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

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.

> 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...)

> 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.

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.

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 Città del Vaticano è 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 è 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 Città 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)

wow, this is very interesting, I never heard to this before.

Adding more evidence to the pile, here's a red-tiara version on the Vatican's own website from a page last updated in 2001: https://www.vatican.va/news_services/press/documentazione/do...

and the WaybackMachine confirms it's been there since at least Jan 2002: https://web.archive.org/web/20020112222602/http://www.vatica...

edit: Also the very first version of Wikipedia's Vatican City flag uploaded in 2005 also had a red tiara! It only stopped being red in 2013: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Flag_of... (look for the 1st upload in the history)

(side note: the Vatican keeping the same URLs up for 2+ decades is a refreshing change of pace!)

Yeah, what this really shows is that flags are not nearly as precise as we sometimes imagine them to me.

For instance, most old heraldic crests and flags have their official formats described in plain text: "Blazon or, three lions passant guardant azure, langued and armed gules." That's the final word on the matter. It's then up to the flag maker to read that and create it correctly.

This can result in flags that look subtly different, with variations in how lions or whatever were drawn. Google "Royal Banner of Scotland" and you'll see a number of variations in how the red lion is drawn. Ditto, say, "Coat of arms of Finland."

These days those Google searches will show more and more the same images, with the Wikipedia effect (or general internet) but you can still find a wealth of examples of how different they used to be.

> 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.

Having just read a bit about what the heraldry rules are and the purpose they serve, it strikes me as very similar to the design ideas of transit maps in modern times. You want the lines to be easily distinguishable, certain colors shouldn't run side by side (so the conventional wisdom says), you choose only from a minimalist simple pallet. In most places, the maps are diagrammatic, the lines can be arranged in any way so long as they connect the right stations in the right order. Convergent evolution.

> It's hard to imagine the flag flown at the UN being done as a rush job from a Wikipedia article.

After working years for a famous international company where anyone from the outside would imagine incredible efficiency, precision, mastery, etc., it is really not hard AT ALL to believe.

Yeah, this looks like "Wikipedia is wrong because it's Wikipedia" as opposed to the encyclopedia actually being wrong.

They link to this dude’s Vatican flag site [0] that has the 2023 version [1] which is a mix of the "correct" (it might be the correct pre-2023 version) and "incorrect" version (2023 seems to have yellow, not bronze, keys, white tiara). I’m left with still not knowing what the real flag is, if Wikipedia is now right, and why the article writer wrote so much without doing any real research.

[0] https://mnflag.tripod.com/vatflag/

[1] https://mnflag.tripod.com/vatflag/official-models1.png

> 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/

Or one could read The Signpost.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...

> So its obviously not just wikipedias invention, but a wider phenomenon.

That doesn't make a difference, IMO. There were all sorts of wrong statements before wikipedia, but it wouldn't reflect well on wikipedia if they presented them.

You are backing up Wikipedia's claim with Twitter evidence. Not even Wikipedia would accept that.

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.

There's also nothing stopping the company itself submitting the correct logo. While, as far as I know, it's usually considered a conflict of interest to directly edit your own article as an organisation, you can upload the logo and request on the talk page of the article that correct image be used.

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.

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...

I'd be willing to wager there's an endless discussion on the Talk page about this, where someone is arguing that the Vatican is wrong about their own flag, and they should be the ones to change.

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

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.

This is funny.

I love how some people prefer internet searches to speaking with actual people for information.

I have drive-by-fixed many articles, including controversial ones like the George Floyd one. What I did was fix it, then post on Talk page with details. Looking through, it appears that most of the fixes remain. For the ones that don't, the precise language no longer appears but the article has since been written over the years since, and the fix is no longer necessary since it is correct.

I've noticed that I easily succeed at things many other people have real trouble with, this kind of thing included. It's a pity it's not particularly monetizable at a good rate, or I could simply launder other people's solutions through me. Maybe I, or a friend, can take a look at Galloway some time this week.

What happens when you just change the articles, and include a supporting citation?

In the case of genuine errors, is there anybody actually arguing on the other side?

I understand debates about whether or not things are worthy of inclusion (like unproved accusations), and there's a whole separate category of controversial viewpoints, but I've never come across meaningful pushback on unambiguous factual errors. You should just be able to fix things. I've certainly done so many times in the past, and I've never gotten anything "shot down" at all. In my experience, factual corrections get zero pushback because why would they?

