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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

#31

Post by Kwpolska »

chungy wrote: 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…

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:Window...

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

#32

Post by dheera »

shlubbert wrote: post #19

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.

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.

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

#33

Post by progbits »

addaon wrote: 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…

Constitution of Nepal has precise drawing instructions for their flag.

See page 221: https://ag.gov.np/files/Constitution-of-Nepal_2072_Eng_www.m...

Now of course you can't draw keys and tiara with Euclid-style instructions (in practice), but maybe countries should standardize their flag by publishing a canonical SVG file.

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

#34

Post by chungy »

Kwpolska wrote: post #31
chungy wrote: 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…

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:Window...

Oh my, there's a ton of the misspelled versions on Google Images. That could explain a lot.

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

#35

Post by sitkack »

conradfr wrote: post #23
chungy wrote: 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.

Absolve your sins!

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

#36

Post by mjg59 »

Prickle wrote: post #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.<-

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_... suggests it's been that way since the 1st of January this year.

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

#37

Post by silisili »

Prickle wrote: post #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.<-

Your first link shows the correct flag for me, FWIW.

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

#38

Post by addaon »

Someone wrote: post #26
addaon wrote: 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 propo…

> Maybe it is gold and white.

Yeah. In general, the first rule of heraldry ("metal should not be placed upon metal, nor color upon color") trumps the convention of "use standard heraldric colors." Gold touching silver violates the first rule; gold touching white violates only convention.

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

#40

Post by nologic01 »

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?

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