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

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

#23
post #6

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"; Wikipe…

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.

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

#24
post #4
post #2

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…

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 —…

> 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.

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

#26
post #2

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…

> but it looks like it's something like "banner divided in yellow (towards the flagpole) and white

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Vatican_City says “A vertical bicolour of gold and white”.

I would have thought that should be gold and silver (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tincture_(heraldry)), but (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tincture_(heraldry)#Other_tinc...) “The heraldic scholar A. C. Fox-Davies proposed that, in some circumstances, white should be considered a heraldic colour, distinct from argent”, so who knows? Maybe it is gold and white.

Edit: https://www.vaticanstate.va/it/stato-governo/note-generali/b... says “un drappo bipartito di giallo (verso l’asta) e di bianco”, so the Vatican itself says it’s yellow and white.

(Interestingly, there’s a convention for converting those colors to monochrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tincture_(heraldry)#Monochroma...)

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

#27
post #16

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

Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect ;)

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...

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

#28
post #21

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

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...

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

#29
post #6

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"; Wikipe…

This is of the level of Ron Burgundy and his teleprompter.

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

#30
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_...

Previous text: ->Unfortunately, the correction to the flag has been reverted, and the vatican flag on wikipedia is now incorrect. Again.<-

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