Vote on New Site Name
A couple of days ago we solicited names from you and other freedom fighters to potentially use on the new post-Bureaucrash website. And you responded. As you can tell from the comments section there, where name suggestions were left, we received a lot of submissions. We took some time to narrow down that list, removing those that were explicitly anarchist — as we want the site to be welcoming to non-anarchists — and those for which the domains were already held by others.
Also, you’ll see that you’re able to not just choose your favorite name or your top three names but indicate whether you like or dislike each name. That’s because we’re using approval voting, which will allow us a community to decide upon the best name together.
So, please let us know our thoughts on the new sites name and feel free to pass this post to those in your sphere. Note that this poll will close at noon EST this Friday, June 12th.
ABC ACTION (After Bureaucrash) 
June 10, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Some good names in there. Just taken the poll, now I sit back and wait.
June 10, 2009 at 1:25 pm
[…] https://abcaction.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/vote/ […]
June 10, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Have you checked to make sure that pple cannot vote multiple times by either using different browsers or removing cookies. It happens (you really need to check the IP of each vote to make sure). Then again I guess we should believe in the honor principle.
June 10, 2009 at 3:10 pm
i dont like the enforcement one, it implies force, and the ungoverned implies chaos and no order.
June 10, 2009 at 7:31 pm
I kinda like the enforcement one too. It implies that we aren’t gonna take any more shiznit from the system.
June 10, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Maybe I’m just partial to mixing words with numbers, but I think Free4all has a better visual effect.
June 11, 2009 at 12:02 am
I expect people will play fair, but I did notice that I could have voted twice by using my Safari browser after I had already voted using Firefox.
I liked a handful of these names, but none as much as Bureaucrash :’-(. Hopefully the winner will grow on me over time.
June 11, 2009 at 12:29 am
@modelmotion: The surveymonkey system is set up for this poll such that it will silently ignore votes that seem to come from the same individual, and count only the first one. This is enforced via a combination of cookie tagging and a one-vote-per-IP policy. We tested this.
June 11, 2009 at 1:00 am
Not a fan of any of the options :(
June 11, 2009 at 1:26 am
I really dislike voting as a way of taking choices. I’ve written extensively on the topic here: http://indomitus.net/madnessofvoting.html
In your poll, which fraudulently purports to represent the choices suggested on the earlier thread, you have the problem of pre-qualified choices. You’ve ignored a bunch of the choices, evidently deliberately and maliciously.
For example, Xaq Fixx suggested several names involving Amagi and Agora. I concurred on Amagi and several others did, as well. Comments are now closed on that thread. Perhaps you’ll also take the time to delete that thread so we can’t be sure what was suggested. I would not be surprised.
One of the obvious choices not included was “none of these choices.” MHD Junkie says he isn’t a fan of any of the options. Presumably he voted to dislike them all. I’m not sure how that works in “approval” voting.
I am quite certain that I don’t like to see the pretense of asking people to review the choices only to find that many of the choices have been left off. I assume this means that some animals are more equal than others. Four legs good, two legs bad?
June 11, 2009 at 3:36 am
jim, i also noticed that xaqq;s suggestions were3 absent, and i too liked them and mentioned it on the post where they were collecting names.
but they still have some god ones worth voting for.
June 11, 2009 at 7:19 am
Noor Mehta and J. Nick Puglia have additional information. Apparently there was an exclusive elite group that held a Skype phone conversation to “narrow” the choices so that those of us who thought we were participating in a naming discussion could be disenfranchised. (The foolishness of trusting Skype’s proprietary encryption scheme seems worth mentioning. I regard Skype as “trust me” level security, not real privacy at all.)
Here are some of my thoughts that I posted to Noor’s profile on FB.
Right, so last night the important people got to vote first. Good to know. So after Bureaucrash was destroyed by unprincipled neo-cons, you guys decided that the name for the new group was too important to be left to the people you invited to suggest names. You pre-qualified the choices based on some determination that “A3” names (what does A3 mean?) were unacceptable. What a sham. Not a real election, just another fraud.
It is an interesting idea. So, the poll is not meant to reflect the views of those who contributed ideas for a new name. Rather, it is to cement one of the pre-qualified acceptable choices that the chosen few in their Skype discussion were willing to allow the rest of us to consider. How cheap. How disgusting. What a sorry sham of an “election.” Why not just pick a name amongst your elite few and tell us to like it or lump it?
