[HN Gopher] Wikipedia had wrong Vatican flag for years - now inc...
___________________________________________________________________
Wikipedia had wrong Vatican flag for years - now incorrect flags
are everywhere
Author : axelfontaine
Score : 131 points
Date : 2023-05-29 15:29 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.catholicnewsagency.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.catholicnewsagency.com)
| mistrial9 wrote:
| 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.
| ttepasse wrote:
| 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.
| maratc wrote:
| "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.
| bewaretheirs wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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...).
| cm2187 wrote:
| This is of the level of Ron Burgundy and his teleprompter.
| MortimerDukePhD wrote:
| [dead]
| Kwpolska wrote:
| 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...
| chungy wrote:
| Oh my, there's a ton of the misspelled versions on Google
| Images. That could explain a lot.
| conradfr wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Absolve your sins!
| ricardobeat wrote:
| 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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Now read up on Gell-Mann amnesia, and ask yourself if you should
| really trust anything on Wikipedia.
| madars wrote:
| Exactly. Aside, I don't think we can predict the full scale
| effects of LLMs for citogenesis https://xkcd.com/978/
| thih9 wrote:
| Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-
| Mann_amnesia_effect ;)
| cm2187 wrote:
| 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...
| kibwen wrote:
| 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
| ummonk wrote:
| 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
|
| Can't really blame them though, since the Indian government does
| the same. https://www.india.gov.in/india-glance/national-symbols
| nologic01 wrote:
| 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?
| yongjik wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 has a
| third variant...)
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Your experience is much different than mine. It has been so
| often a waste of time that I've given up editing (or reading)
| Wikipedia.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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...
|
| [1] https://dam.media.un.org/asset-
| management/2AM9LO46AB5A?FR_=1...
|
| [2] zokier's comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36118232
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| msla wrote:
| Oh, the Olympics has done worse:
|
| https://www.npr.org/2012/03/23/149244038/ceremony-plays-
| bora...
|
| > Kazakhstan won the game but lost the award ceremony. A
| parody of the country's national anthem was played by mistake
| after a Kazakh athlete won a gold medal. Organizers of the
| shooting competition in Kuwait are apologizing for playing
| the Kazakhstan anthem from the comedy movie _Borat_.
| ytdytvhxgydvhh wrote:
| Maybe the Olympics have done worse but your link isn't
| Olympic-related.
| operatingthetan wrote:
| Whoever is downvoting this please ask yourself when the
| last time Kuwait hosted the Olympics was...
| msla wrote:
| The next time it does, it has the opportunity to do
| something extremely funny.
| irrational wrote:
| No idea, but I'll guess the answer is never?
| msla wrote:
| Oh, damn. I Googled for Olympics wrong anthem and that
| came up.
|
| It's a meta-screw up. Apt.
| [deleted]
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _It 's hard to imagine the flag flown at the UN being done as
| a rush job from a Wikipedia article._
|
| I imagine, given enough time, graphical equivalent of
| citogenesis[0] might kick in. Even assuming that, and that in a
| hypothetical reality, the Internet somehow confused both the UN
| and Vatican officials as to what the Vatican flag was, at some
| point you're better off just making it official and letting
| kids 50 years later have a laugh when learning about it on
| history lessons.
|
| --
|
| [0] - https://xkcd.com/978/
| msla wrote:
| Yeah, this looks like "Wikipedia is wrong because it's
| Wikipedia" as opposed to the encyclopedia actually being wrong.
| bertil wrote:
| 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: Wang ). 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...
| ttepasse wrote:
| > 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.
|
| In recent decades every president get's his own rug with his
| own design [1]. It's even more amusing, if you imagine a
| storehouse somewhere with the unused "wars rugs" of past
| presidents.
|
| [1] https://www.ahs.com/home-matters/resources/the-evolution-
| of-...
| x3874 wrote:
| [flagged]
| addaon wrote:
| 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/do...
