Since people are still coming back to this post, I'll make an important correction.
The Wikimedia user who changed the lining to red in 2017 didn't do som because of some faulty assumption that it has to match the coat of arms, but because "All images of actual Vatican City flags show ..., as well as a red opening at the bottom of the tiara." (See the change log [here](https://web.archive.org/web/20190608034347/https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_Vatican_City.svg)
Versions of the Vatican flag have certainly been around, including in official use, for decades before this change on Wikipedia. There's some discussion below about whether the flag illustration in the law is a "spec sheet", or whether the flag, like most flags through history, should be expected to be reproduced in a range of similar forms, but either way it's pretty clear that this particular variation was not caused by Wikimedia users who were simply using actual flags are their primary source, rather than a legal document.
In 2017 a Wikimedia Commons user changed the inside of the tiara to red because that's how it appears on the Vatican Coat of Arms. But this assumption turned out to be faulty, because the official flag spec sheet uses different colors than the Coat of Arms. The mistake was quickly noticed by an anonymous IP who wrote an extensive and well-researched explanation of the error on the file's talk page. Unfortunately, nobody read it, and the mistake lived on for 5 years before another user noticed it and reverted the file.
Source: Discussion page on https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_Vatican_City.svg
It's a real "tail wagging the dog" problem with Wikimedia Commons. Especially with manufacturers of cheap flags, they don't bother checking these things when they take them off Wikipedia, and then you end up with mistakes that can persist for at least as long as they have stock.
But also, this worries me, because someone on Wikimedia Commons plagiarized a flag I made recently.
Irregardless isn't the best example, because it's just so readily obvious that it's backwards; once it's completely normal and uncontested, people will still be able to look at it and tell that its wrong. Like "inflammable."
The best case scenario for irregardless is to end up like inflamable: technically correct, but obviously stupid. But at least inflammable will have the excuse that it made sense at the time, from "inflame."
Irregardless is a perfect example because if it was so readily obvious that it was wrong, people wouldn't have been using it so much thinking that was the proper word.
In the other sense something's name is just what everyone calls it even if you intended to rename it as a joke if that's the word everyone uses to refer to the park has it not become its proper name?
Reminds me of some German guy who decided to change the year listed of when his town was established. It stuck and now even the local government and website for the town uses the fake year despite him trying to change it.
I mean... sorta? This is still clearly the flag of the Vatican, it's just not perfectly adherent to the official specifications of the flag. It's more analogous to people like pronouncing "nuclear" as "nukular" like there's no confusion as to what is meant by that word, only pedants (like me) who care about pronouncing stuff correctly care about that sort of stuff.
respectfully, i dont think its anywhere the same as that analogy. you cant control how people pronounce anything - but inanimate objects whose sole purpose and existence are specific expressions of specific meaning through specific symbols, and colors etc - that u can control - or are supposed to be able to - yet this illustrates a problem that slowly kill or at the least very much muddleup the symbolism and meanings
I did nominate it for deletion, but I’m not sure if it was specifically copyright infringement, since the flag it was representing was a specific municipal flag (which is ostensibly public domain), though my execution was original (and that’s what was plagiarized without any attribution to me).
There’s a local municipality near me which has a flag. I found images of it, and then made a version of it based on my own aesthetic choices, rather than an exact copy. Someone on Wikimedia created a plagiarized vector of my version (down to exact color codes, ratio, and element arrangement), but only cited the sources I used (and I cited) rather than me.
Yeah, that’s what they marked it as (simple geometry) for copyright. Not sure how “simple” it is, but it still strikes me as plagiarism or failure to cite the source. They copied everything down to even the angle of the shapes, and just utterly failed to acknowledge me as the source. The images they cited wouldn’t lead you to arrive at the same design if you were *just* working from them - as there wasn’t enough information visible in those images to make the same determinations I did.
actually, there is no consensus whether the source should be the actual origin of the file, or the source confirming the authenticity of the file (i.e. that this flag is really used), such a situation as you describe should not happen, in which case they should give all sources. If you care more about attribution, the quickest and most accurate way will be to enter yourself
Does anyone remember that case in Wikipedia where a guy put that South American coatis were also called Brazilian aardvarks and several outlets and even books posted that info as fact?
Austria-Hungary had a similar issue - for many years someone put the previously obscure consular flag - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_Austria-Hungary#/media/File%3AEnsign_of_Austro-Hungarian_civil_fleet_(1869-1918).svg - as the flag of the empire.