Right. So, what was the point in soliciting ideas if the intention was to ignore most of the suggested new names? Why engage in a brainstorming activity and then deny people the option to choose for themselves what they want the group to be called? It seems like a shabby tactic. “Oh, we want the demographic of interested persons to think they … Read Morecan participate in how we run things, but we don’t want to give them too much input. We have to manipulate the election results to please our pre-conceived notions of what is acceptable.” Great. Push the group think button and eliminate broad chunks of effectiveness.
In other words, I regret very much having voted in the poll and having offered ideas in the brainstorming session. I was under the impression that participants were going to be encouraged to select from among all the suggested names. I did not realise that the fallacy of pre-qualified offerings was going to be used to eliminate our opinions before we got a chance to vote.
I am against voting as a method for taking choices, which I discuss at some length here:
http://indomitus.net/madnessofvoting.html
It should be clear from my comments that I find this distortion of the process very upsetting. I am unclear what role I could possibly have in an organisation that is run by an insider clique. I have elsewhere written extensively against the insider clique running the LP.
Group think is the process of deliberately ignoring or marginalising opinions from outside the core group. It is an exceedingly dangerous process. Many people think it led to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
June 11, 2009 at 8:18 am
Like I mentioned in Facebook… The one name I chose was not on the list to be voted on either. I’m ok with that.
If Mike Gogulski says that the system is designed to combat fraud then I believe him.
June 11, 2009 at 8:22 am
I have no problem with the list being winnowed down to more or less popular reasonable names. Nor do I have a problem with people taking leadership roles in this new organization. After all, one can freely associate with this group or not.
June 11, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Yes. Let’s not be like the collectivist “anarchists” who equate all hierarchy and leadership with force.
June 11, 2009 at 9:36 pm
You mistake, or deliberately conflate, my concern about fraud with a concern about force. I don’t object to planning, leadership, or organisation.
Hierarchy is usually an excuse for “we don’t want to bother justifying our actions, so don’t try reasoning with us.”
Clearly, some of these animals in ABC Action are more equal than others. Four legs good, two legs bad.
June 11, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Indeed, and, thanks to this illustration of how ABC Action is to be like the LP headquarters insider clique, I won’t.
It is asinine to solicit names from the populous and then assert that an insider group can decide what is and is not allowed to be “popular.” The way that a market researcher would estimate popularity is by putting the names on a survey. A scientist would test for a trait like popularity by gathering data. To have an insider clique make off with most of the names suggested as unacceptable and pretend to inquire what people think of the rest is just asinine.
People are free to take and engage in leadership roles. Leadership, planning, and organisation are not athwart freedom, but support it. My expectation was for effectiveness, honesty, and candor.
To say, “You guys aren’t important enough to see the larger picture and realise that these twenty names cannot be included” would be candid, but to neglect to mention that there is an insider clique, entice suggestions from the group as a whole, and then cheat them, seems both poor marketing research, as well as ineffective leadership.
June 11, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Poor marketing, maybe. I’m willing to call it a mistake. But cheating, or fraud? Hell no. There was no exchange of property involved – only an invitation to participate which, in hindsight, was perhaps a bit vague.
There is also no insider clique, as there is no “organization” yet. Some people had an idea, asked for suggestions for the development of the idea, took some suggestions and did not take others, and are now asking for further suggestions.
You can feel left out if you want to, but to allege that those behind this idea have an obligation to include you is frankly silly.
June 12, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Where were you when people started this site? I mean, how dare people take initiative and leadership roles! To make things happen, people collaborate, collude. People were simply stepping up to the plate while you were waxing philosophical.
Maybe it’s just a bitterness that you weren’t part of the cook kids clique.
June 12, 2009 at 4:53 am
I don’t even know what amagi is, but I also noticd that they were absent from the list. I was never even part of bureaucrash. I’m part of the afterbureaucrash, at least for now. I don’t know if others feel the same way I do, but I was really looking forward in getting involved with a decentralized entity that could quickly and effectively advance the ideas of freedom. I await to see what develops, but won’t be holding my breath while this happens.
