25 ms·

Wikipedia had wrong Vatican flag for years – now incorrect flags are everywhere

359 points by axelfontaine 3y ago

fatfox 3y ago
I bet there’s a special place in hell for that Wikipedia editor. :>
- bob_theslob646 3y ago
  This was quite funny. Thank you for the laugh =)
- usernew 3y ago
  There's a special place in hell for the Vatican. Pedo gay sex galore aside, the entire multi-billion dollar scammer organization, is disgusting. Went to visit while flying through. There's a long line in the square, it's sun-baking weather outside. They have the little roof-covered column things on the side, but the line is in the middle. No little tents over the line area - go ahead and stand there for 3 hours, at the zenith, in the middle of summer. Well, burns and skin cancer, like tears inside the butt, bring you closer to god, as mother teresa always preached while on the scammin' trail, so all good - right? Nope, it's a sales tool. For a mere 300EUR you can bypass that line, and they have extremely rude and pushy sales people approach you multiple times as you suffer. I gave up after 10 minutes. I took a selfie at their post office, now have a better story to tell, and my man-man virginity preserved. Although I probably would have been safe inside there, as I am an adult. The special place in hell for that wiki editor, is called The Vatican. That whole area, the organization, and the people in it, are the definition of true and pure evil.
addaon 3y ago
One of looking at this is that European banners, coats of arms, etc, are traditionally defined in writing (often using a domain-specific language called a blazon), and then compiled to a visual form by a banner maker. This compilation is intended to be reversible -- one goal is to be able to look up the written form in a book of heraldry based on the visual appearance -- but, just like compiling code, is not a one-to-one process; the same blazon can result in various visual representations, and which one is selected is often an aesthetic consideration. Not speaking Italian, and not having done the historical digging, I don't know the original written definition of the Vatican flag, but it looks like it's something like "banner divided in yellow (towards the flagpole) and white, with the white part centered with the crossed keys surmounted by the tiara," where the "crossed keys" and "tiara" are imports of external symbology. In this case, the question concerns the tiara [1] -- which, like most physical tiaras, has a hole running through it that appears neither red nor white when viewed as it is represented on the flag. While it is certainly reasonable for the Vatican to have preferences on the detailed representation of this flag, both as-drawn versions are faithful representations of the blazon, both allow looking up the blazon from the visual representation, and both are, frankly, fine. [1] https://www.vatican.va/news_services/press/documentazione/documents/sp_ss_scv/insigne/triregno_en.html https://www.vatican.va/news_services/press/documentazione/do...
- melagonster 3y ago
  wow, this is very interesting, I never heard to this before.
- maratc 3y ago
  While widely used symbols like “eagle displayed” or “lion passant guardant” are really well defined, the more you get to the esoteric stuff the more you find there are really no standards. Try “importing” such thing as “octopus proper”. Heraldically speaking, it really makes no difference, as nobody would mistake the “wrong” flag of Vatican to represent some completely different entity. But TLA is not implying that — just asking for some more standardization of a widely-used symbol.
  - dehrmann 3y ago
    > nobody would mistake the “wrong” flag of Vatican to represent some completely different entity Compare that to Australia and New Zealand. If you don't know what do look for and aren't aware the other's out there, you could easily mix them up.
    - ytdytvhxgydvhh 3y ago
      NZ came pretty close to changing to an original flag but ended up sticking with that “we’re not Australia, really” flag: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015–2016_New_Zealand_flag_referendums https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015–2016_New_Zealand_flag_r...
      - lostlogin 3y ago
        That man’s vanity project and the shitty options on offer is what scuppered that, not the quality of the existing flag. I never thought an opportunity to show Laser Kiwi would come up here. https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/fire-lazar https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/fire-lazar
    - CoastalCoder 3y ago
      Playing "Legion TD2" had been great for my recognition of national flags. Every game I see up to 3 other flags for the other players, and the country name is shown on mouse-over. It even taught me of the existence a country I'd never heard of before.
mistrial9 3y ago
Holy Roman Empire really doted on those heraldic signs, with England and a few others, too. In German, the word for the heraldry banner is "waffen" which is the same word for actual weapons. In English, to say "Coat of Arms" says the same thing, if I understand it.
- maratc 3y ago
  “Arms” has the same two meanings as in German (see e.g. the College of Arms — hint: it’s not a place where they teach weaponry). “Coat” in this context refers to the actual coat worn by heralds representing the sovereign. The modern word for that outfit is “tabard” I believe.
- ttepasse 3y ago
  The german word for coat of arms is „Wappen“. Etymologically that word is descended from „Waffen“, although the difference happened in the high middle ages.
- bewaretheirs 3y ago
  That's because originally they were arms - it's how combatants would identify who was who on the battlefield based on what was painted on their shield and helmet.
chungy 3y ago
Wikipedia is too often the final source of truth for people. While I'm not saying it's intentionally wrong very often, but accidental wrongs get repeated elsewhere. It happens especially with things like the Vatican flag ("Surely Wikipedians haven't fabricated some alternate version?"). Another example: The Windows Me logo (yes, seriously). At the bottom of the stylized "Me" are the words "Millennium Edition"; Wikipedians like to recreate logos into vector format. Unfortunately, someone had misspelled those words to say "Millenium Edition" instead. I personally fixed that image, but I still see the misspelled version crop up from time to time in articles, YouTube videos, etc (how are they still getting the wrong version? I don't know...).
- MortimerDukePhD 3y ago
  I'd be willing to wager there's an endless discussion on the Talk page about this, where someone is arguing that the Vatican is wrong about their own flag, and they should be the ones to change.
- conradfr 3y ago
  I've been on a forum where from time to time we would put harmless wrong infos in Wikipedia pages, mostly from inside jokes. Few remain but at least one that is still there is now in multiple articles and actual books.
  - sitkack 3y ago
    Absolve your sins!
- cm2187 3y ago
  This is of the level of Ron Burgundy and his teleprompter.
- Kwpolska 3y ago
  The fourth hit on Google Images for "Windows ME" (at least over here) is this misspelled version: https://www.betaarchive.com/wiki/index.php?title=File:Windows_ME_Logo.png https://www.betaarchive.com/wiki/index.php?title=File:Window...
yongjik 3y ago
It becomes worse as you move further away from Anglosphere: according to Wikipedia the ancient Korean kingdom of Goguryeo has a forked red/yellow flag, but AFAIK that's total fabrication, based on a single mention in the record that said "Some troops of Goguryeo used red flags." If I were still in my 20s I might have fought Wikilawyers on this. Now I'm old and I have enough shit to take care of. :/
- slacka 3y ago
  Did you find sources and make the edit? Or just assume it would be rejected? In my experience, the vast majority of my edits were accepted when properly sourced, especially on esoteric topics like this. Yes, there are exceptions and bad apples in the community. Those get a all the attention and media coverage but I've only encountered them on heavily edited and visited pages, not the more rare academic or historic pages. While it's anecdotal, I just checked and I've clocked nearly 800 edits in the past decade.
  - yongjik 3y ago
    Who knows? Maybe the edit will stay, maybe it won't, but the very fact that the flag has been staying for years doesn't bode well for my effort. There are millions of Koreans who can write passable English: if it were that easy to remove the flag, someone would have done it.
    - kemayo 3y ago
      I suspect there's a much smaller number who affirmatively know that there's not a specific flag for a kingdom that ceased to exist 1,335 years ago. Particularly since the article presents both a pure red flag and the red/yellow flag and claims they were used at different times. Thus I'd imagine that of the small number of people intimately familiar with Korean history who even noticed, very few could say with sufficient certainty that the flag was never used. (For that matter, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Korean_flags https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Korean_flags has a third variant...)
  - wolverine876 3y ago
SoftTalker 3y ago
Now read up on Gell-Mann amnesia, and ask yourself if you should really trust anything on Wikipedia.
- madars 3y ago
  Exactly. Aside, I don't think we can predict the full scale effects of LLMs for citogenesis https://xkcd.com/978/ https://xkcd.com/978/
- thih9 3y ago
  Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect ;)
  - cm2187 3y ago
    It used to have its own wiki article which was downgraded as the result of the lack of reputable newspapers making references to the Gell-Mann effect. Like if newspapers would ever push that concept in their columns...