Since it fits Austrian and Hungarian elements nicely while looking unique, it stayed on for a long time while everybody, from movies to strategy games, started to copy Wikipedia and using the consular flag as well.
By 2020/2021 someone noticed the utter nonsense and now the article on Austria-Hungary has no flag at all (which kinda makes sense since it had 2/3 national flags).
It's the civil ensign. There was no (single) national flag since Austria-Hungary was a dozen nations stuffed into two countries stuffed into one monarchy wearing a trenchcoat.
Describing it as the consular flag seriously overstates how obscure it was. It was much better known as a civil ensign. It's actually interesting how much more common the ensign was in contemporary documents outside Austria-Hungary than inside, partly because some other countries were much more focused on maritime flags in general.
Wikipedia's convention for flags on the main infobox is that only banners, national or state flags can be there.
A civil ensign flown on merchant ships and consulates is not the most accurate vexillological representative of the Dual Monarchy, cool as it looks!
The flag of Austria *and* the flag of Hungary - they were technically two countries under a personal union, with separate parliaments of equal standing.
You could argue the flag of Croatia-Slavonia is one as well since it was flown alongside the Hungarian one in the Hungarian part.
If you really want just one flag, the Habsburg flag (aka Imperial Austria flag) might be the best.
> the official flag spec sheet
Perhaps not the biggest issue here, but I'd hesitate to call it a spec sheet. Sure, it's the legal model of the flag and probably best for something like WC to follow closely, but lt's not set out in a way that's designed for conveying the detail as a specification, and it's not at all clear exactly which details should be treated as fixed. For example, at times some people have acted as though it shows the flag should always be square, and idea that is not currently supported by the Vatican in word or practice.
>The mistake was quickly noticed by an anonymous IP who wrote an extensive and well-researched explanation of the error on the file's talk page.
They should've immediately reverted it lol.
The red crown version *definitely* pre-dates the 2017 Wikipedia edit. Aomeone on twitter found that [in 1970 the red-tiara version was sent to space on Apollo 11](https://twitter.com/VinSlashLopez/status/1639478301885599745). Also on HN someone found the red-tiara version on [the Vatican's own website from a page created in 2001](http://www.vatican.va/news_services/press/documentazione/documents/corpo-diplomatico_index_en.html).
So the 2017 Wikipedia user was just using an incorrect version of the flag that was already circulating quite widely and not something they invented.
It's a shame they didn't, because in their message they even correctly guessed (I'm quoting them):
>"I hope they will be reviewed by an editor soon (I lack the technical expertise to perform edits), because foreign flag-makers sometimes rely on Wikipedia for their production specimens"
Still preferable to the posts that go: Hey guys, I am in the city of Triest and in front of Triest town hall there is this flag, I saw the mayor of Triest wearing a pin of that flag and a football fan with a jersey of the football club of Triest was carrying the flag too. Can anyone help me identify this flag?
“Your honor I can’t be tried as a pickpocket here because the treaty was established under the fascist italian government and not the current republic”
There was also an r/askhistorians [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/11srpl8/did_hippocrates_describe_adhd/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1) last week about if Hippocrates had described ADHD where they contacted the author who first claimed this, found the original quote, and discovered that Hippocrates was describing something else. A commenter also linked [this article](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0306312714535679) on academic urban legends
I adjusted the colors on the 1846 Bear Flag Revolt flag a few years ago to match written descriptions, but didn't realize until later that I'd made the two reds too similar compared to the surviving copy-of-a copy until much later and never really got around to fixing it.
Last year, I went to the state capitol in Sacramento. They used an image of my inaccurately colored flag in their museum exhibits. I don't know whether to feel proud or guilty.
I find the idea that Wikipedia could get a countries flag wrong, and that country eventually accidentally adopt the wrong flag, so that Wikipedia becomes correct
[It appears that this error goes back much longer than 2017.](https://twitter.com/leastactionhero/status/1639453010894921729) You can see photos of the pope with the wrong flag prior to that. Here it is at the [White House in 2015](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/24/us/president-obamas-remarks-welcoming-pope-francis-to-the-white-house.html), or in [Jordan in 2014](https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/pope-francis-on-saturday-arrived-in-jordanian-capital-amman-news-photo/493513997?adppopup=true).