Be seeing you.
June 12, 2009 at 7:09 am
I wasn’t apart of bureaucrash either; in fact I only heard about it because of all the activity that has been going on. However, I am looking forward to participating in the future site. There seems to be quite a few people who are passionate about freedom and I for one have been looking for something that I can contribute too and learn from.
June 12, 2009 at 4:07 pm
In seeking discussion, activities, ideas, meet-ups, and friendship with people of like mind, I joined Bureaucrash several months ago. I quit a few days ago. A new social website for freedom-lovers and freedom seekers would be nice, but I don’t care what the name is, and I don’t care who runs the sight. I don’t care if we vote or don’t vote for what happens here. The main thing I would like is to keep out aggressive minarchists and ad-hominem arguments. I like having a moderated forum, but not too moderated.
Consensus is usually helpful. I agree that voting on important things is unwise – everyone here probably knows that. But voting on something trivial like a website name, well, the word “trivial” says it all. Words themselves are imperfect, so any name is going to be imperfect. Pursuit of perfection is a hindrance.
There are many paths to a suitable and satisfactory website. After a while, if I don’t like the content, I’ll be gone. But, I’m not looking for people who think exactly like I think, that would be a very small social group of One!
On BCS, there was much that I agreed with strongly, much that I agreed with partially, some that I disagreed with strongly. When the disagreeable quotient grew too large, it was time to leave. Same with any group, any relationship, or any social website / forum.
June 12, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Poll seems to be closed.
June 12, 2009 at 9:03 pm
Somehow I didn’t get the link to the poll until after it was closed, but that’s okay. I’m not big on voting, anyway. :-)
Just glad to have had the chance to put my opinion into the discussion.
June 13, 2009 at 2:08 am
I didn’t see the options I liked on the list, so I didn’t vote.
It does seem like a ripoff to ask people to offer names and not let people vote on the names we come up with. The discussion had some popular names not on the poll. So if several people said they liked a name, why leave it off? Sux.
June 13, 2009 at 4:42 pm
* Friday, midnight EST – new site launches
– what is the url of the new site?
June 14, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Seconded.
What is the new site?
June 14, 2009 at 1:35 pm
thirded
June 14, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Free Agents Network won. Fr33agents.com and all its related sites.
June 13, 2009 at 8:23 pm
How the hell did CEI get control of Bureaucrash. I did some research and found out the originaly CEI had no control over Bureaucrash. Was there a vote held by the members of Bureaucrash giving CEI control over Bureaucrash?
BTW if anyone is interested check out my blog sometime:
“Underdog Militia Report”
June 14, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Amagi Action Network
June 14, 2009 at 10:23 pm
“How the hell did CEI get control of Bureaucrash.”
Once upon a time, Bureaucrash’s “umbrella” was the Henry Hazlitt Foundation / FreeMarket.Net. Then Hazlitt/FMN went bankrupt (circa late 2002/early 2003), and the resources it fostered were moved to new sponsors.
I’m not sure how that process worked — whether HHF/FMN sold all of the resources to various new owners, or whether those involved in the resources in some cases simply sought new sponsorship. I suspect the latter, but know some of the former took place (for example, FMN’s domain name, “resource directory” and newsletter (Freedom News Daily), were sold to ISIL).
Anyway, CEI ended up as the sponsor/foster/umbrella/possibly funding mechanism for Bureaucrash after that.
June 20, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Not that I’m totally impressed, but this is more than I expected for when I found a link on Delicious telling that the info here is awesome. Thanks.
p.s. Year One is already on the Internet and you can watch it for free.
January 28, 2010 at 12:26 pm
This is my first time I visit here. I found so much interesting stuff in your post, especially its topics. From the scores of comments on your string, I guess I am not the only person having all the enjoyment here! Keep up the good work.
May 20, 2010 at 2:06 pm
I’m amused that you are considering Freedom Activist Network as your new name. I too changed our name to Freedom Activist Network 10 years ago because our original name Freedom Network was too generic, and too many other orgs using the same or similar name. Although I have no intellectual property claim to the name, you should consider the confusion choosing that name may cause. I don’t what name you did pick, I do recall seeing fr33agents when I searched on Freedom Activist Network.
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