Formal proposal to rename the Pirate Party by 2018

Hmm, could make it happen with open source video, pictures and a couple of weeks. A few pirates, including myself have some video production experience. I’m planning on starting new projects like this once we get through Congress. Will put it in the pile. :slight_smile:

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FIXED

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I’m coming around to the need for a name change after spending time on the ground at the last election explaining why “Pirate Party”, although I do think that the name was actually getting more traction. Still not fussed on Libertarian Left.

Australian Social Justice Party
Social Justice Party
Freedom for All
The Party Formerly Known As Pirates
Spirit of Australia Party (Vote SOAP!)

I should probably get more sleep.

I still think Free Australia Party has merit. FAP. Hehehehe.

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I disagree that ditching the name would solve the problems the party has. Few people have actually heard of us, my entire family included (though I’m trying to convert them :P). I think, with the right marketing, we could make a lot of hay out of the brand as it is, especially with the success of the Iceland branch/chapter/whatever. “What’s in a name?” Would be a great marketing tagline I think to attach to the brand, something we’d lose if we chose just another political party name that would just get lost in the crowd.

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If a name change occurs I can see Libertarian Left makes sense and with the right marketing will work. I joined the Pirate Party after the recent federal election. In voting for the senate I reviewed the policies for a number of the parties. I was attracted to the Pirate Party when I saw there was a broad policy base which I was in general agreement with. Prior to my research I thought it was just a single issue party. The strongest policy area that attracted me the area of taxation/welfare reform. Talking to people I know about the Pirate Party their initial thoughts are it’s just a silly name to attract votes and is probably just a joke party with no serious policies. Anyway, just a few of my thoughts to consider as a new person to the Party.

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Here is a copy of an email sent to Pirate Party Australia’s membership email address…
"To whom it may concern–
I have been considering my membership of PPA since the election and have decided to resign.
The kicker was the proposed name change. I don’t wish to be associated with a party that has “LIBERTARIAN” in it’s name.People
are getting to know the name PIRATE PARTY. The Party’s Icelandic
profile and the fact the PPA was mentioned quite a few times during the
election campaign has made the name visible to voters. Tarring the party
with the Libertarian brush will get you lumped in with knuckle dragging gun fondlers like David Leyonhelm.

That’s my 2c less tax (even though a good libertarian believes that all tax is theft)
Good luck.

Dave Miles"

Actually not a bad idea. “Free as in Freedom, not as in Free Beer”, blah blah blah about how the recipe is free, but then give them a free beer anyway.

Name has not been changed yet. I think you’ve jumped the gun

So I got the pleasure to meet Frew in person at PAX 2016 just before this data loss incident and it just came up in conversation for me to ask what’s happening with this proposal…

Well, apparently the National Council held a vote among themselves on whether to continue with this proposal or not, and they voted NO for the reasons affecting that decision being (1) The person who first proposed/pushed for this motion has seemed to have off the face of the earth as far as they can tell, and (2) nobody has really been pushing for this topic so it was assumed that there is no longer any interest in doing this.

WELL I don’t really agree with the National Council having a vote among themselves to do this. Now I personally don’t care one way or the other whether the name is actually changed or not… It’s now November 2016 and even as far back as July we were already sick of the topic and we just want it over and done with. However what I do care about is I don’t think that it was in the spirit of the Pirate Party’s values. That is to basically sweep it under a rug as a way to resolve the question.

Frew did say that National Council would re-open the topic if there was enough interest (even though apparently this topic was locked after that decision was made but before the data loss incident, which kind of conflicts with that)

I was under the impression from the last National Congress that everyone in the National Council was committed to taking the question to vote “As Soon As Possible” as the way of resolving it.

A lot of people have put a lot of effort into the topic for it just to go away. The way I see it is that despite who proposed it, it was already “formally proposed” in an official capacity at the time and the current National Council has an obligation to follow through with the directives of the previous one, and what was discussed at the National Congress, and this issue is compounded by how involved the members were in this directly.

I had been less active in the party since the National Congress because I had [incorrectly] assumed that the National Council had been too busy in getting things up and running to get up to doing the formal vote (and also memberdb… which apparently has also stalled), so I didn’t want to bother them with anything else. I am guessing that other Pirates are doing the same not because they don’t want to participate if it’s not in a lead up to an election, but because they were giving space on this issue and waiting for the party to engage them into participation.

Yes I get it that it’s a difficult topic with many members being here in the Pirate Party first place because they love the name and the direct connection in the name to Pirate Party International, and some would leave over a change of name (and some have been thin skinned enough to leave over the very discussion of a change of name, even though open discussions on all topics is what makes us great), but at the end of the day we need to self-determine our future as a party democratically.

It’s like an election (AU/Brexit/US, it’s all been close) where roughly a little bit less than 50% of the voters are EXTREMELY pissed off the outcome because they didn’t get the one they wanted, but at the end of the day that’s what MOST people wanted, and that’s how a democracy works and not everyone can be happy.

