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

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/ Open Clip Art] website. {{PD-OpenClipart}} Category:SVG flags

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-w...

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.