'd wager it's just coincidence that it is seemingly made up of two other words. It's not unlike the English word "searing" seemingly being composed of "sea" and "ring".

Allow me to hijack this thread to tell you about my favorite[1] word.

A Korean word "inbun", when followed by a number, means "amount of serving". So "3 inbun" means "serves three", or "a dish for three".

When NOT followed by a number, it is a different word (with exactly the same spelling and sound). It means "human feces".

[1] LOL, not really.

And to this day (?) Korean farmers had pigs eat human feces. And the word for pig-sty and out-house are apparently of similar origin?

Eh, that practice is gone for at least thirty years, probably more. Health concerns aside, you cannot run a for-profit pig farm with your family's "output"...

I have no idea what your second sentence is talking about. :/

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

There are some puns with the city name, but I haven't heard any Batman ones. It is probably a bit too far-fetched for a good joke. Also, in Swedish, the city is called Göteborg and I actually spent some time considering whether to give its native name or the English version of it when writing my original post.

What does Swedish Batman have with his chips?

Gothenburger.

What's crime does Swedish Batman hate the most?

Gothenburglary.

> This literally means "the entrails bath", though the word for entrails could also be interpreted as "in-river", hence the pun.

I approve this message...

They were running with this as the top story on radio 1 this morning. (I assume they don't want to freak kids out with bombs in Brussels.)

So the amusing name has brought the ship and it's mission to the minds of kids throughout the UK. They also mentioned that the guy who submitted the name was very sorry he had done so.

Oh England :)

Same thing happened few years ago with Pitbull, when, as a prank, it was voted for him to go to Alaska. He went there.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/videos/pitbull-is-heading-...

(btw it's RSS, Royal Research Ship)

RRS, but one of the suggestions is "RRS Feed".

RRS, I presume?

You maybe right but they are going to have to recruit real scientist to work on the ship who are going to need to put that on their CV.

I don't know how recruiting in that field works but it could be an issue in a lot of people's minds.

They got off easy. At least the top entry wasn't SS Hitler Did Nothing Wrong.

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/

There were actually some hilarious suggestions on Reddit (not sure if they're all actual submissions) like Usain Boat, Ice Ice Baby, Boatimus Prime, Notitanic, Boats by Dre or Pier Pressure.

The company that does the maintenance on the waterfront and harbour near where I live has a small barge called Pier Pressure.

My old university town of Aberystwyth has a club called Pier Pressure which, rather pleasingly, is on a pier.

> Although personally I liked 'what iceberg' as a name

That's a very Culture ship name.

Banks' father was in the Royal Navy and he grew up in North Queensferry right next to the Forth Bridge and the Rosyth naval base - pretty sure that influenced his love of really big things and Ships With Cool Names - the RN being rather good at the latter and there are few bridges with the visual impact of the former.

I was musing on a Culture-type name last night, and came up with;

Anticipation Of A New Iceberg's Arrival, The

They See Me Trawling...

Ice, Ice Baby

"Arbitrary" might be good as it collects snowflakes as a hobby.

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.

I have no interest in boating, but I dream of one day buying a boat just so I can name it Ultimate Ship II.

nice. I'm going to call mine "Real Hackers Ship".

That's wonderful. I think you need two: Real Hackers Ship and Real Hackers' Ship.

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 attention if you get a bunch of people together to vote "no" but what if you get a bunch of people together to vote "no" on all odd numbered streets?

A large number of contests with low voter interest, plus the potential for publicity is fertile ground for trolling.

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.

Google has been testing just such a form of governing: http://www.tdcommons.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1092&co...

I went to the Pirate Party conference in the UK a few years ago. This method of decision making was proposed, but issue that was recognised was that of absenteeism. What happens when Alice gives her vote to Bob, but then gets disillusioned with the entire system and disengages without de-registering her delegation. Any liquid democracy system needs a strong way of differentiating between genuine delegation and disinterest, in order to stop legacy power accruals.

Couldn't the delegation have a time-out, such that Alice must renew her commitment to delegate her vote to Bob every 6 months or whatever we decide the optimal period is?

I would say this highlights a different problem of democracy:

Everyone is aware of the fact that even if their candidate wins, someone else will have the final say in the matter. Therefore, no one takes the election seriously.

I myself feel confident that a large proportion of people voting Boatey McBoatface believe that they will not actually name the ship that.

Your conclusion assumes that direct democracy tends to affect things that have little real impact on the humans voting on them.

People don't take voting seriously because voting feels less like casting a vote, and more like buying a raffle ticket. "Enter for a chance for your vote to be taken seriously."

However, in small communities and towns, I think they often vote on things that are important to them and end up taking it seriously, and feel better off for having a say in it.