If this proposal does finally end up going to vote one day, the would be done using the optional preferential Schulze method which is as fair as you can practically get to determine the true will of the member base to determine which name would please most people. And even if the winning vote is for another name, there would need to be a second (national congress) and third (whole membership) rounds of voting to actually make that name official… so there’s no risk that a single vote would just change the party’s name so easily.

The main reason I would like a vote to still go ahead for the main reason that the cat’s already out of the bag, it’s already been discussed, and if we don’t act now then the topic could resurface again in the future, and it would be far more damaging to our reputation if it happened at an inopportune time. Let’s do it now while we haven’t got any elections coming up soon, and even we voted to keep the name this time the topic was to come up again, we could say “Well look back to 2016 when we ran a vote and most people wanted to keep the name”.

I guess now that I’ve cleared that up, if nobody else continues with this topic after this I guess we can assume that the National Council is right and there isn’t enough interest to move forward but the topic should at least be kept open.

Points to perhaps consider:

  • Children

  • 15 yr plan

  • 30 yr plan

Also, consensus as a topic itself, though pioneering work on the method, may need continuous scholarship.Simple add 1% vote every year of active membership is also a thing. Perhaps.

Here’s something, decentralised Prediction Markets - https://www.augur.net/ ( This is not a plug )

Essentially the wisdom of the crowds. What do you ‘feel’ about a topic, approval rating, trending etc? How is one invested? Is no money a bad thing? Professional money management.

Also taking a stance with named commercial products, like Xero accounting, or something ( with a strict emphasis on data export and vendor mgmt ). Or waiting to write the whole thing from scratch ( I vote meh ).

meta political party
meta NFP
polly’s/journalist/smb non political career intersection.
zero liability legal agreements with and for all involved. diy is always a strong fallback option.
hourly contract party work with mix and match of dough / volunteer cred / shares.
learn computers
official divergent viewpoints ratio ( nothing known as crossing the floor )
continuous engagement with other parties ( on philosophical grounds )
run as SMB ( allows voting and non voting shares on top matters ). Different process for ongoings.
funding. Demographic Targeted ( not individual ) Internet Advertising. We don’t want your vote. We want your mandate. your participation.
lack of emphasis on non-scalable field work.
Second life community?

Get your digits stamped.

Decision making and acting without the electoral process impeding it.

Shameless

No we didn’t. Some of us (if not all) have made our opinions publicly known one way or the other, but there was never an NC exclusive vote to kill off the whole thing. What we may have done, unofficially, was let the member base discuss it amongst themselves to come up with a convincing alternative that struck a cord, but such an alternative never came to fruition, so it was not further pursued.

Again, didn’t happen.

I’m sorry that we gave you this impression. I’m more inclined to suggest there’s been a misunderstanding.

I won’t quote or say anymore, as I’ll otherwise be repeating myself.

Technically correct, but we did discuss holding the vote and everyone, other than me, wanted to hold off until after the Icelandic election.

From the minutes:

Consensus is to leave everything until after the Icelandic election
Simon Frew would prefer to kill the debate completely

I wanted to kill it by having the vote and therefore put an end to the debate for a long time. That was what the discussion at Congress seemed to land on, although the minutes for that particular discussion weren’t taken.

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This isn’t quite accurate either. The person who started the thread here and made the initial name change proposal at the last Congress has deleted/deactivated all his old accounts in conjunction with his resignation. This is fine and entirely his decision, of course, but it also means that there are technical issues with the thread that can only be overridden by the discourse software administrator (and if I recall correctly the former member in question also had an admin account).

Anyway, I’m in the pro-pirate name camp; I don’t really care if there’s a vote or not, but if there is I’ll be voting to keep the name.

Just throwing it out there, do we really want to distance ourselves from a name that’s doing so well internationally? ie Iceland?

Iceland is relevant for precisely as long as they get (positive) coverage here. ‘Pirate’ in Icelandic is an import word, if I recall previous discussions correctly. Just because a name is working overseas doesn’t mean it’ll work here.

That is true although I would be reluctant to change the name if success in Europe does get a lot of coverage here.

The coverage and electoral success in Iceland is what tipped me over the line to finally join PPAU. I had voted for the party previously and had thought of joining earlier.

Frankly, I was a little worried to find on joining that the red-hot discussion thread concerned a name change. Reassuringly, It appears that the proposal may have drifted off; I do hope so.

Party names assume meaning from the policies, actions and culture of the party. From the actions of the party worldwide to date, I associate the Pirate Party ‘brand’ with ethical, responsible and thoughtful social policy and action. That’s why I joined.

The Labor and Liberal brands provide stark example of how hollow and valueless a party name becomes when a party loses its policy heart.

Its not a red hot discussion. Its 3 people not letting it go, despite fact there are many parties not called Pirate Party they can join.

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Yeah this thread has been dragging on for ages. The OP actually closed this thread when he resigned from the Party quite a while ago, it has only been open again because of the forum loss incident (Forum data loss incident).

There is no formal proposal to rename the Party at this point in time. If members wish to continue the discussion on renaming the Party they’ll need to come up with a new proposal in a new thread, this one has had its time (closing).

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