by axelfontaine on 5/29/23, 3:29 PM with 145 comments
by addaon on 5/29/23, 5:35 PM
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...
by lolinder on 5/29/23, 9:33 PM
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
by zokier on 5/29/23, 9:19 PM
So its obviously not just wikipedias invention, but a wider phenomenon.
by shlubbert on 5/29/23, 8:24 PM
by yongjik on 5/29/23, 6:31 PM
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. :/
by chungy on 5/29/23, 6:24 PM
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...).
by omnibrain on 5/29/23, 9:11 PM
by ForOldHack on 5/30/23, 3:03 AM
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.
by fatfox on 5/29/23, 8:17 PM
by renewiltord on 5/30/23, 5:47 AM
There's a flag in the Vatican Museum 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".
by nologic01 on 5/29/23, 9:03 PM
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?
by ricardobeat on 5/29/23, 9:01 PM
by Prickle on 5/29/23, 8:51 PM
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.<-
by mistrial9 on 5/29/23, 6:24 PM
by marc_abonce on 5/30/23, 5:13 AM
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/...
[2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/03/EP...
[3] https://diario.mx/jrz/media/uploads/galeria/2022/09/01/20220...
by b33j0r on 5/30/23, 12:35 AM
“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?”
by ummonk on 5/29/23, 9:56 PM
Can't really blame them though, since the Indian government does the same. https://www.india.gov.in/india-glance/national-symbols
by meinersbur on 5/30/23, 5:39 PM
https://youtu.be/BRNrrj03akw ("This is the American Flag." by Tapakapa)
by nashashmi on 5/30/23, 3:21 AM
This might be a flag variance problem. The heads of the keys have three different versions thus far in my search of images.
by bertil on 5/29/23, 9:07 PM
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...
by queuebert on 5/29/23, 10:05 PM
by cxy7z on 5/29/23, 8:30 PM
by TheRealPomax on 5/30/23, 12:10 AM
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.
by masswerk on 5/30/23, 12:52 AM
It can be still found on Amazon, etc, as "Austria-Hungary Flag".
[0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Flag_of...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Flags_of_Austria-Hungary
by hexo on 5/29/23, 9:09 PM
by bombcar on 5/29/23, 11:53 PM
by ldehaan on 5/29/23, 8:23 PM
by ed25519FUUU on 5/30/23, 12:57 AM
by ajsnigrutin on 5/29/23, 11:28 PM
But I do live in slovenia, and everyone mistakes us for slovakia anyways, and that includes our flags.
by agumonkey on 5/29/23, 11:46 PM
by Apocryphon on 5/30/23, 7:13 AM
by SoftTalker on 5/29/23, 8:10 PM
by 10g1k on 5/29/23, 9:13 PM
by akudha on 5/30/23, 12:52 AM
by wolverine876 on 5/29/23, 10:17 PM
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?
by jwie on 5/29/23, 11:03 PM
by jeroenhd on 5/30/23, 12:43 AM