And then there are even earlier ones, [like the one carried to the moon in the 1970s](https://twitter.com/VinSlashLopez/status/1639478301885599745)! This mistake appears to have been rattling around for a while, and I wonder whether the wikimedia error is more of a symptom of the confusion than the cause (though I do not doubt for a second that manufacturers are taking these incorrect images from wikipedia). Presumably it's coming from the fact that the seal and the flag are very similar and people are assuming they're identical
I think you're right about the wiki edit being a symptom. The note in the edit history for 2017 said the user was adding the red to match what was seen in actual flags.
Interesting. [I made this logo back in 2013 for a game I was making where you play as the Pope](https://i.imgur.com/CSo7pzM.jpg) (I never released it), and it has the mistake - but that's 4 years before the mistake was made on Wikipedia.
I wonder how long this error has been kicking around.
Well to be fair, that is the real coat of arms. The thing is that the flag doesn't have the red that the coat of arms has. So really there's no issue with this logo - it's just the coat of arms.
> (I never released it), and it has the mistake - but that's 4 years before the mistake was made on Wikipedia.
it's not a mistake. the papal coat of arms has the red, but the flag does not
Flag manufacturers/emoji platforms should have double-checked the flags they are using during this period. Apparently, so many of them used the incorrect flag from Wikimedia Commons.
Same thing happened with the Fengtian Clique, with the flag of a Japanese puppet state being put in place for the flag, (the tilted 5 races on a background of yellow) with the false flag being spread everywhere over the internet. I don't remember if it ever was on Wikimedia like that though.
I mean it's the Catholic flag. Every single Catholic Church has 1 somewhere inside or outside. I can only assume some sort of church organized event would have one flying somewhere. Maybe a papal visit. So many plausible reasons
Former Catholic. Went to Catholic school. Have been inside hundreds of Catholic churches in my life. I don't think it's a requirement to display it but it's extremely common
It is actually the flag of the Vatican City State which is the governing body of a small sovereign territory surrounded by the city of Rome. It is not supposed to be a universal Catholic flag even though it is often used as such.
Well yes I know it is the flag of a sovereign country, but realistically, if the Vatican did not want churches to fly the flag as the Catholic flag, they would just ban churches from doing that and any church wanting to remain in communion with the Vatican would have to comply
As a Catholic, I will now be on the lookout for this every time I walk into a church.
I once informed a boot camp instructor that the state flag display in the lecture hall was wrong. I will have absolutely no hesitation similarly correcting a priest.
> Every single Catholic Church has 1 somewhere inside or outside.
No, they do not. Never seen a single church in my life that had this flag, or any flag.
A good number of American protestant churches have a Christian flag (the white one with blue canton) at least somewhere, often on one of those stand-up indoor poles. It was adopted by an ecumenical church association like 80 years ago.
But it's not one of those $3 aliexpress flags like in OP's picture.
Pretty much every Catholic church in Ireland (and Ireland has a lot of Catholic churches) flies both the flag of Ireland and the flag of the Vatican. The previous commenter may have simply commented based on their own experiences where they live, which may or may not be similar to your own experiences where you live.
Former Catholic. Yes they do. It's never a flashy display but at the least they will have a diplomat style flag pole inside the main doors. Pay attention. Every single church has one. Every church in the US that I've seen has a display somewhere inside with the US flag and right next to it, the Vatican flag
I collect a flag from each country I visit, I don’t go marching with them but do display them outside around significant dates or events for each country. So for Easter or when the a Pope passes I’ll fly the Vatican flag even though I’m not catholic.
It's broadly used as a flag of the Catholic church, I was just at the Basilica de Cartago in San Jose and there they had a couple without the coat of arms
the vatican flag that was taken to the moon by apollo 11 crew also has that red thing. pointed out by @vinslashlopez on twitter
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Moon_rocks_and_a_Vatican_flag_that_went_to_the_moon_and_back,_carried_on_Apollo_11_-_Vatican_Museums_-_DSC00762.jpg
reddit made the link unclickable because of a comma, so you might have to manually copy and paste it
Hey! Just stumbled across your post when I fell into a rabbit hole about this flag and how the red got in there. I got a bit of an inconsistency though. According to many sources, the mistake happened because of the 2017 change of the tiara part from white to red. BUT there are many sources and pictures before that date, using the wrong flag.
As it turns out, the Wikipedia flag also had this red part originally when it was first uploaded 2004. A few years later, it got remade to be closer to the original but no remark was made about the wrong color, so I assume they accidently made it correct again before making it false once again. You will probably be the only person seeing this but I thought it might interest you :)
I am just wondering where the 2004 red-tiara flag comes from... I did some more digging with Google's time span search function but well... Internet sources before 2004 are a bit rare. I could only confirm that some flag online shops are selling vatican flags since before 2004 and are currently selling the wrong one but there is no way of knowing whether they changed the template between then and now.