| ttepasse wrote:
| Additional: Blazons mostly concern themselves with the
| distinguishing element, the coat of arms on the escutcheon,
| with the external devices described mostly by reference - the
| papal tiara, an Earl's coronet, a naval crown, etc. Mostly
| because in the heraldry of a European country these coronets
| were somewhat standardised - "everybody" knows that a duke's
| coronet has acanthus/strawberry leaves - and for well-known
| crowns of sovereigns like the St. Edwards/Tudor crown, the
| Crown of St. Stephen, the Holy Roman Emperors Crown and of
| course the Papal Tiara developed over time well known
| depictions after their real likeness.
|
| Pius XI didn't bother to specify the tiara (the "triregnum") in
| writing.
|
| > La bandiera della Citta del Vaticano e costituita da due
| campi divisi verticalmente, uno giallo aderente all'asta e
| l'altro bianco, e porta in questo ultimo la tiara colle chiavi,
| il tutto come al modello, che forma l'allegato A alla presente
| legge.
|
| > Lo stemma e costituito dalla tiara colle chiavi, come al
| modello che forma l'allegato B alla presente legge.
|
| > Il sigillo porta nel centro la tiara colle chiavi ed intorno
| le parole << Stato della Citta del Vaticano >>, come al modello
| che forma l'allegato C alla presente legge.
|
| Translated by Google:
|
| > The flag of the Vatican City is made up of two vertically
| divided fields, one yellow adhering to the hoist and the other
| white, and in the latter bears the tiara with the keys, all as
| in the model, which forms attachment A to this law.
|
| > The coat of arms consists of the tiara with the keys, as in
| the model which forms annex B to this law.
|
| > The seal bears in the center the tiara with the keys and
| around the words "State of the Vatican City", as in the model
| which forms annex C to the present law.
|
| From [1] - where the models in the annexes are printed in black
| and white.
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20131217230421/http://www.unirom...
|
| Getting pixel-perfect representations from textual descriptions
| seems like a fool's errand. The original sin, of course, was
| depicting the coat of arms on the flag, although that seems to
| be long practice for the preceding flags of the Papal States
| and institutions, as seen in the linked digital book on Vatican
| Flags [2] in the article, which features a multitude of
| different ancient depictions of the flag, often displaying the
| Papal Tiara's inner lining in ... red.
|
| [2] https://nava.org/raven-volume-25
|
| (Edit: fixed quote formatting)
| maratc wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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_r...
| progbits wrote:
| 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.
| Someone wrote:
| > 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_(h
| eraldry)#Monochroma...)
| addaon wrote:
| > 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.
| bboygravity wrote:
| k thanks, now I want to know what official flag
| breaks/broke the most of those rules and conventions :p
| addaon wrote:
| Eh, rules are meant to be broken. And keep in mind these
| are at best European rules -- and even then, certain
| areas (England!) took them more seriously than others.
|
| There's also a lot of rules lawyering possible. e.g. red
| doesn't touch black on the German flag, because that
| would violate the first rule; instead, the field
| (background) is half black and half gold (color touching
| metal, fine), and the red stripe is on top of this field,
| totally legal, wink wink.
|
| That said, trying to follow these rules has led to some
| strange decisions; e.g. it's interesting to look into
| (some unverified stories about) why the US flag has white
| (silver, metal) stripes on a red background, while the US
| seal has red stripes on a white background.
| labster wrote:
| I thought that red didn't touch black in the German flag,
| it touches sable, which is a fur. And furs can be placed
| on metal or color. ... yeah, rules lawyering.
| addaon wrote:
| Yeah; in most of Western Europe sable is a color, but
| apparently in Germany and parts east it's considered a
| fur...
| grt_thr wrote:
| For secular states. The coat of arms of the Kingdom of
| Jerusalem used gold on silver. The coat of arms of the
| papacy on the other hand is not the flag so they can do
| whatever they feel like there.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| You're citing Wikipedia as a source on this issue?
| ttepasse wrote:
| > _"The heraldic scholar A. C. Fox-Davies proposed that, in
| some circumstances, white should be considered a heraldic
| colour, distinct from argent"_
|
| I took a look, just because Fox-Davies can be absurdly and
| amusingly pedantic about that stuff:
|
| He only postulates White as tincture for labels of cadency -
| as in the CoA of the Prince of Wales. The idea is to
| difference it from argent. The supporters of the PoW's CoA
| are a lion or and the unicorn argent - both with a label. If
| the label was argent it would be a violation of the rule of
| tinctures for the lion and without distinction from the
| unicorn.
