In the Monday Message Board before last, I asked for suggestions for a possible name for this blog. When I started blogging, I didn’t really think too much about this. I knew I didn’t want to run a pseudonymous blog (disclaimer: some of my best friends are pseudonymous bloggers, or might be) so I just used my own name for the blog as well as when I signed my posts. But now I think a name for the blog might be a good idea. In addition, I’m interested in testing out polling plugins.
When I thought about it, my own idea for a name was “Honest disagreement”. It lacks the irony that most blognames seem to display, but it does give an idea of the kind of forum I hope to provide. Of the many suggestions by commenters, the two I liked best were “QED” and “Quog”. And of course, there’s the option, favored by at least some, of sticking to the existing name.
So, here’s my poll. The usual caveats apply. The results do not represent a scientific sample of anything and I am not bound to pay any attention to them if I don’t feel like it.
You must turn on JavaScript to view the PulsePoll. For tech support: co-laboratory
John Quiggin 
I am distressed you’re using such an unAustralian beast as first past the post.
Don’t jump to conclusions. I’m considering a runoff, which is equivalent to preferential voting.
Do you want us to vote on what style of tie you should wear as well? The name is an expression of you, and your choice alone.
Having said that, I must say ‘Quog’ is truly awful: unimaginative, bland, and charmless. You will regret it the morning after if it gets up. One vote, one value is generally a good principle, and I don’t propose to cheat, but surely intensity of feeling counts a little.
It looks like the conservative, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” vote is buoyant John!
“Quog” sounds like a character from “A Clockwork Orange” or maybe an alien life form encountered by Dr Who…..and “Quiggers” would be a bit too G&T…
speaking as a conservative laeve it as it is.
Why do youy need a name for the site anyway?
If you rename your blog think about search engines.
If someone is looking for you or your blog will they be able to find it easily using Google?
Will you attract unwanted traffic from people who are looking for something else?
I think QED captures Quiggers’ form quite well … but must say, a few other options could have been considered …
quog-mire…you get stuck here reading for days…
so go for quog…
(i hope my name isnt too ironic…im over cheap irony)
I’m a blogger. I like jumping to conclusions. And I’m an STVDB. I also recognise there are no preferential poll sites around.
QED would give horrible results in any search engine. Quogmire would be good.
LOL James. Doesn’t preferential voting, which PrQ has intimated he might implement in a runoff (second comment above), take account of intensity of feeling?
PrQ, unlike Homer I’m not a conservative but I don’t believe in change for the sake of it and in this case, none of the change possibilities selected for voting are as good as the current title. So my preferential vote is:
1 John Quiggin
2 Honest disagreement
In support of James’s lead that it really is entirely your call, the best of the rest is clearly ‘Honest disagreement’ as it comes closest to a description of what you want to achieve in the discussion. And it has a certain appeal of ‘plainness’ that grows on you. However, this title doesn’t refer to the point of honest disagreement in ongoing discussion, which as I see it is the objective of nutting-out consensus theory to go on with while further truths are sought.
Unfortunately, the discussion process more usually gets quagmired in dogged defence of established trenches. (By the way, ‘mired’ in the title is not terribly desirable as it suggests there is little or nothing of value in the content, or that the participants are all the proverbial metaphorical ‘pigs’, whereas in fact most of the discussion has great amusement or information value)
Everyone’s probably expended their creativity for the moment, but perhaps you could put the name-change proposal on the shelf to age for a while and make another call next year for variations, both poetic and descriptive, on ‘Honest disagreement’? It’s a legitimate procedure when considering such momentous change! Look how many competitions for a new Australian flag we’ve had!
I reckon Quiggin itself is such a great name you don’t need a quirky pseudonym, so I’m voting conservative just this once.
How about Quigginometrics?
Quiggnominy?
Otherwise, I like QED (I don’t see the problem with getting “false positive” search engine referrals, at least in this context).
In terms of polls, isn’t it customary (as for writing multiple choice test questions) to have one outrageous and/or in-joke option? E.g.: “The economist who thinks that The Economist is for liberal wimps”
As I believe I may have said before, when you have a well-established blog such as this that has been going on as long as this one has, unless you’re planning a major change of identity for the blog then leave the name as it is. Admittedly I didn’t start mine with the name Hot Buttered Death, but I changed it very early in its life when it had yet to be discovered by anyone…
I finally found some pictures of Professor Challenger. I detected no enthusiasm for this suggestion as a name for the blog. Nonetheless, the picture with the umbrella would make a particularly good motif for your new ‘visual image’.
Maybe this will work.