I like Annexia. Would it present any obstacle that Burroughs is still under copyright?
5 Likes
I suggest “Mutandine.”
Is that so wrong?
No, but there could be a mutandi.ne, mutandine.silk, mutandine.show or… OK I’ll stop for now
3 Likes
How about Eligius? (But I like my previous idea much better)
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Here’s my thinking:
What’s the demographic we want to encapsulate? Basically we’re geeks of one sort or another, right?
But just going with Geeksville or something is too dumb and literal, of course. It has to be a reference of some sort to have any cred.
But we comprise pretty much every flavour of geek; what sort of reference would cut across every subcategory…?
Then it hit me - Douglas Adams.
We need a Douglas Adams reference. Failing that, Pratchett.
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I disagree.
I feel any reference to a specific domain ties this forum to that reference- so if we were to use Adams (and I do like Adams…), we look like an Adams-centric board.
It’s my feeling that the board needs to have it’s own identity (in as much as is possible) unattached to those things around us.
Said another way: I don’t want to define ourselves as what we’re from (boing or otherwise), and I don’t want to define ourselves via reference to established “brands”.
my $0.02
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I disagree. For the very reason I proposed Adams - he cuts across virtually every category of geek.
And get a load of this - I just went to another thread, and the first thing I saw was this:
Beware of leopard. There you go.
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If not, then I guess gniobgniob is right out.
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I used to hang out on a board called Atomic, and they had a splinter group… Otamic.
1 Like
Adams doesn’t come close to cutting across “every category of geek”. He’s popular with a particular group of people, but there are many, many people who should feel welcome here that will never have picked up a book by Adams.
Adams is sci-fi, and a fairly specific type at that. I (hope) this board isn’t just about that flavor of things, because there are many other fascinating and worthwhile flavors to sample.
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I agree.
GoingGoingGone
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.
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is a an example of the sort of thing we should strictly avoid, IMO. Any wink or snarky reference to the Olde Blog is going to look silly in two years’ time. Let’s come up with something uniquely our own, and broad enough to contain multitudes… There are enough creative people here to make that happen.
13 Likes
I’d like to wait a little bit to vote. I feel like things are percolating. I’m not too worried about a cease and desist. We can just cease and desist if we get such a letter.
I feel like ideas are brewing.
I don’t want mutants in the name. I want an identity that does not refer to BoingBoing though rebel or underground stuff appeals.
16 Likes
What, like the Cafe at the end of the world? The towel enthusiasts? The Rag Flags?
1 Like
Brogdinab, after the gray too swarm in Doctorow and Rosenbaum’s True Names?
I’ve started thinking of this as The Other Place, although it looks like that domain’s already been taken
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That having been said, some of my favorite posts were departures from sci-fi and tech issues, like Mark Dery’s article on Victorian post-mortem photography.
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I want to make the case one more time for “hieroglyphics” because it occurs to me that not only does the word itself inspire curiosity, but that it also juxtaposes the concepts of both “word” and “picture” (in much the same way that the TimeWarner logo is a mashup of an ear and an eye). It would represent the same naming strategy as Medium, which is also a contributor-driven site with a techie audience; it refers to communication in a way that allows for a broad range of topics, without resorting to a boring/generic moniker (“writerplace.com”).
Arthur Machen, a forerunner of Lovecraft, used it as the title of a book of literary criticism where he defines art as that which evokes a feeling of “ecstacy,” or “withdrawal from the common life.”
I like Numbers Station for similar reasons; it references communication, but in an intriguing way. “This is a site where people share ideas…but also, those ideas are actually interesting.”
And if neither of those quite hit the target, it seems worthwhile to continue thinking in that direction.
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Free Mutants?
Liberté, Égalité, Mutation
Though I do like that idea too.
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I’ve got an interim plan to work around my unfortunate naming choice.
I’ve got some backend work to do first, but I’ll provide some more details later this evening.
Keep working on names. Take the time to make it right. I’ll take care of the potential dark cloud looming.
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I was going to say that I fully support everything @nothingfuture and @ChickieD said. Seriously, we should really be our own thing. We are awesome. We may have met at BB during certain phases of awesomeness that it has exhibited. But as we know, we became the draw; at least for those of us who are here and reading this thread 
BUT
The last time I read HHGTTG was '87 (actually, listened to books on tape while I applied polyurethane to my godmother’s fence. In Nashville. In July) which means I was twelve. But, I’ve gotta say, if we can get something like cafeattheendoftheworld.org, I could really get behind that, since it works in the sense of “cafe society” and enlightenment salons, plus a certain learned, cynical outlook or prediction for our collective world fate. This would be valid irrespective of whether the user understands the Adams reference.
I have my own suggestion, too, but I’ll post it separately since voting with likes is easiest and that way it’s unambiguous which idea the likes support.
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