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- kibwen 3y ago
  Wikipedia itself says you shouldn't trust anything on Wikipedia, a statement which, of course, you shouldn't trust: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_disclaimer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_disclaimer
ldehaan 3y ago
Wikipedia is trash, always has been. A small group of fanatics run that site and only allow information they deem acceptable. Using their information has always been a bad idea.
shlubbert 3y ago
A similar scourge of mine is Wikipedia contributors helpfully "tracing" company logos so they can be uploaded as vector graphics (great in theory!) but introducing all kinds of mistakes in the process or using the wrong fonts... also causing the wrong logos to spread all over the internet.
- dheera 3y ago
  That's the punishment companies get for not providing their official logos for download in an easy format without fuss. If you have a startup, have a "media kit" page with all of this stuff. Logos for black and white backgrounds in open vector and raster formats, founder photos, bios, company intros, product photos, video clips of your product that you're okay with media cutting up and using.
  - kevinmchugh 3y ago
    If you want it to be usable on Wikipedia, how do you assign the IP?
    - amenghra 3y ago
      Wikipedia lets you specify the license. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#/media/File:Tux.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#/media/File:Tux.svg has three permission details, including Creative Commons CC0 1.0.
    - someotherperson 3y ago
      A lot of companies release press kits for proper usage of their logos without necessarily transferring the IP. I imagine in a lot of cases (including Wikipedia) it falls under fair use -- ultimately the logo is still trademarked.
    - wizzwizz4 3y ago
      Release it under a CC 4.0 license. Section 2b2: > Patent and trademark rights are not licensed under this Public License.
    - 3y ago
cxy7z 3y ago
I was hoping they'd say that the incorrect version had made it so far as to be shown by the Vatican itself.
- cshimmin 3y ago
  Well the article does show a photo of the wrong flag flying at (or very near to) the vatican. TBH I think the incorrect design looks better! But I suppose that's beside the point...
SrslyJosh 3y ago
[flagged]
Prickle 3y ago
edit: For whatever reason, my computer is rendering the wrong shade of yellow. You can see the previous edit/revert war that was happening on the image itself here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_Vatican_City.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_Vatican_... Previous text: ->Unfortunately, the correction to the flag has been reverted, and the vatican flag on wikipedia is now incorrect. Again.<-
- mjg59 3y ago
  Wikipedia currently shows me the version with the white disk in the papal tiara, which the article asserts is the correct one. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_Vatican_City.svg#filehistory https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_Vatican_... suggests it's been that way since the 1st of January this year.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- silisili 3y ago
  Your first link shows the correct flag for me, FWIW.
- lolinder 3y ago
  I see the correct one, and it hasn't changed since 1 January. Regardless, that edit history is interesting because it suggests that the mistake (if it is one) goes back way further than Wikipedia. The very first upload (24 Nov 2005) had the red tiara, and was added with this comment: > Flag of the Vatican City from the [http://openclipart.org/ http://openclipart.org/ Open Clip Art] website. {{PD-OpenClipart}} Category:SVG flags
  - Prickle 3y ago
    Turn out I am just blind and had the wrong hue of yellow in mind. But yes, it's quite interesting to watch some of the flag pages. Vexillologists constantly fighting over the correct flag. One of the recent ones fixed was the Imperial Japanese flag. Watching that flag flip flop between 4 or 5 different iterations was amusing, to say the least.
ricardobeat 3y ago
To be fair, the wrong version is just a recolor and is more visually pleasing. The “red disk” is the inside of the tiara and makes the 3D shape more recognizable than the white version.
nologic01 3y ago
This raises deep philosophical questions about the nature of truth as it pertains to flags in particular. If everybody is using the wrong flag in real life (well, ok, online) while the correct flag is merely a blueprint, a shadow projected inside Plato's cave, what is true and what is wrong?
- stevezsa8 3y ago
  I think this was a very specific case of someone editing an image and introducing a mistake. Experts knew what the real flag should look like. For example, if the name on my birth certificate is Steve but my forgetful friends keep calling me Bob, my actual true name does not change regardless of how many people say my name wrong.
hexo 3y ago
Mmmm, the Prime Example of color space hell. I'd bet these people never seen it correctly on monitor since I don't think any single of them ever had calibrated display (if i'm wrong i apologize). Pointless and priceless until it gets serious and then, wait for it, printed! Which is whole another step of brain-melting-difficulty in getting it correct. (wikipedia reverters [in this scenario] are) Laughable at least, thanks, made my day. The difference in versions from 2014 (compared to later ones) is completely hilarious. Enjoy while you can!
bertil 3y ago
I’m really surprised that Father Becker thinks this is a meaningful difference. I’m as detail-oriented as it gets, but symbols on flags and coats of arms are a notoriously hard thing to get “right” and I’m not sure they should. Noble houses had lions, dolphins, elephants, and unicorns on their coat of arms at a time when people (bored monks who never left their monastery) drew them like a confused alcoholic toddler, a dried-out octopus, a Shar-Pei with a snake for a nose, and nothing like a rhinoceros, respectively. (The last one was never really fixed and we stole the horn of a narwhal and made up a whole imaginary animal rather than admit we got it wrong. Still pissed that Scotland doesn’t have rhinoceros as a symbol because it would suit their nightlife so much better than a unicorn.) This was so bad that people, at least those who cared about heraldry, had to agree that the difference between a lion and a leopard was that one was looking straight at the viewer and the other looked right (which famously is left because of how shields work). This long introduction to say: Symbols have to be recognizable, but their specific design isn’t part of what makes a flag a flag. Yesterday, someone asked r/vexillology which one among 10(!) was the proper flag for the Isle of Man. If you haven’t seen it, it’s red (gules) with the symbol of the island, the triskele: “three legs in armour flexed at the knee and conjoined at the thigh, all proper, garnished and spurred”. I can’t imagine a more specific description, and yet: 10 different armours, feet extension, spurs… All valid, all different. Anyone who cares about medieval armours will tell you: the complexity of protecting a fighter in battle with 15th-century forging techniques makes vexillologists look like children playing with Duplo bricks in comparison. We are never getting a photo-exact triskele, not without going beyond what that symbol is meant to be: recognizable. This hits personally because my family colours are extremely simple but impossible to draw: it’s “silver (white) with a brewer’s pole.” Sound simple? Yeah, if anyone knew what a brewer pole is meant to look like. I won’t bore you with emails with my uncles, but let’s say there’s a new version every time anyone responds. We’ve seen anything from a club, a broom, a rake to something that is best described as an old-school TV antenna. I think some creative license is welcome in that case. Since Pope Francis has rejected the heavy triple crown for a more symbolic tiara (a silver mitre with three connected golden lines, like this: 王). It makes sense that the flag has adapted, and some flags and some coats of arms in Rome have that design. But that (much bigger and symbolically enormous) inconsistency isn’t raised by Father Becker, who prefers to point out that, while every Papal vestment is coated in white, while personal effects are velveted in red, as the tiara is part of a sacrament… Sure, technically true, but this is a conversation about papal underwear——literally. More generally the design of the keys, the flowing of the stole even the motif embroidered on it, all can be adapted without betraying who the Pope is. The only real things that matter are: having three crowns (or a liturgical equivalent) and that the two keys are of different colours. For example, I’ve even seen one very committed designer change the colour of the stole based on the liturgical calendar (for the miscreants who are inexplicably still reading: stoles can be green, white, red, or purple, depending on the day or the occasion —— and nerds will add blue to that list). As absurd as the idea of a flag changing colour every day can seem, it makes sense. Can you imagine if the flag of your country had the tiniest difference if you were in mourning? The carpet in the Oval Office has the Great Seal of the United States: the Eagle with the start-spangled shield. Famously, the Eagle looks left, towards the olive branch, to symbolise the country’s historical preference for peace. There’s a rumour that the carpet has another version: one where the Eagle looks right, towards the arrows, and that the carpet can be switched if the country is at war. I like that idea. Wikipedia editors might not appreciate the extra work, but I think that nuances like those make symbols more powerful. We didn’t just send a carrier battle group to your shores, we switched the carpet. This is not an exercise. It’s not technically true says Snopes [0] but if West Wing, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill like the idea, who could possibly disagree? All that to say: you have the Great Seal in mind, right? Can you tell, without looking and with certainty, whether the nails of the talons (the “claws”) are yellow, black, or red? Would you consider that a mistake? Well, that article argues something similar and I’m not sure that it’s fair. I think we would be better served by an article asking if the Pope is king in Rome. [0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/presidential-seal-change-war/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/presidential-seal-change-w...