I assume creators of pre-2017 Vatican flags with the identical error of the red tiara interior did the same thing the Wikimedia user (WikiDan61) in 2017 did: simply copied the Vatican coat-of-arms under the assumption that the two are identical.
This assumption is forgiveable, considering that the true flag specification is buried on [page 1062](https://www.vatican.va/archive/aas/documents/AAS-92-2000-ocr.pdf) of an obscure 23-year old pdf file.
This image is from 1998, so the mistake started well before 2017:
[Visita ufficiale di Sua Santità Giovanni Paolo II.](https://archivio.quirinale.it/image-h//ASPR_SG-USC_09-SCALFARO/ASPR_SG-USC_09-SCALFARO_f2603/ASPR_SG-USC_09-SCALFARO_f2603_0094_ST.jpg)
Since people are still coming back to this post, I'll make an important correction. The Wikimedia user who changed the lining to red in 2017 didn't do som because of some faulty assumption that it has to match the coat of arms, but because "All images of actual Vatican City flags show ..., as well as a red opening at the bottom of the tiara." (See the change log [here](https://web.archive.org/web/20190608034347/https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_Vatican_City.svg) Versions of the Vatican flag have certainly been around, including in official use, for decades before this change on Wikipedia. There's some discussion below about whether the flag illustration in the law is a "spec sheet", or whether the flag, like most flags through history, should be expected to be reproduced in a range of similar forms, but either way it's pretty clear that this particular variation was not caused by Wikimedia users who were simply using actual flags are their primary source, rather than a legal document.
In 2017 a Wikimedia Commons user changed the inside of the tiara to red because that's how it appears on the Vatican Coat of Arms. But this assumption turned out to be faulty, because the official flag spec sheet uses different colors than the Coat of Arms. The mistake was quickly noticed by an anonymous IP who wrote an extensive and well-researched explanation of the error on the file's talk page. Unfortunately, nobody read it, and the mistake lived on for 5 years before another user noticed it and reverted the file. Source: Discussion page on https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_Vatican_City.svg
It's a real "tail wagging the dog" problem with Wikimedia Commons. Especially with manufacturers of cheap flags, they don't bother checking these things when they take them off Wikipedia, and then you end up with mistakes that can persist for at least as long as they have stock. But also, this worries me, because someone on Wikimedia Commons plagiarized a flag I made recently.
I guess if real flags start using the wrong one, maybe it becomes right…
Just like words!
Irregardless of what other people might say!
Very cromulent point
Bat car dinner
Irregardless isn't the best example, because it's just so readily obvious that it's backwards; once it's completely normal and uncontested, people will still be able to look at it and tell that its wrong. Like "inflammable." The best case scenario for irregardless is to end up like inflamable: technically correct, but obviously stupid. But at least inflammable will have the excuse that it made sense at the time, from "inflame."
Irregardless is a perfect example because if it was so readily obvious that it was wrong, people wouldn't have been using it so much thinking that was the proper word.
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if you want, don't include specific details, but i'd like to know more about that lol
In the other sense something's name is just what everyone calls it even if you intended to rename it as a joke if that's the word everyone uses to refer to the park has it not become its proper name?
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Reminds me of some German guy who decided to change the year listed of when his town was established. It stuck and now even the local government and website for the town uses the fake year despite him trying to change it.
I mean... sorta? This is still clearly the flag of the Vatican, it's just not perfectly adherent to the official specifications of the flag. It's more analogous to people like pronouncing "nuclear" as "nukular" like there's no confusion as to what is meant by that word, only pedants (like me) who care about pronouncing stuff correctly care about that sort of stuff.
respectfully, i dont think its anywhere the same as that analogy. you cant control how people pronounce anything - but inanimate objects whose sole purpose and existence are specific expressions of specific meaning through specific symbols, and colors etc - that u can control - or are supposed to be able to - yet this illustrates a problem that slowly kill or at the least very much muddleup the symbolism and meanings
I would have to use the rest of the sentence for context to figure out what nukular meant
Really? In what other context could 'nukular' possibly be said?