Honestly, how can people picking a funny name for a boat seriously make you come to that conclusion about direct democracy? I think rather, you already had that conclusion, and found a good anecdote to float your opinion on.

> Honestly, how can people picking a funny name for a boat seriously make you come to that conclusion about direct democracy? I think rather, you already had that conclusion, and found a good anecdote to float your opinion on.

Nope. The boat made me think of other situations.

Direct democracy doesn't mean democratic micromanagement of everything.

Yeah direct democracy improves some cases but has 2 cases off the top of my head that it fails for 1) small issues few people will care to vote for and 2) large complex issues. In the case of (2) it makes the issue of in informed lawmakers making laws based on partial biased information even worse by vastly increasing the number of people who 1) have to care to get educated in the first place and 2) have to find good sources to get their education from.

Another problem with direct democracy is consistency. In one vote the people will overwhelmingly support a constitutionally mandated limit on taxation. Then in the next vote they will overwhelmingly vote in mandatory ring fenced high spending on health care, education, etc, etc with automatic inflation-busting increases every year.

This is why you need a government with the power to govern, because someone has to be able to make the trade offs between different and changing demands and priorities that one-off, single-issue referenda can't make.

Similar thing happened in Iceland a few years ago. Before starting work to review the constitution, they ran a facebook poll to get input from the population. Top suggestions were "Free Ice Cream"and "More Volcanoes": http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/31/icelands-crowdsourced-con...

More Volcanoes? That's just greedy...

What is so wrong with it?

Does it sound like every other seagoing vessel before it? No but who cares. It's unique and wonderful that human beings have a sense of humor. Maybe public works projects need more of this.

Well for one She is a Ship not a Boat - and Maritime types get quite upset if you refer to their ship as a boat. (think Pissed off Gibbs from NCIS)

I did like that "Forward Unto Dawn" (the ship in halo) was 4th at one point

I think it was "Pillar of Autumn"

I think Pillar of Autumn is the coolest name ever given to something fictional. Followed by Shadow Moses island.

Halo had the best names. Some others:

Forward Unto Dawn, Shadow of Intent, Long Night of Solace, Point of No Return.

Well, if you want to go full Culture you have ship names like (in this case a warship):

Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath

It's also a thing not a woman so I don't think maritime types really have much credibility when it comes to word choice.

The chaps from the Special Boat Service might disagree with you on that point!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Boat_Service

I don't think so - their name refers to the small boats and canoes they originally operated from.

Aren't submarines referred to as boats? :-)

[NB Apologies, I was being silly with that original comment, as far as I know you are correct.]

That refers to the German name for them, where they’re U-Boot (Undersea Boat)

Yes, a "special" boat much like the Special Olympics.

Fine.

Shippy McShipface it is.

Well you could hardly call it Shippy McShipface could you? (Try saying it 5 time fast)

I for one would immediately vote for calling a ship The Shipfaced.

How about "Royal Research Ship Happens"?

Sounds like an Iain M Banks ship name.

Good point. Instead, I'd like to nominate "The Seaward".

RSS Pedantry

Honestly, based on my (albeit limited) experience in the UK, this would be a fitting name for any number of things. Buildings, bridges, ships, people, places. Name it.

USS Pedantry, just for that extra blow.

Frankly, I think that makes it an even better name.

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.

Eurovision is supposed to be fun though. At least, that's the UK's perspective. Everyone else takes it more seriously and submit almost exclusively tedious rock ballads. They're been a few non-boring entries though, including a finish metal band and a pair of clowns from Ireland.

Well, it's fun nowadays... Before 2008 the fun entries were still novelty rather than the norm (it had pretty much been only Lordi until then - and I would consider them awesome rather than fun :)).

The ESC is definitely seen as a fun contest for longer than that, at least in Germany. Case in point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3q7Y3fgTIc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJgszpNj7dY

Portugal trolled it hard back in 2011, when we sent the "Men of Struggle": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bDN53Rqh54

Pan-pan, pan-pan, pan-pan to all-Stations, all-Stations, all-Stations, this is RSS Boaty McBoatface. We are currently not sure where we are and are suffering from a social media crisis. Please advise whether we should follow the masses or maintain our stiff upper lip

Why on earth does the naming of a boat need to be a solemn affair? Why is it a bad thing that "what we get" is lighthearted? Won't this make more people invested in and engaged with the research purpose of the boat?

This excerpt from a speech John Cleese gave on creativity was the first thing to come to mind when I read this headline: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7fyOLe-xn4

I love this kind of british humour, however crude. In my mind, it's similar to the campaigns (most years?) to have a non-christmas song be the #1 christmas single.

Boaty McBoatface must be the least crude name someone could come up with ;)

Exactly, if they (Gallup?) had decided that Rage Against the Machine's Killing IN the Name Of could not be UK Christmas Nr1 it would have been even sillier. As it was it was just the right amount of protest and respect from both sides.