omnibrain 3y ago
When our local fire department got a new fire engine the manufacturer placed the coat of arms of the town on the door. But instead of getting it from the municipality they used a grotesquely wrong version from Wikipedia.
- stevezsa8 3y ago
  This is funny. I love how some people prefer internet searches to speaking with actual people for information.
10g1k 3y ago
Sadly, far too many internerds confuse a brief look at Wikipedia with actual knowledge.
zokier 3y ago
Just highlighting this twitter thread where people are finding all sorts of pre-wikipedia examples of Vatican flag, like this one from 1970: https://twitter.com/VinSlashLopez/status/1639478301885599745/photo/1 https://twitter.com/VinSlashLopez/status/1639478301885599745... So its obviously not just wikipedias invention, but a wider phenomenon.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  You are backing up Wikipedia's claim with Twitter evidence. Not even Wikipedia would accept that.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    You didn't even bother following the link to the Twitter thread. The photo of the Apollo 11 display shown in the thread was taken from Wikimedia Commons, uploaded in 2008 [0]. The other one, with Pope Benedict seated next to a red-tiara'd flag comes from archivio.quirinale.it, the official archives of the Italian presidency [1]. [0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Vatican_City_lunar_sample_display https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Vatican_City_lun... [1] https://archivio.quirinale.it/image-h/Ciampi/grandi_immagini_27375.jpg https://archivio.quirinale.it/image-h/Ciampi/grandi_immagini...
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - octernion 3y ago
        [flagged]
      - underratedbug 3y ago
        [flagged]
    - acqq 3y ago
      This one from the archives is from the October 1998 visit, more than 2 years before Wikipedia existed. https://twitter.com/scheeko/status/1639673883719618562 https://twitter.com/scheeko/status/1639673883719618562 It's one of the 139 images linked from here: https://archivio.quirinale.it/aspr/diari/EVENT-002-021416/presidente/oscar-luigi-scalfaro https://archivio.quirinale.it/aspr/diari/EVENT-002-021416/pr... Named: ASPR_SG-USC_09-SCALFARO_f2603_0094_ST.jpg On the right from the Pope John Paul II and the flag with the red detail is Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, the president of Italy from 1992 to 1999. Noted in that discussion by Francisco Feijó Delgado, @scheeko Mar 25, 2023.
lolinder 3y ago
This feels like the author jumped to the conclusion that Wikipedia was at fault because it's a common enough story and sounded good, but it doesn't add up. See addaon's comment for an explanation of why heraldry here isn't as cut-and-dry as we're used to for, say, the US flag. But even aside from that, the author neglected to check the full edit history on the Wikipedia file: the very first version of the flag (25 Nov 2005) had the red tiara that the article decries, citing Open Clip Art as the source [0]. That suggests the "wrong" version was already highly circulated before Wikipedia got the image. The caption on the main photo goes so far as to suggest that the Vatican itself is using Wikipedia as a source for printing its flags. Indeed, the UN has a photo of the flag of the Vatican shortly after it was raised there in 2015, and that flag has the red tiara [1]. It's hard to imagine the flag flown at the UN being done as a rush job from a Wikipedia article. It's a cute story, but it looks like the simpler truth is that the Vatican doesn't particularly care about the coloring of the tiara. EDIT: Kudos to zokier for finding a Twitter thread with more examples [2]. Apparently the flag taken to the moon and back by Apollo 11 had the red tiara. [0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Flag_of_the_Vatican_City.svg&offset=&limit=250 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Flag_of... [1] https://dam.media.un.org/asset-management/2AM9LO46AB5A?FR_=1&W=1920&H=947 https://dam.media.un.org/asset-management/2AM9LO46AB5A?FR_=1... [2] zokier's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36118232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36118232
- adhesive_wombat 3y ago
  > It's hard to imagine the flag flown at the UN being done as a rush job from a Wikipedia article. Maybe the UN has their buttons on, but at the Olympics, displaying the wrong flag, an incorrect flag or the right flag upside-down happens now and then.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    I imagine so, but in this instance the flag is a big stinking deal because the UN had just allowed the flags of Palestine and the Vatican (Observer States) to be flown for the very first time. This wasn't a case of "we've got to print out flags for every single country and fly them all at once", these two flags were given special attention. Also note my edit: the Twitter thread zokier found shows Benedict XVI seated next to a red-tiara'd flag in 2005, as well as the one that was sent to the moon in 1969.
x3874 3y ago
[flagged]
ummonk 3y ago
They also have a really wrong shade of saffron for the Indian flag, even though the Wiki article on the flag correctly specifies the colors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_India#Colours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_India#Colours Can't really blame them though, since the Indian government does the same. https://www.india.gov.in/india-glance/national-symbols https://www.india.gov.in/india-glance/national-symbols
- MayeulC 3y ago
  Seems like there is an edit war, or at least a discussion, on the file at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File_talk:Flag_of_India.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File_talk:Flag_of_India.s... I imagine the other will be changed once there is a consensus, but it seems they're having trouble getting a definitive answer from the government.
  - ummonk 3y ago
    Interesting - the Wikimedia Commons file is what I'd consider "correct", but the Wikipedia file that links to it is not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_India.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_India.svg I guess the edit war would need to be conclusively resolved before the Wikipedia page is update to reflect it? Wikipedia proceduralism is always confusing to me.
queuebert 3y ago
I think this is a well-played, long-term Vatican conspiracy to use internet virality to get the entire world to recognize its flag.
wolverine876 3y ago
Accuracy is hard. As with many things, the first 90% takes 10% of the time, the last 10% takes 90%. Wikipedia seems filled with <90% accurate information, which is misinformation (or BS). I could imagine an obvious reason, that these volunteers with limited expertise and facility with the information (i.e., they aren't experts in the field who know all the sources well) write what they know. Also, it is up to Wikipedia's standard de facto, and most people don't go beyond that norm. Instead of lots of people providing <90% accurate misinfo, we need a few people producing 99.999% accurate info. (Seriously, if you are producing <90% accurate info, stop. The Internet has infinite amounts of it, if there was ever a marginal benefit to it, we don't need more now.) It's easy to copy and share accurate info, in theory, rather than creating or sharing more BS. The other problem is that such info is often placed behind paywalls; the intellectual elite get it, but not the public. If you want an accurate science info, look at McGraw-Hill's AccessScience (the decendent of their leading Encyclopedia of Science and Technology), "written by world-renowned scientists, including 46 Nobel Prize Laureates" - not exactly Wikipedia. Unfortunately, you'll probably need an institutional subscriptioin. Who cares if high school kids (or anyone else) have accurate info?
- greenpeas 3y ago
  > the first 90% takes 10% of the time, the last 10% takes 90%. Is the second part of that statement necessary?
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    Yes. Of the last 10%, 5% could require 29% of the time, and 5% could require 61%.
jwie 3y ago
This sort of stuff is the natural consequence of the verifiability over truth approach Wikipedia has foolishly embraced.
ajsnigrutin 3y ago
I was expecting a much bigger difference in flags :/ But I do live in slovenia, and everyone mistakes us for slovakia anyways, and that includes our flags.
agumonkey 3y ago
the distributed asynchronous nature of information is fascinating
bombcar 3y ago
More importantly and amusingly the Vatican flag is square - [|] vs [ | ]. Your emoji viewer may render it wrong (check your flag section, iPhone gets it right) but don’t feel bad - most of the flags are incorrectly rectangle.
TheRealPomax 3y ago
On the one hand, yes, it's incorrect. On the other, claiming malicious intent is pretending the little flood fill is FAR more important than it really is. It's not the era of the crusades anymore, and realistically if this bothers anyone, the easiest solution is to just remove that flood fill from the official flag because a speck of red makes zero difference in recognizing a flag. We're not carrying them into war, and the Vatican sure as hell isn't funding any expeditions by the Doge of Venice to reclaim Jerusalem any time soon. It's like someone getting the font for "California Republic" on the California flag wrong: no one cares except the people who shouldn't.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Unofficial US flags use different blues and reds too