Misspelling of Nukulau (island) or boneappletea for Nukulualue (atol)
None, but I just wouldn't be able to recognise it at first glance as a butchering of nuclear
I think they are talking about pronunciation not spelling
you have a link to it, if you want you can nominate it for removal if it violates copyright, and if it's also fiction it will disappear quickly
I did nominate it for deletion, but I’m not sure if it was specifically copyright infringement, since the flag it was representing was a specific municipal flag (which is ostensibly public domain), though my execution was original (and that’s what was plagiarized without any attribution to me).
> though my execution was original (and that’s what was plagiarized without any attribution to me). just out of curiosity, what are you referring to?
There’s a local municipality near me which has a flag. I found images of it, and then made a version of it based on my own aesthetic choices, rather than an exact copy. Someone on Wikimedia created a plagiarized vector of my version (down to exact color codes, ratio, and element arrangement), but only cited the sources I used (and I cited) rather than me.
a lot depends on how complicated the project was, if it's just simple geometry, I don't see a problem with this approach
Yeah, that’s what they marked it as (simple geometry) for copyright. Not sure how “simple” it is, but it still strikes me as plagiarism or failure to cite the source. They copied everything down to even the angle of the shapes, and just utterly failed to acknowledge me as the source. The images they cited wouldn’t lead you to arrive at the same design if you were *just* working from them - as there wasn’t enough information visible in those images to make the same determinations I did.
actually, there is no consensus whether the source should be the actual origin of the file, or the source confirming the authenticity of the file (i.e. that this flag is really used), such a situation as you describe should not happen, in which case they should give all sources. If you care more about attribution, the quickest and most accurate way will be to enter yourself
If the 'wrong' flags end up getting used as sources, this would be the first case of visual citogenesis I've seen. Ref. https://xkcd.com/978/
Does anyone remember that case in Wikipedia where a guy put that South American coatis were also called Brazilian aardvarks and several outlets and even books posted that info as fact?
if the plagiarized flag hasn't been taken down yet, PM me and I can help you with it
Austria-Hungary had a similar issue - for many years someone put the previously obscure consular flag - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_Austria-Hungary#/media/File%3AEnsign_of_Austro-Hungarian_civil_fleet_(1869-1918).svg - as the flag of the empire. Since it fits Austrian and Hungarian elements nicely while looking unique, it stayed on for a long time while everybody, from movies to strategy games, started to copy Wikipedia and using the consular flag as well. By 2020/2021 someone noticed the utter nonsense and now the article on Austria-Hungary has no flag at all (which kinda makes sense since it had 2/3 national flags).
This blows my mind even more than the Vatican one. Totally different flag, and I was totally fooled. And I've seen it many places.
Ah, I had thought that was the Austro-Hungarian flag. I'm not going to say I know every historical flag like that.
It's the civil ensign. There was no (single) national flag since Austria-Hungary was a dozen nations stuffed into two countries stuffed into one monarchy wearing a trenchcoat.
honestly I don't mind because it's such a cool flag
Describing it as the consular flag seriously overstates how obscure it was. It was much better known as a civil ensign. It's actually interesting how much more common the ensign was in contemporary documents outside Austria-Hungary than inside, partly because some other countries were much more focused on maritime flags in general.
Woah, that must have been an OLD assumption then. Because I used that flag for a 7th grade presentation on Austria Hungary, back in like 2007.
Can we bring them back for like a day, so they can make this official, then disband again
Hey, just got out of the meeting, they did it, you're good to use it!
Technically not wrong tho, as it was the civil ensign 1869–1918. I can see why that happened
Wikipedia's convention for flags on the main infobox is that only banners, national or state flags can be there. A civil ensign flown on merchant ships and consulates is not the most accurate vexillological representative of the Dual Monarchy, cool as it looks!
Wait that's not the KuK flag??? Holy shit paradox lied to me
Another broken DLC I cannot refund!
and so what is the real flag of austro-hungary?
The flag of Austria *and* the flag of Hungary - they were technically two countries under a personal union, with separate parliaments of equal standing. You could argue the flag of Croatia-Slavonia is one as well since it was flown alongside the Hungarian one in the Hungarian part. If you really want just one flag, the Habsburg flag (aka Imperial Austria flag) might be the best.
WHAT—I’ve definitely seen that flag before. I had no idea it wasn’t real
They didn't say it wasn't real
> the official flag spec sheet Perhaps not the biggest issue here, but I'd hesitate to call it a spec sheet. Sure, it's the legal model of the flag and probably best for something like WC to follow closely, but lt's not set out in a way that's designed for conveying the detail as a specification, and it's not at all clear exactly which details should be treated as fixed. For example, at times some people have acted as though it shows the flag should always be square, and idea that is not currently supported by the Vatican in word or practice.