There's nothing particular English about "Boaty McBoatface" to my mind, it's just standard internet humor.

It's absurd and mocks authority, which are staples in British (not just English) humour.

This reads less like a thoughtful consideration of what happens when you let the Internet decide than a naked attempt by NYTimes to grab a quick hit of local search traffic around 'Boaty McBoatface.'

Possibly a bit late, but I'd love to suggest:

"Experiencing A Significant Gravitas Shortfall"

I know a Tribute to the Late Iain M Banks would have been great.

Going to have to agree here.

Well, they should have known better. When they were searching a name for a bridge close to the new Wembley Stadium, german fans hijacked the Poll and voted for "Dietmar Hamann Bridge", a german national soccer player.

Also, in a small town in germany, people voted for a "Bud Spencer Tunnel". As a concession, the city council named the local swimming pool for him, after they found out he had been training there when a olympic swimmer prior to his acting career.

In Australia - we have a swimming pool named after a former Prime Minister.... who drowned while in office.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Holt_Memorial_Swimming_...

Porto's main airport is named after a former prime minister who died in a plane crash while flying to that airport.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_de_S%C3%A1_Carneiro_...

Better than paying a group of "naming experts" some huge amount of money, only for them to come up with a generic-sounding name.

The Internet can be very silly but also a great source of creativity.

Back in the 90's, People magazine ran an internet competition for the most beautiful person alive. Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf won by a mile.

That is the first thing that came to my mind as well. Must have been the first popular internet voting campaign to go wrong.

And for those that do not know the story, Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf (RIP) was very much a real person.

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.

Letsby Avenue - http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/feb/12/martinwainwright

Remember that episode when Colbert managed to get 17 million votes to get a new Hungarian bridge named after him? That's versus ~10 million of total population of Hungary. The outcome was highly predictable, but it didn't make the process any less entertaining :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megyeri_Bridge#Results

Truly the wisdom of crowds. I am reminded once again of the perils of direct democracy.

Ah now that's an excellent topic, because the root of the problem is the participants don't think wisdom is the correct source for boat names. Some may not like it, but its still their culture.

What you get when you let the internet decide what words to put in a haiku: http://www.crowdhaiku.com

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/13j3hs/laughed_my_as...

and

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10506482

One of the best "when you let internet decide" moments was the Eurovision 2008 contestant for Spain. Organizers tried online votation and this guy won: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A47UTfzoj-Q

Similar to the famous Glasgow statue with the now traditional traffic cone: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-24907190

A few years ago, there was an online poll to name the next Mountain Dew flavor, which was supposed to taste like granny smith apples.

The winner was "Hitler Did Nothing Wrong". Other top contenders included "Gushing Granny" and "Fapple".

I was unable to read the article at first due to a malfunctioning scroll hijacking script. http://livememe.com/nyt.webm

Reloading the page fixed the issue. Bad ad network?

So, basically what we're learning is that the internet as a whole will tend to act in trollish, hilarious ways for things that don't matter.

I might be okay with that.

This is 2016's "Mr. Splashy Pants".

Which shows the right way to do this: don't provide a free form text field, and give one really silly option that you can live with. The internet piled into the silly option and created a massive public awareness swarm for their cause.

Well they asked internet for suggestions and got some good ones and some bad ones. Plus some extra publicity. So it worked

Meanwhile, someone has already registered BoatyMcBoatface.com

I dislike the NYT more and more these days. I knew as I read that the title the article was from NYT. They are becoming very predictable in their biases.

Well just give people a vote but secure veto rights so you can pick from a runner-up.

Not that complicated.

Crowdsourcing can be wonderful but it does have its pitfalls for the lowest common denominator.

How is this the lowest common denominator? I'd say "Shackleton" or "Falcon" are lowest common denominators. They're basic ones that nearly everyone can accept. Isn't that the definition of lowest common denominator when it comes to people?

What's wrong with a comedy name? Google managed OK being called Google. DuckDuckGo isn't doing too badly either. But SpoonRocket recently shut down, so I guess it doesn't guarantee success.

I can't imagine Google would have done so well if they'd stuck with BackRub.

"I BackRubbed for car dealers." Nope.

> Crowdsourcing can be wonderful but it does have its pitfalls for the lowest common denominator.

Actually the Boaty... name was proposed by one of the NERC staff, so isn't actually a result of crowdsourcing.

They should just admit that Boaty McBoatface is a stupid name, that asking "the Internet" to decide was a stupid idea, and quickly bury this idea behind them. At least it would set a precedent. I can't ever remember anything like this turning into something cool or favorable.

I know it was for the publicity. It worked, so good for that boat-line.

It didn't work well enough if you think it's a boat-line doing this.

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