b33j0r 3y ago
I’m not taking a side on any issue at all, and definitely not this one! Just a funny observation about how something could go undetected on a wiki. I’ll go as far as a joke postulate: “For any given page on wikipedia, the people with the most personal experience (as distinct from ‘knowledge’) will be the least frequent visitors to that page.” Or as it was later to be summed up, “so… you thought doctors were the ones searching for ‘doctor’ on the internet?”
jeroenhd 3y ago
How is this Wikipedia's fault if the Vatican doesn't even make usable graphics of their own flag available? I suppose an ancient conservative institution like the Catholic Church failing to adapt to the internet isn't all that surprising, but you can hardly blame well-willing volunteers for the Vatican's lack of public information.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  The Catholic Church is like the Ents from LoTR.
masswerk 3y ago
Fun fact: This also happened with the Austro-Hungarian monarchy for some time, where the civil naval ensign was communicated as the flag, compare [0] and [1]. It can be still found on Amazon, etc, as "Austria-Hungary Flag". [0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Flag_of_Austria-Hungary.svg&redirect=no https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Flag_of... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Flags_of_Austria-Hungary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Flags_of_Austria-Hungary
akudha 3y ago
It is amusing that an entity as obscenely rich as the Vatican isn’t providing official high quality images of their own flag. Maybe it isn’t as important in the grand scheme of things?
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  Harvard's endowment is far larger than the monetary wealth of the Vatican.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > It is amusing that an entity as obscenely rich as the Vatican isn’t providing official high quality images of their own flag. The State of Vatican City wasn’t rich before most of its assets were stripped and transferred to the Holy See (which also isn’t all that rich.) The Catholic Church collectively has a lot of assets, but the vast majority of them aren’t controlled by the Holy See (and even less are controlled by the State of Vatican City), they belong to individual dioceses or religious communities. > Maybe it isn’t as important in the grand scheme of things? DINGDINGDINGDING
ed25519FUUU 3y ago
How is this not intentional? Is there some meaning with the additional red? I know Occam’s razor and all, but this is really suspicious to me.
ForOldHack 3y ago
Wikipedia had Brigham Young University listed as Michael Jackson's Alma mater for a year. The article on George Galloway, lists more lies and propaganda than a German speech, and they have NO plans to remove any of it. Wait until you see the article on the IBM PC. Wow. "Wikipedia was at fault." They are never at fault. They just host the largest collection of loud mouth opinionators on the planet: I have absolute an irritable proof: Hit random, until you find an article about, say... something you know about. Find the first error. Point it out in the talk section, and watch it get shot down.
- ForOldHack 3y ago
  From the talk page of George Galloway: " Currently the article stands as a detailed report of every accusation upon the person. The article should be shortened by removing allegations which have proven not true. The article gives much more focus to negative allegations than is normal for article on a person and reading it, portrays a negatively biased picture of the person. " clearly against their policy of bias, with nothing being done, except to bias it further.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  What happens when you just change the articles, and include a supporting citation? In the case of genuine errors, is there anybody actually arguing on the other side? I understand debates about whether or not things are worthy of inclusion (like unproved accusations), and there's a whole separate category of controversial viewpoints, but I've never come across meaningful pushback on unambiguous factual errors. You should just be able to fix things. I've certainly done so many times in the past, and I've never gotten anything "shot down" at all. In my experience, factual corrections get zero pushback because why would they? I don't really understand complaining that people aren't fixing errors on Wikipedia if you aren't fixing them yourself. Also, what are the dates that Brigham Young was added and then removed from the Michael Jackson article? Vandalism happens all the time but I'm pretty shocked that could stay up for a year. But I can't find any reference to it on the internet aside from your comment here, and WikiBlame isn't finding it either (looking up "Brigham" starting from Jan 2001 yields "Your search term was not found at all. Check the settings and try again." but maybe it's broken?)
nashashmi 3y ago
Here is a more detailed version of the flag. https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/highly-detailed-flag-of-vatican-city-holy-see-vatican-city-holy-see-flag-high-detail-gm1309831698-399425592 https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/highly-detailed-flag-of-va... This might be a flag variance problem. The heads of the keys have three different versions thus far in my search of images.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
marc_abonce 3y ago
There's a similar issue with the Mexican coat of arms in Wikipedia. The Wikipedia eagle has black claws and red eyes but the official one doesn't. [1][2][3] One time I tried to fix it but I don't know how to use Inkspace and it turned out to be trickier than it looks. I naïvely hoped I could just fix it with a bucket tool but it's not as simple, lol. [1] https://wrmx00.epimg.net/radio/imagenes/2019/09/16/nacional/1568635338_696229_1568635784_noticia_normal.jpg https://wrmx00.epimg.net/radio/imagenes/2019/09/16/nacional/... [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/03/EPN._Grito_de_Independencia_2.jpg/1800px-EPN._Grito_de_Independencia_2.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/03/EP... [3] https://diario.mx/jrz/media/uploads/galeria/2022/09/01/20220901101532796-0-1967521.jpg https://diario.mx/jrz/media/uploads/galeria/2022/09/01/20220...
- MayeulC 3y ago
  > I naïvely hoped I could just fix it with a bucket tool but it's not as simple, lol. It's way simpler than that: open it, click it; you'll see everything is selected, so it's grouped (also visible in the status bar that describes the selection). Double click to enter the group; now you can select the correct shape. Once you have selected the shape you want to change, you can change its color by using the color bar, or bring up the color selector (from the UI, background and outline, or Ctrl-Shift-F). However, I'd be cautious before modifying it. Do you have a better source than these for the colors? Ideally, in writing. I can see some red eyes and black claws (with a central gradient similar to the one on the prickly pears) on your [3], which is closest to the Wikimedia image. The other two images have different colors and shapes for a lot of elements, including the plants. There's another variant on that page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mexico_coat_of_arms.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mexico_coat_of_arms....
renewiltord 3y ago
Entirely wrong and hallucinated article. There's a flag in the Vatican Museum https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Moon_rocks_and_a_Vatican_flag_that_went_to_the_moon_and_back,_carried_on_Apollo_11_-_Vatican_Museums_-_DSC00762.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Moon_rocks_and_a_Vat... Many other photos. OP seems to have performed the common human error of confidently asserting wholly fabricated things: a thing that we call "hallucination".
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Apocryphon 3y ago
Major respect for Fra. Becker for hosting his site on Tripod.
meinersbur 3y ago
The article uses the USA flag as an example of how to precisely specify a flag, but the USA is one of the countries which does NOT define its flag in any precise manner, to the point that different US agencies use different flags (Most noticeably varying in color). https://youtu.be/BRNrrj03akw https://youtu.be/BRNrrj03akw ("This is the American Flag." by Tapakapa)
- encody 3y ago
  I don't know if you were trying to use it as a source for your claim, but the video you linked does describe and link to the exact textile color specification from the US government. http://everyspec.com/FED_SPECS/F/DDD-F-416F_49205/ http://everyspec.com/FED_SPECS/F/DDD-F-416F_49205/ I'm not a vexillologist, just watched the video, so idk.
  - meinersbur 3y ago
    For textiles, but not print or computer screens. Also, it is a GSA guideline for use by US government agencies themselves only (along with quality standards when the federal government purchases things from private vendors such as chocolate [1], but it does not define what can be sold as chocolate and what not, the FDA would define that [2]). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Specification_for_Candy_and_Chocolate_Confections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Specification_for_Cand... [2] https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/cpg-sec-515800-labeling-products-purporting-be-chocolate-or-chocolate-flavored https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidan...