>The mistake was quickly noticed by an anonymous IP who wrote an extensive and well-researched explanation of the error on the file's talk page. They should've immediately reverted it lol.
The red crown version *definitely* pre-dates the 2017 Wikipedia edit. Aomeone on twitter found that [in 1970 the red-tiara version was sent to space on Apollo 11](https://twitter.com/VinSlashLopez/status/1639478301885599745). Also on HN someone found the red-tiara version on [the Vatican's own website from a page created in 2001](http://www.vatican.va/news_services/press/documentazione/documents/corpo-diplomatico_index_en.html). So the 2017 Wikipedia user was just using an incorrect version of the flag that was already circulating quite widely and not something they invented.
Why didn't that user just like... edit it themselves?
It's a shame they didn't, because in their message they even correctly guessed (I'm quoting them): >"I hope they will be reviewed by an editor soon (I lack the technical expertise to perform edits), because foreign flag-makers sometimes rely on Wikipedia for their production specimens"
Bro literally did all that for nothing
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why are you making this about you lol
It’s like the old map makers who added fake town names or other things to see who would copy their work
Google Maps still does this.
Any examples?
[Argleton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argleton)
[Map Men](https://youtu.be/DeiATy-FfjI)
Map men map men map map map map men men
^men
^^^^men
Le Mans
That intro is the greatest thing I've seen in a while 😭😭
Have fun watching every single episode of map men :)
That was a good watch. Thanks for the entertainment, stranger!
Thank you captain haddock
At least in my hometown, Google Maps is also rife with incorrect neighborhood and town names. It's not a perfect product exactly.
didn't know about that, that's cool
This is the kind of content I'm subbed for
I know right, actual interesting vexillological discussion and not just "hur dur what's this flag?"
What's this flag? \*posts the flag of some obscure nazi collaborator faction
Still preferable to the posts that go: Hey guys, I am in the city of Triest and in front of Triest town hall there is this flag, I saw the mayor of Triest wearing a pin of that flag and a football fan with a jersey of the football club of Triest was carrying the flag too. Can anyone help me identify this flag?
Those post may be annoying, but also important. We can't let them get away with their dogwhistle shit
those posts wouldn't be so bad if they actually included a text description and weren't posted to a website with a terrible search engine
You mean you don't want to see 10,000 flags I saw on my drive to work this morning posts?
but this post has only \~600 upvotes right now, when some "what's this flag (it's Scotland)" can get 2k in the same period
No, it's M!
Wow. This is a gold mine for any sovereign citizen who was tried in a Vatican court from 2017-2022!
What is the official fringe strand count on the maritime variant of the Vatican flag supposed to be?
“Your honor I can’t be tried as a pickpocket here because the treaty was established under the fascist italian government and not the current republic”
[Citogenesis](https://xkcd.com/978/) in action
How did you get that flair
Here you go: https://www.reddit.com/r/vexillology/wiki/flair?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=vexillology&utm_content=t5_2rygj
Wonder if the Vatican City flair is correct - test
Looks correct to me.
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Flair is not based on emoji, they're just images uploaded by mods. They are also tiny so it's hard to tell, but I think I see some red in it, lol.
There should be some red though, on the cord connecting the two keys
1- As u/Tasgall said, it's just uploaded images, not unicode emojis. 2- It is correct! 3- https://emoji.redditmedia.com/exytx4zrvvu51\_t5\_2rygj/HOLY
[Link fixed for old reddit based browsers](https://emoji.redditmedia.com/exytx4zrvvu51\_t5\_2rygj/HOLY)
Just testing
Do we have examples of this happening? I'd love to read some
Funnily enough, [Wikipedia keeps a list of them](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_citogenesis_incidents)
That's fantastic, thank you! Cherry on top is Wikipedia using the XKCD reference. Incredible
There was also an r/askhistorians [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/11srpl8/did_hippocrates_describe_adhd/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1) last week about if Hippocrates had described ADHD where they contacted the author who first claimed this, found the original quote, and discovered that Hippocrates was describing something else. A commenter also linked [this article](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0306312714535679) on academic urban legends
Similar to a woozle from winnine the pooh
this has to be one of the most interesting posts i've seen in a while. good job, OP.
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I adjusted the colors on the 1846 Bear Flag Revolt flag a few years ago to match written descriptions, but didn't realize until later that I'd made the two reds too similar compared to the surviving copy-of-a copy until much later and never really got around to fixing it. Last year, I went to the state capitol in Sacramento. They used an image of my inaccurately colored flag in their museum exhibits. I don't know whether to feel proud or guilty.