I don't really understand complaining that people aren't fixing errors on Wikipedia if you aren't fixing them yourself.

Also, what are the dates that Brigham Young was added and then removed from the Michael Jackson article? Vandalism happens all the time but I'm pretty shocked that could stay up for a year. But I can't find any reference to it on the internet aside from your comment here, and WikiBlame isn't finding it either (looking up "Brigham" starting from Jan 2001 yields "Your search term was not found at all. Check the settings and try again." but maybe it's broken?)

From the talk page of George Galloway: " Currently the article stands as a detailed report of every accusation upon the person. The article should be shortened by removing allegations which have proven not true. The article gives much more focus to negative allegations than is normal for article on a person and reading it, portrays a negatively biased picture of the person. " clearly against their policy of bias, with nothing being done, except to bias it further.

This was quite funny. Thank you for the laugh =)

There's a special place in hell for the Vatican. Pedo gay sex galore aside, the entire multi-billion dollar scammer organization, is disgusting. Went to visit while flying through. There's a long line in the square, it's sun-baking weather outside. They have the little roof-covered column things on the side, but the line is in the middle. No little tents over the line area - go ahead and stand there for 3 hours, at the zenith, in the middle of summer.

Well, burns and skin cancer, like tears inside the butt, bring you closer to god, as mother teresa always preached while on the scammin' trail, so all good - right? Nope, it's a sales tool. For a mere 300EUR you can bypass that line, and they have extremely rude and pushy sales people approach you multiple times as you suffer.

I gave up after 10 minutes. I took a selfie at their post office, now have a better story to tell, and my man-man virginity preserved. Although I probably would have been safe inside there, as I am an adult.

The special place in hell for that wiki editor, is called The Vatican. That whole area, the organization, and the people in it, are the definition of true and pure evil.

I think this was a very specific case of someone editing an image and introducing a mistake. Experts knew what the real flag should look like.

For example, if the name on my birth certificate is Steve but my forgetful friends keep calling me Bob, my actual true name does not change regardless of how many people say my name wrong.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

“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.

> I naïvely hoped I could just fix it with a bucket tool but it's not as simple, lol.

It's way simpler than that: open it, click it; you'll see everything is selected, so it's grouped (also visible in the status bar that describes the selection). Double click to enter the group; now you can select the correct shape. Once you have selected the shape you want to change, you can change its color by using the color bar, or bring up the color selector (from the UI, background and outline, or Ctrl-Shift-F).

However, I'd be cautious before modifying it. Do you have a better source than these for the colors? Ideally, in writing.

I can see some red eyes and black claws (with a central gradient similar to the one on the prickly pears) on your [3], which is closest to the Wikimedia image. The other two images have different colors and shapes for a lot of elements, including the plants.

There's another variant on that page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mexico_coat_of_arms....

Seems like there is an edit war, or at least a discussion, on the file at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File_talk:Flag_of_India.s...

I imagine the other will be changed once there is a consensus, but it seems they're having trouble getting a definitive answer from the government.

I don't know if you were trying to use it as a source for your claim, but the video you linked does describe and link to the exact textile color specification from the US government.

http://everyspec.com/FED_SPECS/F/DDD-F-416F_49205/

I'm not a vexillologist, just watched the video, so idk.

> 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-...

> the carpet can be switched if the country is at war

"There is a temple to him in Rome, which has two doors, and which they call the gate of war. It is the custom to open the temple in time of war, and to close it during peace. This scarcely ever took place, as the empire was almost always at war with some state."

- Parallel Lives

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...

Unofficial US flags use different blues and reds too

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

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

Exactly. Aside, I don't think we can predict the full scale effects of LLMs for citogenesis https://xkcd.com/978/

> It is amusing that an entity as obscenely rich as the Vatican isn’t providing official high quality images of their own flag.

The State of Vatican City wasn’t rich before most of its assets were stripped and transferred to the Holy See (which also isn’t all that rich.)

The Catholic Church collectively has a lot of assets, but the vast majority of them aren’t controlled by the Holy See (and even less are controlled by the State of Vatican City), they belong to individual dioceses or religious communities.

> Maybe it isn’t as important in the grand scheme of things?

DINGDINGDINGDING

Harvard's endowment is far larger than the monetary wealth of the Vatican.

> the first 90% takes 10% of the time, the last 10% takes 90%.

Is the second part of that statement necessary?

The Catholic Church is like the Ents from LoTR.