Formal proposal to rename the Pirate Party by 2018

[Frew]

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.

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.

[Ben (Ben McGinnes)]

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)

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.

[Emily]

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

[alexjago]

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.

[Emily]

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

[nick (Nick Fahey)]

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.

[edeity]

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.

[rundll (Tom Randle)]

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).