359 points by axelfontaine 3y ago

fatfox 3y ago

I bet there’s a special place in hell for that Wikipedia editor. :>

bob_theslob646 3y ago
This was quite funny. Thank you for the laugh =)
usernew 3y ago
There's a special place in hell for the Vatican. Pedo gay sex galore aside, the entire multi-billion dollar scammer organization, is disgusting. Went to visit while flying through. There's a long line in the square, it's sun-baking weather outside. They have the little roof-covered column things on the side, but the line is in the middle. No little tents over the line area - go ahead and stand there for 3 hours, at the zenith, in the middle of summer. Well, burns and skin cancer, like tears inside the butt, bring you closer to god, as mother teresa always preached while on the scammin' trail, so all good - right? Nope, it's a sales tool. For a mere 300EUR you can bypass that line, and they have extremely rude and pushy sales people approach you multiple times as you suffer. I gave up after 10 minutes. I took a selfie at their post office, now have a better story to tell, and my man-man virginity preserved. Although I probably would have been safe inside there, as I am an adult. The special place in hell for that wiki editor, is called The Vatican. That whole area, the organization, and the people in it, are the definition of true and pure evil.

addaon 3y ago

One of looking at this is that European banners, coats of arms, etc, are traditionally defined in writing (often using a domain-specific language called a blazon), and then compiled to a visual form by a banner maker. This compilation is intended to be reversible -- one goal is to be able to look up the written form in a book of heraldry based on the visual appearance -- but, just like compiling code, is not a one-to-one process; the same blazon can result in various visual representations, and which one is selected is often an aesthetic consideration. Not speaking Italian, and not having done the historical digging, I don't know the original written definition of the Vatican flag, but it looks like it's something like "banner divided in yellow (towards the flagpole) and white, with the white part centered with the crossed keys surmounted by the tiara," where the "crossed keys" and "tiara" are imports of external symbology. In this case, the question concerns the tiara [1] -- which, like most physical tiaras, has a hole running through it that appears neither red nor white when viewed as it is represented on the flag. While it is certainly reasonable for the Vatican to have preferences on the detailed representation of this flag, both as-drawn versions are faithful representations of the blazon, both allow looking up the blazon from the visual representation, and both are, frankly, fine. [1] https://www.vatican.va/news_services/press/documentazione/documents/sp_ss_scv/insigne/triregno_en.html https://www.vatican.va/news_services/press/documentazione/do...

melagonster 3y ago
wow, this is very interesting, I never heard to this before.
maratc 3y ago
While widely used symbols like “eagle displayed” or “lion passant guardant” are really well defined, the more you get to the esoteric stuff the more you find there are really no standards. Try “importing” such thing as “octopus proper”. Heraldically speaking, it really makes no difference, as nobody would mistake the “wrong” flag of Vatican to represent some completely different entity. But TLA is not implying that — just asking for some more standardization of a widely-used symbol.
- dehrmann 3y ago
  > nobody would mistake the “wrong” flag of Vatican to represent some completely different entity Compare that to Australia and New Zealand. If you don't know what do look for and aren't aware the other's out there, you could easily mix them up.
  - ytdytvhxgydvhh 3y ago
    NZ came pretty close to changing to an original flag but ended up sticking with that “we’re not Australia, really” flag: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015–2016_New_Zealand_flag_referendums https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015–2016_New_Zealand_flag_r...
    - lostlogin 3y ago
      That man’s vanity project and the shitty options on offer is what scuppered that, not the quality of the existing flag. I never thought an opportunity to show Laser Kiwi would come up here. https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/fire-lazar https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/fire-lazar
  - CoastalCoder 3y ago
    Playing "Legion TD2" had been great for my recognition of national flags. Every game I see up to 3 other flags for the other players, and the country name is shown on mouse-over. It even taught me of the existence a country I'd never heard of before.

mistrial9 3y ago

Holy Roman Empire really doted on those heraldic signs, with England and a few others, too. In German, the word for the heraldry banner is "waffen" which is the same word for actual weapons. In English, to say "Coat of Arms" says the same thing, if I understand it.

maratc 3y ago
“Arms” has the same two meanings as in German (see e.g. the College of Arms — hint: it’s not a place where they teach weaponry). “Coat” in this context refers to the actual coat worn by heralds representing the sovereign. The modern word for that outfit is “tabard” I believe.
ttepasse 3y ago
The german word for coat of arms is „Wappen“. Etymologically that word is descended from „Waffen“, although the difference happened in the high middle ages.
bewaretheirs 3y ago
That's because originally they were arms - it's how combatants would identify who was who on the battlefield based on what was painted on their shield and helmet.

chungy 3y ago

Wikipedia is too often the final source of truth for people. While I'm not saying it's intentionally wrong very often, but accidental wrongs get repeated elsewhere. It happens especially with things like the Vatican flag ("Surely Wikipedians haven't fabricated some alternate version?"). Another example: The Windows Me logo (yes, seriously). At the bottom of the stylized "Me" are the words "Millennium Edition"; Wikipedians like to recreate logos into vector format. Unfortunately, someone had misspelled those words to say "Millenium Edition" instead. I personally fixed that image, but I still see the misspelled version crop up from time to time in articles, YouTube videos, etc (how are they still getting the wrong version? I don't know...).

MortimerDukePhD 3y ago
I'd be willing to wager there's an endless discussion on the Talk page about this, where someone is arguing that the Vatican is wrong about their own flag, and they should be the ones to change.
conradfr 3y ago
I've been on a forum where from time to time we would put harmless wrong infos in Wikipedia pages, mostly from inside jokes. Few remain but at least one that is still there is now in multiple articles and actual books.
- sitkack 3y ago
  Absolve your sins!
cm2187 3y ago
This is of the level of Ron Burgundy and his teleprompter.
Kwpolska 3y ago
The fourth hit on Google Images for "Windows ME" (at least over here) is this misspelled version: https://www.betaarchive.com/wiki/index.php?title=File:Windows_ME_Logo.png https://www.betaarchive.com/wiki/index.php?title=File:Window...

yongjik 3y ago

It becomes worse as you move further away from Anglosphere: according to Wikipedia the ancient Korean kingdom of Goguryeo has a forked red/yellow flag, but AFAIK that's total fabrication, based on a single mention in the record that said "Some troops of Goguryeo used red flags." If I were still in my 20s I might have fought Wikilawyers on this. Now I'm old and I have enough shit to take care of. :/

slacka 3y ago
Did you find sources and make the edit? Or just assume it would be rejected? In my experience, the vast majority of my edits were accepted when properly sourced, especially on esoteric topics like this. Yes, there are exceptions and bad apples in the community. Those get a all the attention and media coverage but I've only encountered them on heavily edited and visited pages, not the more rare academic or historic pages. While it's anecdotal, I just checked and I've clocked nearly 800 edits in the past decade.
- yongjik 3y ago
  Who knows? Maybe the edit will stay, maybe it won't, but the very fact that the flag has been staying for years doesn't bode well for my effort. There are millions of Koreans who can write passable English: if it were that easy to remove the flag, someone would have done it.
  - kemayo 3y ago
    I suspect there's a much smaller number who affirmatively know that there's not a specific flag for a kingdom that ceased to exist 1,335 years ago. Particularly since the article presents both a pure red flag and the red/yellow flag and claims they were used at different times. Thus I'd imagine that of the small number of people intimately familiar with Korean history who even noticed, very few could say with sufficient certainty that the flag was never used. (For that matter, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Korean_flags https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Korean_flags has a third variant...)
- wolverine876 3y ago

SoftTalker 3y ago

Now read up on Gell-Mann amnesia, and ask yourself if you should really trust anything on Wikipedia.

madars 3y ago
Exactly. Aside, I don't think we can predict the full scale effects of LLMs for citogenesis https://xkcd.com/978/ https://xkcd.com/978/
thih9 3y ago
Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect ;)
- cm2187 3y ago
  It used to have its own wiki article which was downgraded as the result of the lack of reputable newspapers making references to the Gell-Mann effect. Like if newspapers would ever push that concept in their columns...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
kibwen 3y ago
Wikipedia itself says you shouldn't trust anything on Wikipedia, a statement which, of course, you shouldn't trust: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_disclaimer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_disclaimer

ldehaan 3y ago

Wikipedia is trash, always has been. A small group of fanatics run that site and only allow information they deem acceptable. Using their information has always been a bad idea.