|
| https://archive.org/details/completeguidetoh00foxdrich/page/.
| ..
|
| But I don't think heraldic rules apply for flags. For banners
| and standards, which are CoAs in flag form, but the general
| flags are not CoA.
| labster wrote:
| Heraldic rules should apply to flags, insofar as it is
| centuries of graphic design knowledge about what can be
| distinguished from a distance, and in low-light.
|
| Politics aside, the white-blue-white flag is simply a
| better design than the current flag of the Russian
| Federation, because color on metal is easier to
| distinguish. But the French tricolor looks great, because
| it follows the rules.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I would have thought that should be gold and silver
|
| The Vatican City flag (when also referencing the descriptions
| of elements imported from the coat of arms) uses yellow and
| white _and_ gold and silver (and the gold and silver are on
| the white.
| melagonster wrote:
| wow, this is very interesting, I never heard to this before.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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
|
| It obviously has an actual color (which might be red or white,
| but: (1) the tiara is not a unique physical object, there are
| multiple of them, and they may differ on this point, (2)
| weirdly, while there are lots of photographs, including of them
| in displays where that angle would be visible in person, I
| can't find any actually photographed of any iterations showing
| the actual color, and (3) while stock art of coat of arms
| design (without the field) also has the red just as debated
| flag design does, the actual coat of arms does not specify red
| as a feature of the tiara and the red shown in the actual coat
| of arms there is the red of the field (which would not be
| visible if the field were a physical background and the tiara a
| physical object, but armorial designs aren't constrained by
| physical representation.)
|
| So I suspect both the flag image in question _and common stock
| art of the Vatican Coat of Arms design without the field_ are
| importing part of the _field_ of the coat of arms (which is,
| explicitly, red [ _gules_ ]) as if it were part of the tiara.
| hexo wrote:
| 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!
| fatfox wrote:
| I bet there's a special place in hell for that Wikipedia editor.
| :>
| bob_theslob646 wrote:
| This was quite funny. Thank you for the laugh =)
| omnibrain wrote:
| 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.
| queuebert wrote:
| I think this is a well-played, long-term Vatican conspiracy to
| use internet virality to get the entire world to recognize its
| flag.
| 10g1k wrote:
| Sadly, far too many internerds confuse a brief look at Wikipedia
| with actual knowledge.
| ldehaan wrote:
| [dead]
| shlubbert wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| drowsspa wrote:
| Ideally, your logo in your website should also be a SVG or at
| least a transparent PNG. I definitely pick it up from
| Wikipedia when I go do a presentation if it's not there.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| If you want it to be usable on Wikipedia, how do you assign
| the IP?
| someotherperson wrote:
| 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.
| brewmarche wrote:
| IIRC a lot of logos technically don't meet the threshold of
| originality so they're not even copyrightable
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Release it under a CC 4.0 license. Section 2b2:
|
| > Patent and trademark rights are not licensed under this
| Public License.
| amenghra wrote:
| Wikipedia lets you specify the license. E.g.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#/media/File:Tux.svg has
| three permission details, including Creative Commons CC0
| 1.0.
| zokier wrote:
| 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...
|
| So its obviously not just wikipedias invention, but a wider
| phenomenon.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| You are backing up Wikipedia's claim with Twitter evidence. Not
| even Wikipedia would accept that.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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_
| lun...
|
| [1] https://archivio.quirinale.it/image-h/Ciampi/grandi_immag
| ini...
| wolverine876 wrote:
| [flagged]
| octernion wrote:
| ideally you realize you are being flagged as you are both
| annoying and wrong
| underratedbug wrote:
| Stop posting on the internet. Maybe your time is valuable
| but your comments are not.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| 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?
| Prickle wrote:
| 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.<-
| mjg59 wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| silisili wrote:
| Your first link shows the correct flag for me, FWIW.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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/
| Open Clip Art] website. {{PD-OpenClipart}} Category:SVG flags
| cxy7z wrote:
| I was hoping they'd say that the incorrect version had made it so
| far as to be shown by the Vatican itself.
| cshimmin wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| [flagged]
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