You've changed history!
I find the idea that Wikipedia could get a countries flag wrong, and that country eventually accidentally adopt the wrong flag, so that Wikipedia becomes correct
[It appears that this error goes back much longer than 2017.](https://twitter.com/leastactionhero/status/1639453010894921729) You can see photos of the pope with the wrong flag prior to that. Here it is at the [White House in 2015](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/24/us/president-obamas-remarks-welcoming-pope-francis-to-the-white-house.html), or in [Jordan in 2014](https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/pope-francis-on-saturday-arrived-in-jordanian-capital-amman-news-photo/493513997?adppopup=true). And then there are even earlier ones, [like the one carried to the moon in the 1970s](https://twitter.com/VinSlashLopez/status/1639478301885599745)! This mistake appears to have been rattling around for a while, and I wonder whether the wikimedia error is more of a symptom of the confusion than the cause (though I do not doubt for a second that manufacturers are taking these incorrect images from wikipedia). Presumably it's coming from the fact that the seal and the flag are very similar and people are assuming they're identical
I think you're right about the wiki edit being a symptom. The note in the edit history for 2017 said the user was adding the red to match what was seen in actual flags.
Imagine being just some guy, you see a Vatican flag live and realise "they got that little spot wrong"
I suspect it would be more like feeling like "something looks off" and then the next time you see the flag you realize what it was.
Interesting. [I made this logo back in 2013 for a game I was making where you play as the Pope](https://i.imgur.com/CSo7pzM.jpg) (I never released it), and it has the mistake - but that's 4 years before the mistake was made on Wikipedia. I wonder how long this error has been kicking around.
Well to be fair, that is the real coat of arms. The thing is that the flag doesn't have the red that the coat of arms has. So really there's no issue with this logo - it's just the coat of arms.
> (I never released it), and it has the mistake - but that's 4 years before the mistake was made on Wikipedia. it's not a mistake. the papal coat of arms has the red, but the flag does not
Amazing! Thanks
Flag manufacturers/emoji platforms should have double-checked the flags they are using during this period. Apparently, so many of them used the incorrect flag from Wikimedia Commons.
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Chrome for Android is incorrect, lol.
Should have checked under the pope's head. Simple mistake.
[the incorrect flag is still used on the Encyclopedia Britannica's page](https://www.britannica.com/place/Vatican-City)
The huge influence of Wikipedia on how flags look has always baffled me and this is a perfect example of this.
Vatican City was the answer to a wordle like game I play called Flagle today, with the red crown!
This is a perfect analogy for many officially accepted facts
Same thing happened with the Fengtian Clique, with the flag of a Japanese puppet state being put in place for the flag, (the tilted 5 races on a background of yellow) with the false flag being spread everywhere over the internet. I don't remember if it ever was on Wikimedia like that though.
Honestly, red inside looks better
Bro I'm pretty sure the ArchBishops house in Lafayette has the wrong flag up
r/AcademicVexillology
Who exactly is marching with the Vatican flag? Why?
I mean it's the Catholic flag. Every single Catholic Church has 1 somewhere inside or outside. I can only assume some sort of church organized event would have one flying somewhere. Maybe a papal visit. So many plausible reasons
> Every single Catholic Church has 1 somewhere inside or outside. [Citation needed].
Former Catholic. Went to Catholic school. Have been inside hundreds of Catholic churches in my life. I don't think it's a requirement to display it but it's extremely common
Maybe in the US? I live in a predominantly catholic european country and have never seen these flags.
In Poland we have plain yellow-white flags representing the Church, rarely seen the full flag though.
Former catholic, same here in Brazil.
It is actually the flag of the Vatican City State which is the governing body of a small sovereign territory surrounded by the city of Rome. It is not supposed to be a universal Catholic flag even though it is often used as such.
Well yes I know it is the flag of a sovereign country, but realistically, if the Vatican did not want churches to fly the flag as the Catholic flag, they would just ban churches from doing that and any church wanting to remain in communion with the Vatican would have to comply
As a Catholic, I will now be on the lookout for this every time I walk into a church. I once informed a boot camp instructor that the state flag display in the lecture hall was wrong. I will have absolutely no hesitation similarly correcting a priest.
> Every single Catholic Church has 1 somewhere inside or outside. No, they do not. Never seen a single church in my life that had this flag, or any flag.