shlubbert 3y ago

A similar scourge of mine is Wikipedia contributors helpfully "tracing" company logos so they can be uploaded as vector graphics (great in theory!) but introducing all kinds of mistakes in the process or using the wrong fonts... also causing the wrong logos to spread all over the internet.

dheera 3y ago
That's the punishment companies get for not providing their official logos for download in an easy format without fuss. If you have a startup, have a "media kit" page with all of this stuff. Logos for black and white backgrounds in open vector and raster formats, founder photos, bios, company intros, product photos, video clips of your product that you're okay with media cutting up and using.
- kevinmchugh 3y ago
  If you want it to be usable on Wikipedia, how do you assign the IP?
  - amenghra 3y ago
    Wikipedia lets you specify the license. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#/media/File:Tux.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#/media/File:Tux.svg has three permission details, including Creative Commons CC0 1.0.
  - someotherperson 3y ago
    A lot of companies release press kits for proper usage of their logos without necessarily transferring the IP. I imagine in a lot of cases (including Wikipedia) it falls under fair use -- ultimately the logo is still trademarked.
  - wizzwizz4 3y ago
    Release it under a CC 4.0 license. Section 2b2: > Patent and trademark rights are not licensed under this Public License.
  - 3y ago

cxy7z 3y ago

I was hoping they'd say that the incorrect version had made it so far as to be shown by the Vatican itself.

cshimmin 3y ago
Well the article does show a photo of the wrong flag flying at (or very near to) the vatican. TBH I think the incorrect design looks better! But I suppose that's beside the point...

SrslyJosh 3y ago

[flagged]

Prickle 3y ago

edit: For whatever reason, my computer is rendering the wrong shade of yellow. You can see the previous edit/revert war that was happening on the image itself here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_Vatican_City.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_Vatican_... Previous text: ->Unfortunately, the correction to the flag has been reverted, and the vatican flag on wikipedia is now incorrect. Again.<-

mjg59 3y ago
Wikipedia currently shows me the version with the white disk in the papal tiara, which the article asserts is the correct one. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_Vatican_City.svg#filehistory https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_Vatican_... suggests it's been that way since the 1st of January this year.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
silisili 3y ago
Your first link shows the correct flag for me, FWIW.
lolinder 3y ago
I see the correct one, and it hasn't changed since 1 January. Regardless, that edit history is interesting because it suggests that the mistake (if it is one) goes back way further than Wikipedia. The very first upload (24 Nov 2005) had the red tiara, and was added with this comment: > Flag of the Vatican City from the [http://openclipart.org/ http://openclipart.org/ Open Clip Art] website. {{PD-OpenClipart}} Category:SVG flags
- Prickle 3y ago
  Turn out I am just blind and had the wrong hue of yellow in mind. But yes, it's quite interesting to watch some of the flag pages. Vexillologists constantly fighting over the correct flag. One of the recent ones fixed was the Imperial Japanese flag. Watching that flag flip flop between 4 or 5 different iterations was amusing, to say the least.

ricardobeat 3y ago

To be fair, the wrong version is just a recolor and is more visually pleasing. The “red disk” is the inside of the tiara and makes the 3D shape more recognizable than the white version.

nologic01 3y ago

This raises deep philosophical questions about the nature of truth as it pertains to flags in particular. If everybody is using the wrong flag in real life (well, ok, online) while the correct flag is merely a blueprint, a shadow projected inside Plato's cave, what is true and what is wrong?

stevezsa8 3y ago
I think this was a very specific case of someone editing an image and introducing a mistake. Experts knew what the real flag should look like. For example, if the name on my birth certificate is Steve but my forgetful friends keep calling me Bob, my actual true name does not change regardless of how many people say my name wrong.

hexo 3y ago

Mmmm, the Prime Example of color space hell. I'd bet these people never seen it correctly on monitor since I don't think any single of them ever had calibrated display (if i'm wrong i apologize). Pointless and priceless until it gets serious and then, wait for it, printed! Which is whole another step of brain-melting-difficulty in getting it correct. (wikipedia reverters [in this scenario] are) Laughable at least, thanks, made my day. The difference in versions from 2014 (compared to later ones) is completely hilarious. Enjoy while you can!

bertil 3y ago

I’m really surprised that Father Becker thinks this is a meaningful difference. I’m as detail-oriented as it gets, but symbols on flags and coats of arms are a notoriously hard thing to get “right” and I’m not sure they should. Noble houses had lions, dolphins, elephants, and unicorns on their coat of arms at a time when people (bored monks who never left their monastery) drew them like a confused alcoholic toddler, a dried-out octopus, a Shar-Pei with a snake for a nose, and nothing like a rhinoceros, respectively. (The last one was never really fixed and we stole the horn of a narwhal and made up a whole imaginary animal rather than admit we got it wrong. Still pissed that Scotland doesn’t have rhinoceros as a symbol because it would suit their nightlife so much better than a unicorn.) This was so bad that people, at least those who cared about heraldry, had to agree that the difference between a lion and a leopard was that one was looking straight at the viewer and the other looked right (which famously is left because of how shields work). This long introduction to say: Symbols have to be recognizable, but their specific design isn’t part of what makes a flag a flag. Yesterday, someone asked r/vexillology which one among 10(!) was the proper flag for the Isle of Man. If you haven’t seen it, it’s red (gules) with the symbol of the island, the triskele: “three legs in armour flexed at the knee and conjoined at the thigh, all proper, garnished and spurred”. I can’t imagine a more specific description, and yet: 10 different armours, feet extension, spurs… All valid, all different. Anyone who cares about medieval armours will tell you: the complexity of protecting a fighter in battle with 15th-century forging techniques makes vexillologists look like children playing with Duplo bricks in comparison. We are never getting a photo-exact triskele, not without going beyond what that symbol is meant to be: recognizable. This hits personally because my family colours are extremely simple but impossible to draw: it’s “silver (white) with a brewer’s pole.” Sound simple? Yeah, if anyone knew what a brewer pole is meant to look like. I won’t bore you with emails with my uncles, but let’s say there’s a new version every time anyone responds. We’ve seen anything from a club, a broom, a rake to something that is best described as an old-school TV antenna. I think some creative license is welcome in that case. Since Pope Francis has rejected the heavy triple crown for a more symbolic tiara (a silver mitre with three connected golden lines, like this: 王). It makes sense that the flag has adapted, and some flags and some coats of arms in Rome have that design. But that (much bigger and symbolically enormous) inconsistency isn’t raised by Father Becker, who prefers to point out that, while every Papal vestment is coated in white, while personal effects are velveted in red, as the tiara is part of a sacrament… Sure, technically true, but this is a conversation about papal underwear——literally. More generally the design of the keys, the flowing of the stole even the motif embroidered on it, all can be adapted without betraying who the Pope is. The only real things that matter are: having three crowns (or a liturgical equivalent) and that the two keys are of different colours. For example, I’ve even seen one very committed designer change the colour of the stole based on the liturgical calendar (for the miscreants who are inexplicably still reading: stoles can be green, white, red, or purple, depending on the day or the occasion —— and nerds will add blue to that list). As absurd as the idea of a flag changing colour every day can seem, it makes sense. Can you imagine if the flag of your country had the tiniest difference if you were in mourning? The carpet in the Oval Office has the Great Seal of the United States: the Eagle with the start-spangled shield. Famously, the Eagle looks left, towards the olive branch, to symbolise the country’s historical preference for peace. There’s a rumour that the carpet has another version: one where the Eagle looks right, towards the arrows, and that the carpet can be switched if the country is at war. I like that idea. Wikipedia editors might not appreciate the extra work, but I think that nuances like those make symbols more powerful. We didn’t just send a carrier battle group to your shores, we switched the carpet. This is not an exercise. It’s not technically true says Snopes [0] but if West Wing, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill like the idea, who could possibly disagree? All that to say: you have the Great Seal in mind, right? Can you tell, without looking and with certainty, whether the nails of the talons (the “claws”) are yellow, black, or red? Would you consider that a mistake? Well, that article argues something similar and I’m not sure that it’s fair. I think we would be better served by an article asking if the Pope is king in Rome. [0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/presidential-seal-change-war/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/presidential-seal-change-w...

omnibrain 3y ago

When our local fire department got a new fire engine the manufacturer placed the coat of arms of the town on the door. But instead of getting it from the municipality they used a grotesquely wrong version from Wikipedia.

stevezsa8 3y ago
This is funny. I love how some people prefer internet searches to speaking with actual people for information.

