A Vatican-Sized Flag Mystery
Reddit user “horizontalhole” discovered something curious:
From 2017–2022 the Vatican flag SVG on Wikimedia Commons contained a mistake. You can now tell which flag manufacturers/emoji platforms used the file.
[…]
Indeed, Becker includes a series of flags with variations in the colour used for the keys, the cord element, and the tiara, in the 1980s through 2013. Even well past the publication of what the Vatican deemed its official flag, versions shown in and around Vatican City have differences in the shading of each of these elements. Becker goes on to write that these “variations suggest that Vatican authorities could clarify the flag’s details more precisely”, and laments how “local flagmakers often rely on questionable sources (e.g., Wikipedia)” (106).
It does seem that, officially, the version of the Vatican flag with a white-filled tiara is the most correct option. But even within Vatican City itself and in official use, there is considerable variation. Perhaps most relevant to the original post, it is not necessarily true that a Vatican flag with a red-filled tiara is derived from the 2017–2022 Wikimedia image. However, with a more correct version in the world’s most-used encyclopaedia, it may be a productive case of citogenesis.
See also: Emojipedia.
Previously:
- Hiding Easter Eggs in Maps
- Yelp Inserts Tracking Phone Numbers
- Genius Accuses Google of Copying Its Lyrics Data
- Fingerprinting Swift Code Using Spacecrypt
- Xerox Scanners and Photocopiers Randomly Alter Numbers