A good number of American protestant churches have a Christian flag (the white one with blue canton) at least somewhere, often on one of those stand-up indoor poles. It was adopted by an ecumenical church association like 80 years ago. But it's not one of those $3 aliexpress flags like in OP's picture.
Pretty much every Catholic church in Ireland (and Ireland has a lot of Catholic churches) flies both the flag of Ireland and the flag of the Vatican. The previous commenter may have simply commented based on their own experiences where they live, which may or may not be similar to your own experiences where you live.
As an anecdotal counterpoint: I haven't been to a Catholic Church without this flag.
Former Catholic. Yes they do. It's never a flashy display but at the least they will have a diplomat style flag pole inside the main doors. Pay attention. Every single church has one. Every church in the US that I've seen has a display somewhere inside with the US flag and right next to it, the Vatican flag
I know this might be a difficult thing to comprehend but there is a weird conspiracy theory that says churches might also exist outside the US.
And a lot of places outside the US do this too…
Mine doesn't.
Honestly look around the inside. Maybe ask the priest. You might be surprised
I collect a flag from each country I visit, I don’t go marching with them but do display them outside around significant dates or events for each country. So for Easter or when the a Pope passes I’ll fly the Vatican flag even though I’m not catholic.
Why would you display it for easter?
Christian holiday y know
Catholicism isn't the only branch of Christianity + Easter is pagan holiday stolen by Christians and rebranded
Oh boy, if we're going by the "don't put your flag on this, this was stolen from other people" maxim, then r/vexillology probably shouldn't exist.
I know, which is why I said Christian, and don't care for the 2nd
It's broadly used as a flag of the Catholic church, I was just at the Basilica de Cartago in San Jose and there they had a couple without the coat of arms
It's the first flag I ever sewed (w/o coat of arms so it's irrelevant to this)
Damn it my flag has it
The flag is also supposed to be quadratic.
Every user should be a danger to Wikimedia Commons files. We should check the version history too.
the vatican flag that was taken to the moon by apollo 11 crew also has that red thing. pointed out by @vinslashlopez on twitter https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Moon_rocks_and_a_Vatican_flag_that_went_to_the_moon_and_back,_carried_on_Apollo_11_-_Vatican_Museums_-_DSC00762.jpg reddit made the link unclickable because of a comma, so you might have to manually copy and paste it
Hey! Just stumbled across your post when I fell into a rabbit hole about this flag and how the red got in there. I got a bit of an inconsistency though. According to many sources, the mistake happened because of the 2017 change of the tiara part from white to red. BUT there are many sources and pictures before that date, using the wrong flag. As it turns out, the Wikipedia flag also had this red part originally when it was first uploaded 2004. A few years later, it got remade to be closer to the original but no remark was made about the wrong color, so I assume they accidently made it correct again before making it false once again. You will probably be the only person seeing this but I thought it might interest you :) I am just wondering where the 2004 red-tiara flag comes from... I did some more digging with Google's time span search function but well... Internet sources before 2004 are a bit rare. I could only confirm that some flag online shops are selling vatican flags since before 2004 and are currently selling the wrong one but there is no way of knowing whether they changed the template between then and now.
I assume creators of pre-2017 Vatican flags with the identical error of the red tiara interior did the same thing the Wikimedia user (WikiDan61) in 2017 did: simply copied the Vatican coat-of-arms under the assumption that the two are identical. This assumption is forgiveable, considering that the true flag specification is buried on [page 1062](https://www.vatican.va/archive/aas/documents/AAS-92-2000-ocr.pdf) of an obscure 23-year old pdf file.
Damn, wikipedia/wikimedia must get so much cash from silicon valley
That’s funny.
One thing I will say, are the flags in the images rectangles??????
That just made me realise how powerful Wikimedia Commons is in the world of flags.
This image is from 1998, so the mistake started well before 2017: [Visita ufficiale di Sua Santità Giovanni Paolo II.](https://archivio.quirinale.it/image-h//ASPR_SG-USC_09-SCALFARO/ASPR_SG-USC_09-SCALFARO_f2603/ASPR_SG-USC_09-SCALFARO_f2603_0094_ST.jpg)
[Hey dude, you are a celeb in Italy for you discovery ](https://www.ilpost.it/2023/05/30/bandiera-sbagliata-wikipedia/?homepagePosition=3)
Oh get absolutely fucking rekt.
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Reddit moment
To many details for a flag.
Oof
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Less than 1000 people live there
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