10g1k 3y ago

Sadly, far too many internerds confuse a brief look at Wikipedia with actual knowledge.

zokier 3y ago

Just highlighting this twitter thread where people are finding all sorts of pre-wikipedia examples of Vatican flag, like this one from 1970: https://twitter.com/VinSlashLopez/status/1639478301885599745/photo/1 https://twitter.com/VinSlashLopez/status/1639478301885599745... So its obviously not just wikipedias invention, but a wider phenomenon.

wolverine876 3y ago
You are backing up Wikipedia's claim with Twitter evidence. Not even Wikipedia would accept that.
- lolinder 3y ago
  You didn't even bother following the link to the Twitter thread. The photo of the Apollo 11 display shown in the thread was taken from Wikimedia Commons, uploaded in 2008 [0]. The other one, with Pope Benedict seated next to a red-tiara'd flag comes from archivio.quirinale.it, the official archives of the Italian presidency [1]. [0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Vatican_City_lunar_sample_display https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Vatican_City_lun... [1] https://archivio.quirinale.it/image-h/Ciampi/grandi_immagini_27375.jpg https://archivio.quirinale.it/image-h/Ciampi/grandi_immagini...
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - octernion 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - underratedbug 3y ago
      [flagged]
  - acqq 3y ago
    This one from the archives is from the October 1998 visit, more than 2 years before Wikipedia existed. https://twitter.com/scheeko/status/1639673883719618562 https://twitter.com/scheeko/status/1639673883719618562 It's one of the 139 images linked from here: https://archivio.quirinale.it/aspr/diari/EVENT-002-021416/presidente/oscar-luigi-scalfaro https://archivio.quirinale.it/aspr/diari/EVENT-002-021416/pr... Named: ASPR_SG-USC_09-SCALFARO_f2603_0094_ST.jpg On the right from the Pope John Paul II and the flag with the red detail is Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, the president of Italy from 1992 to 1999. Noted in that discussion by Francisco Feijó Delgado, @scheeko Mar 25, 2023.

lolinder 3y ago

This feels like the author jumped to the conclusion that Wikipedia was at fault because it's a common enough story and sounded good, but it doesn't add up. See addaon's comment for an explanation of why heraldry here isn't as cut-and-dry as we're used to for, say, the US flag. But even aside from that, the author neglected to check the full edit history on the Wikipedia file: the very first version of the flag (25 Nov 2005) had the red tiara that the article decries, citing Open Clip Art as the source [0]. That suggests the "wrong" version was already highly circulated before Wikipedia got the image. The caption on the main photo goes so far as to suggest that the Vatican itself is using Wikipedia as a source for printing its flags. Indeed, the UN has a photo of the flag of the Vatican shortly after it was raised there in 2015, and that flag has the red tiara [1]. It's hard to imagine the flag flown at the UN being done as a rush job from a Wikipedia article. It's a cute story, but it looks like the simpler truth is that the Vatican doesn't particularly care about the coloring of the tiara. EDIT: Kudos to zokier for finding a Twitter thread with more examples [2]. Apparently the flag taken to the moon and back by Apollo 11 had the red tiara. [0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Flag_of_the_Vatican_City.svg&offset=&limit=250 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Flag_of... [1] https://dam.media.un.org/asset-management/2AM9LO46AB5A?FR_=1&W=1920&H=947 https://dam.media.un.org/asset-management/2AM9LO46AB5A?FR_=1... [2] zokier's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36118232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36118232

adhesive_wombat 3y ago
> It's hard to imagine the flag flown at the UN being done as a rush job from a Wikipedia article. Maybe the UN has their buttons on, but at the Olympics, displaying the wrong flag, an incorrect flag or the right flag upside-down happens now and then.
- lolinder 3y ago
  I imagine so, but in this instance the flag is a big stinking deal because the UN had just allowed the flags of Palestine and the Vatican (Observer States) to be flown for the very first time. This wasn't a case of "we've got to print out flags for every single country and fly them all at once", these two flags were given special attention. Also note my edit: the Twitter thread zokier found shows Benedict XVI seated next to a red-tiara'd flag in 2005, as well as the one that was sent to the moon in 1969.

x3874 3y ago

[flagged]

ummonk 3y ago

They also have a really wrong shade of saffron for the Indian flag, even though the Wiki article on the flag correctly specifies the colors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_India#Colours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_India#Colours Can't really blame them though, since the Indian government does the same. https://www.india.gov.in/india-glance/national-symbols https://www.india.gov.in/india-glance/national-symbols

MayeulC 3y ago
Seems like there is an edit war, or at least a discussion, on the file at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File_talk:Flag_of_India.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File_talk:Flag_of_India.s... I imagine the other will be changed once there is a consensus, but it seems they're having trouble getting a definitive answer from the government.
- ummonk 3y ago
  Interesting - the Wikimedia Commons file is what I'd consider "correct", but the Wikipedia file that links to it is not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_India.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_India.svg I guess the edit war would need to be conclusively resolved before the Wikipedia page is update to reflect it? Wikipedia proceduralism is always confusing to me.

queuebert 3y ago

I think this is a well-played, long-term Vatican conspiracy to use internet virality to get the entire world to recognize its flag.

wolverine876 3y ago

Accuracy is hard. As with many things, the first 90% takes 10% of the time, the last 10% takes 90%. Wikipedia seems filled with <90% accurate information, which is misinformation (or BS). I could imagine an obvious reason, that these volunteers with limited expertise and facility with the information (i.e., they aren't experts in the field who know all the sources well) write what they know. Also, it is up to Wikipedia's standard de facto, and most people don't go beyond that norm. Instead of lots of people providing <90% accurate misinfo, we need a few people producing 99.999% accurate info. (Seriously, if you are producing <90% accurate info, stop. The Internet has infinite amounts of it, if there was ever a marginal benefit to it, we don't need more now.) It's easy to copy and share accurate info, in theory, rather than creating or sharing more BS. The other problem is that such info is often placed behind paywalls; the intellectual elite get it, but not the public. If you want an accurate science info, look at McGraw-Hill's AccessScience (the decendent of their leading Encyclopedia of Science and Technology), "written by world-renowned scientists, including 46 Nobel Prize Laureates" - not exactly Wikipedia. Unfortunately, you'll probably need an institutional subscriptioin. Who cares if high school kids (or anyone else) have accurate info?

greenpeas 3y ago
> the first 90% takes 10% of the time, the last 10% takes 90%. Is the second part of that statement necessary?
- wolverine876 3y ago
  Yes. Of the last 10%, 5% could require 29% of the time, and 5% could require 61%.

jwie 3y ago

This sort of stuff is the natural consequence of the verifiability over truth approach Wikipedia has foolishly embraced.

ajsnigrutin 3y ago

I was expecting a much bigger difference in flags :/ But I do live in slovenia, and everyone mistakes us for slovakia anyways, and that includes our flags.

agumonkey 3y ago

the distributed asynchronous nature of information is fascinating

bombcar 3y ago

More importantly and amusingly the Vatican flag is square - [|] vs [ | ]. Your emoji viewer may render it wrong (check your flag section, iPhone gets it right) but don’t feel bad - most of the flags are incorrectly rectangle.

TheRealPomax 3y ago

On the one hand, yes, it's incorrect. On the other, claiming malicious intent is pretending the little flood fill is FAR more important than it really is. It's not the era of the crusades anymore, and realistically if this bothers anyone, the easiest solution is to just remove that flood fill from the official flag because a speck of red makes zero difference in recognizing a flag. We're not carrying them into war, and the Vatican sure as hell isn't funding any expeditions by the Doge of Venice to reclaim Jerusalem any time soon. It's like someone getting the font for "California Republic" on the California flag wrong: no one cares except the people who shouldn't.

quickthrower2 3y ago
Unofficial US flags use different blues and reds too

b33j0r 3y ago

I’m not taking a side on any issue at all, and definitely not this one! Just a funny observation about how something could go undetected on a wiki. I’ll go as far as a joke postulate: “For any given page on wikipedia, the people with the most personal experience (as distinct from ‘knowledge’) will be the least frequent visitors to that page.” Or as it was later to be summed up, “so… you thought doctors were the ones searching for ‘doctor’ on the internet?”

jeroenhd 3y ago

How is this Wikipedia's fault if the Vatican doesn't even make usable graphics of their own flag available? I suppose an ancient conservative institution like the Catholic Church failing to adapt to the internet isn't all that surprising, but you can hardly blame well-willing volunteers for the Vatican's lack of public information.

mensetmanusman 3y ago
The Catholic Church is like the Ents from LoTR.

masswerk 3y ago

Fun fact: This also happened with the Austro-Hungarian monarchy for some time, where the civil naval ensign was communicated as the flag, compare [0] and [1]. It can be still found on Amazon, etc, as "Austria-Hungary Flag". [0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Flag_of_Austria-Hungary.svg&redirect=no https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Flag_of... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Flags_of_Austria-Hungary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Flags_of_Austria-Hungary

akudha 3y ago

It is amusing that an entity as obscenely rich as the Vatican isn’t providing official high quality images of their own flag. Maybe it isn’t as important in the grand scheme of things?

mensetmanusman 3y ago
Harvard's endowment is far larger than the monetary wealth of the Vatican.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> It is amusing that an entity as obscenely rich as the Vatican isn’t providing official high quality images of their own flag. The State of Vatican City wasn’t rich before most of its assets were stripped and transferred to the Holy See (which also isn’t all that rich.) The Catholic Church collectively has a lot of assets, but the vast majority of them aren’t controlled by the Holy See (and even less are controlled by the State of Vatican City), they belong to individual dioceses or religious communities. > Maybe it isn’t as important in the grand scheme of things? DINGDINGDINGDING

ed25519FUUU 3y ago

How is this not intentional? Is there some meaning with the additional red? I know Occam’s razor and all, but this is really suspicious to me.

ForOldHack 3y ago

Wikipedia had Brigham Young University listed as Michael Jackson's Alma mater for a year. The article on George Galloway, lists more lies and propaganda than a German speech, and they have NO plans to remove any of it. Wait until you see the article on the IBM PC. Wow. "Wikipedia was at fault." They are never at fault. They just host the largest collection of loud mouth opinionators on the planet: I have absolute an irritable proof: Hit random, until you find an article about, say... something you know about. Find the first error. Point it out in the talk section, and watch it get shot down.

ForOldHack 3y ago
From the talk page of George Galloway: " Currently the article stands as a detailed report of every accusation upon the person. The article should be shortened by removing allegations which have proven not true. The article gives much more focus to negative allegations than is normal for article on a person and reading it, portrays a negatively biased picture of the person. " clearly against their policy of bias, with nothing being done, except to bias it further.
crazygringo 3y ago
What happens when you just change the articles, and include a supporting citation? In the case of genuine errors, is there anybody actually arguing on the other side? I understand debates about whether or not things are worthy of inclusion (like unproved accusations), and there's a whole separate category of controversial viewpoints, but I've never come across meaningful pushback on unambiguous factual errors. You should just be able to fix things. I've certainly done so many times in the past, and I've never gotten anything "shot down" at all. In my experience, factual corrections get zero pushback because why would they? I don't really understand complaining that people aren't fixing errors on Wikipedia if you aren't fixing them yourself. Also, what are the dates that Brigham Young was added and then removed from the Michael Jackson article? Vandalism happens all the time but I'm pretty shocked that could stay up for a year. But I can't find any reference to it on the internet aside from your comment here, and WikiBlame isn't finding it either (looking up "Brigham" starting from Jan 2001 yields "Your search term was not found at all. Check the settings and try again." but maybe it's broken?)

nashashmi 3y ago

Here is a more detailed version of the flag. https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/highly-detailed-flag-of-vatican-city-holy-see-vatican-city-holy-see-flag-high-detail-gm1309831698-399425592 https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/highly-detailed-flag-of-va... This might be a flag variance problem. The heads of the keys have three different versions thus far in my search of images.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

marc_abonce 3y ago

There's a similar issue with the Mexican coat of arms in Wikipedia. The Wikipedia eagle has black claws and red eyes but the official one doesn't. [1][2][3] One time I tried to fix it but I don't know how to use Inkspace and it turned out to be trickier than it looks. I naïvely hoped I could just fix it with a bucket tool but it's not as simple, lol. [1] https://wrmx00.epimg.net/radio/imagenes/2019/09/16/nacional/1568635338_696229_1568635784_noticia_normal.jpg https://wrmx00.epimg.net/radio/imagenes/2019/09/16/nacional/... [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/03/EPN._Grito_de_Independencia_2.jpg/1800px-EPN._Grito_de_Independencia_2.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/03/EP... [3] https://diario.mx/jrz/media/uploads/galeria/2022/09/01/20220901101532796-0-1967521.jpg https://diario.mx/jrz/media/uploads/galeria/2022/09/01/20220...

MayeulC 3y ago
> I naïvely hoped I could just fix it with a bucket tool but it's not as simple, lol. It's way simpler than that: open it, click it; you'll see everything is selected, so it's grouped (also visible in the status bar that describes the selection). Double click to enter the group; now you can select the correct shape. Once you have selected the shape you want to change, you can change its color by using the color bar, or bring up the color selector (from the UI, background and outline, or Ctrl-Shift-F). However, I'd be cautious before modifying it. Do you have a better source than these for the colors? Ideally, in writing. I can see some red eyes and black claws (with a central gradient similar to the one on the prickly pears) on your [3], which is closest to the Wikimedia image. The other two images have different colors and shapes for a lot of elements, including the plants. There's another variant on that page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mexico_coat_of_arms.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mexico_coat_of_arms....

renewiltord 3y ago

Entirely wrong and hallucinated article. There's a flag in the Vatican Museum https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Moon_rocks_and_a_Vatican_flag_that_went_to_the_moon_and_back,_carried_on_Apollo_11_-_Vatican_Museums_-_DSC00762.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Moon_rocks_and_a_Vat... Many other photos. OP seems to have performed the common human error of confidently asserting wholly fabricated things: a thing that we call "hallucination".

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Apocryphon 3y ago

Major respect for Fra. Becker for hosting his site on Tripod.

meinersbur 3y ago

The article uses the USA flag as an example of how to precisely specify a flag, but the USA is one of the countries which does NOT define its flag in any precise manner, to the point that different US agencies use different flags (Most noticeably varying in color). https://youtu.be/BRNrrj03akw https://youtu.be/BRNrrj03akw ("This is the American Flag." by Tapakapa)

encody 3y ago
I don't know if you were trying to use it as a source for your claim, but the video you linked does describe and link to the exact textile color specification from the US government. http://everyspec.com/FED_SPECS/F/DDD-F-416F_49205/ http://everyspec.com/FED_SPECS/F/DDD-F-416F_49205/ I'm not a vexillologist, just watched the video, so idk.
- meinersbur 3y ago
  For textiles, but not print or computer screens. Also, it is a GSA guideline for use by US government agencies themselves only (along with quality standards when the federal government purchases things from private vendors such as chocolate [1], but it does not define what can be sold as chocolate and what not, the FDA would define that [2]). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Specification_for_Candy_and_Chocolate_Confections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Specification_for_Cand... [2] https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/cpg-sec-515800-labeling-products-purporting-be-chocolate-or-chocolate-flavored https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidan...