Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Heraldry and vexillology/Archive 2006

message: The removal of images originating from the Flags Of The World website is well under way apparantly. I see images have been deleted from Royal Standard of Norway for one. The decition to delete them has been made and it was probably the right one, but now many articles might be left almost pointless. Replacement images should have been found or made beforehand and are now certainly urgently needed. How do we deal with this situation? Inge 00:39, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I could take my digital camera and take pictures of flags.  Seems better than nothing.--Bedford 00:43, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That is a good idea. I must admit I am a bit annoyed with the deletion of the somewhat tedious work I put in when creating List of flags of Norway. That article has suffered quite a bit and I hope it can be rebuilt some day. Inge 00:55, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The best solution in the long run would in my opinion be if someone could create fre-use images to replace the deleted ones.Inge 01:01, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, with so many being unoriginal three stipes up and down, that shouldn't be that hard.--Bedford 01:25, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I created a bunch of Norwegian flags, mostly the military ones (and sorry about the deletion, I was the one who mostly did them). User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 04:01, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I see that it had to be done and I am not annoyed with the people doing it:). Do you think that the other deleted flags of Norway will be recreated sometime soon? Inge 09:10, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The Flag of Denmark article also suffered pretty badly when a copyvio was deleted from Commons, so the "who may use what" section is pretty useless now. I think I could find most of the images or scan them from books from the 1950s, but I'm not sure if we can claim fair use for so many images in one article. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 09:47, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: With or without the pictures, that section really needs to include descriptions of the flags in words. JPD (talk) 09:52, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I know, it is on my list. I had been thinking about creating a similar list of Danish flags, but I abandoned that idea when I saw what had happend with the Norwegian material. Perhaps we could get help from Commons:WikiProject Flags ? Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 10:00, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good idea, though I am also part of that Wikiproject too. I been getting a lot of folks asking to draw stuff in SVG; just give me time folks. I know what yall want, but just finding time to sit down and play with inkscape is the hard part. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 13:43, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: FOTW images

message: I just noticed the new categories listed to the project page, and they reminded me of an old oddity. Sure, it is a minor matter, but perhaps it would be be an idea to settle from the beginning if we should write "Coat of arms" or "Coat of Arms"? It seems to me that the standard most commonly used is the lowercase version (although the actual headline in the article space can use capitalised forms, e.g. "National Coat of Arms of Denmark" in the article space but "Coat of arms of Denmark" as the actual article name). However, I've noticed that the articles on Polish heraldry apparently use capitalized names, which I believe is a former standard. I personally prefer lowercase forms in the article names, but do anybody have any strong feelings about this? Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 21:30, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, I rechecked this one and apparently the Polish material was renamed less than two weeks ago (I should learn to check such things). Perhaps a standard actually exits? Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 21:36, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Have a look at Category_talk:National_coats_of_arms. The consensus there was for arms (lowercase). Dr pda 16:25, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It would be nice if Wikipedia was programmed to automatically detect and accept capitalization variances such as this, making the page utilize both names.  It gets annoying creating redirect pages for each capitalization variance.  --Dulcimerist 22:34, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Coat of arms" or "Coat of Arms" ? 

message: The Heraldry Portal is linked to by this wikiproject. I know that the person that started the portal has left the Wikipedia project. Is there any chance that "WikiProject Heraldry and vexillology" can help manage the portal? I updated some things this past month, but didn't get it all done.--dave-- 18:39, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it would be natural for this project to adopt the heraldry portal and if the mood is there maybe convert it to a heraldry and vexillology portal (at least for the short term). It will add to the administrative side of things, but I am not too conserned. It seems to have functioned well up to now (I only recently discovered it) and the users involved with the portal seem to be a great resource. I believe this project has great potential. Espeshially if you just look at the number of users who have included the User flags interest template on their user page we have a large potential member mass. I have already extended invitations to the users of page one on the list of those using the template. Hopefully we already have a few devoted enthousiasts willing to put in some time among our members (it seems so) :). Inge 13:48, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Heraldry Portal... 

message: Is it possible to display a template both on Commons and on en: Wikipedia? I thought it would be cool if we could create the needed images section as a template which could be displayed on Commons:WikiProject Flags as well as here. That way you would alert both projects, but would only have to make your request once. Inge 16:19, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was looking at the Template help earlier for another reason, and the answer is apparently 'no', so we'll have to think of another way to do things. Regarding coat of arms images, we should communicate with the French and German projects, who are also doing this. Dr pda 20:39, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How about using something like a stub? Just about every image that we require fits on a page of its own somewhere. Would it be possible to create a stub that says "This article requires a flag (or coat of arms).", and assign a category to it. Then you can just look at the pages listed under that category - and that would become the "needed images" section. Does that sounds reasonable? — 52 Pickup 16:50, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Needed images 

message: Now that we've got a reasonable number of members, it would probably be a good idea to direct this manpower in some way, to achieve the project's stated goals of improving Wikipedia's coverage of heraldry and vexillology. Identify and create/improve articles needing creation/improvement is a good general principle, but I feel something a bit more specific is needed. I have a few thoughts
*I like the way the Chemistry Wikiproject has set goals like write articles on 30 important concepts like solution, write articles for 10 major classes of chemical reactions like nucleophilic subsititution. The 'heraldry by country' series is a good start in this direction; maybe we need to think about others
*If we start listing all the articles for creation/improvement on the project page it could become quite long. I've created a sub-page at /Tasks for this instead. If people like this idea we can modify the project page accordingly. Maybe a template like Template:WikiProjectCSBTasks which people could put on their user pages would also be a good idea.
*Regarding improving articles, do we want to take the route of Wikipedia 1.0-style assessment (i.e. this article has been rated Start-class on the project assessment scale sort of thing, which I'm sure everyone has seen)? This has the advantage that (a) you get a count of how many articles within the project's scope are FA-class, GA-class, stubs etc (with a cool little box updated daily by a bot) (b) you can see the progress the project is making, in terms of the number of articles being created, or moving from stub-class to start-class etc, (c) the articles are placed in categories according to quality, which makes finding (for example) a GA-class heraldry/vexillology article easier. The downside is that it does require some work to give a rating to all the articles in the scope of WP:HV (there are about 900 with Template:WikiProject Heraldry and vexillology at the moment, but if everyone did one a day it would still only take a month). If we want to go down this road, I can make the necessary changes to Template:WikiProject Heraldry and vexillology.
*Maybe some sort of numerical goal like getting 1 (2? 5?) article to GA-status per month? As a long term goal it might be nice to get Heraldry and Vexillology to FA status.
Comments? Dr pda 20:39, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I also feel it is time to direct some of the resources we have and I like your suggestions. Inge 15:11, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I am looking forward to see this suggestion implemented. As seen below other users are looking for a place to hand in their requests. I have a long list of images I would like to request, but adding them to the main page would make it very cluttered so I will add them to the /Tasks sub-page just to list them somewhere. Inge 12:01, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Which suggestions specfically were you referring to? I've now linked the Tasks subpage to the project page in the Open Tasks section, and it seems to be getting a bit of activity. I had held off implementing any of the other things I suggested since I only had one response (yours). Dr pda 12:58, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Goals and tasks 

message: A discussion on heraldic cross stubs has been started in the Cercelée article.  Some heraldic crosses have enough information for a full article, while some only have a sentence or two on their own pages.  Additionally, it would be nice to have some added uniformity on some of these; as some designs contain the word "Cross" in the title, while some do not.  Thanks.  --Dulcimerist 22:42, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Cross Stubs

message: I've gone ahead and converted Portal:Heraldry to a Heraldry and Vexillology portal, which can be reached at Portal:Heraldry and Vexillology. (This is just a redirect to Portal:Heraldry, since I didn't want to have to move all the subpages of which it is composed). I've added vexillological material, but I don't have much expertise in this area, so those who do, please have a look and make sure the important points are covered. I hope members of the project will suggest articles for DYK and Selected Article/Picture/Biography for the monthly updates (and maybe even do the monthly updates! I've just done this month's). The actual updating of the portal doesn't take long providing there are suggestions there.
Oh, and I haven't updated the heraldry to do list at the portal to a H&V to do list yet.
I also like the idea of adding a template to the project banner for image required, and as I mentioned up the page I think rating the quality of articles would also be useful. I'm happy to make the necessary changes to the template, but I won't get to it before the weekend. Someone else is welcome to beat me to it :) --Dr pda 02:05, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Portal and Templates 

message: I have now made the changes to the template and created the pages and categories needed for this part of the project. I am not good at these things so I just copied the one from Trains and changed it to fit us. I hope everything whent OK. The page itself isn't pretty yet, but that is because there are links to the statistics which are to be created by a bot. If left alone that should be OK by tomorrow. If everything is OK it's just time to dig in and assess articles :) Inge 11:42, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And the requested image parameter is implemented as well. Inge 11:43, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Nice! I've tweaked the code a bit so the "requested images" list is shown in bold. Now we just have to wait to see if Mathbot can log the assessments automatically or if we have to tweak the code a little. It looks like the bot already logs more than 120 projects (Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Index), so if we have any problems, we can borrow some code here. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 20:42, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks like we still need to do a little tweaking of the code. The bot found the category, but it didn't generate a report. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 07:37, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Forget the last post. Mathbot was a bit slow generating the statistics, but it works! Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 15:28, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Heraldry and vexillology/Assessment|Assessment department]] 

message: I've made a template for articles referring to Australian coats of arms. Should this be shown on the project page? See for yourself: 
--R.carroll 21:28, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sure, I've added both this and the similar UK template to the list of templates. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 15:28, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Australian coats of arms 

message: I find quite confusing the "Flag" of "Entity" (where "Flag" is linked the the Flag of Entity page, and "Entity" is linked as one might expect) formatting used in some of the flag image galleries, e.g., Gallery of sovereign state flags.  I expect many readers would expect Flag to the linked to Flag page, and thus don't click on that link -- which is the only direct route to the page that actually explains the image.  As flag galleries are primarily about flags, and only secondarily about the entities they represent, I propose that each caption as a whole bring the reader directly to the relevant Flag of Entity page.  Only if that page does not exist does it make sense to link only the entity name in the caption to the page for that entity itself, e.g. Flag of "Entity".  Do others agree? --ScottMainwaring 14:11, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I find the practice very useful. It is very likely in my view at least that someone browsing a flag gallery might want to find out more about the particular flag they are seeing and the entity it represents. The article Flag should only be linked to in the top text of the gallery: This gallery contains flags with crosses. If you consistently link Flag of to the spesific flag's page and entitiy to the entity, possible confusion will at least decrease.Inge 15:51, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My mistake, I should have indicated "Flag of" rather than "Flag" was being linked in the style you like.  However, I still maintain that this adds more complexity and risk of link-following mistakes than it returns in terms of direct access to entity pages. And my point about the "Flag" or "Flag of" links is not that they should be linked to the Flag page, but that readers might reasonably expect that they will be linked there — and so avoid clicking on them. --ScottMainwaring 22:31, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Linking captions in galleries 

message: We're having a discussion over at Wiki Project Ships about ship crests. We could use some heraldry expertise in improving the article at US Navy Ship Seals. Everything from what the title of the article should be to some content. Our general consensus right now is that a listing of all ships' crests is not desired, but a more general article about the process of how one is developed and approved might be valuable. Thoughts? Feel free to post here or at the other project page. Thanks. Jinian 13:34, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ship crests 

message: In case anyone is interested, I just finished my blason project on the CoA of all 116 municipalities of Luxembourg, plus the state and royal family and some for the historians. You can have a look either on commons or my userpage. Cheers Spanish Inquisition 10:55, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good work! The images are very nice. Interesting to see a large degree of varitaion on traditional design and at the same time modern topics are not banned :) Inge 11:56, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe I'll some day get the time to write a little history for each of those blazons/coats of arms. I scanned in the relevant book (from the national library) so I can look it all up whenever it's needed. Most of the traditionals designs are based on arms of pre-napoleonic nobility (some are actual medieval grants of arms (Vianden for instance). When the newest series of arms were granted particular care was paid to the fact that all (a few exceptions like Vianden) municipal coat of arms should be distinct from those of their former lords (as many municipalities had requested or even used). Oh and another source for the design of those arms were of course old city/town seals. Anyhow, Spanish Inquisition did a great job assembling the lot.--Caranorn 15:38, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Coat of Arms of Luxembourg 

message: There are some talented artists rendering blazons and donating them as free images to Wikipedia.  Is there a central list of requests for arms and flag images that artists watch?  I would like to suggest a couple that would be useful for articles, and I have neither the talent nor knowledge to render them myself, but I don't want to spam this talk page. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 23:30, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You're welcome to list them on the open tasks page for this project. Alternatively, if they're for specific articles you could tag the talk page of the article with  template (if it's not already), and use the imageneeded and imagedetails parameters, e.g. . This adds the article to the category :Category:Heraldry and vexillology articles needing images. I don't know what visibility either of these places has. Depending on the specific images there may be other wiki-projects who could help - there are French (fr:Projet:Blasons) and German (de:Portal:Wappen) projects concentrating on the arms of those countries (and some others), and there's WikiProject Flags on Commons. Dr pda 00:37, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

text: Thanks.  To add to that excellent array, I have found another request list, at Wikipedia:Requested pictures/Graphics#Flags & Heraldry.   --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 00:54, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Knocking some of the requests out of the way and marking out already completed requests. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 05:50, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Requesting volunteer artwork?

message: Hello Friends. The article John Vanbrugh is a long-featured article that is about a man who served at the College of Arms for a number of years. His article was recently added to the WikiProject, but I'm not sure whether to list it HERE, as his heraldic endeavors make up only a small part of his life narrative. Does this count as a "Featured articles about heraldry or vexillology?"--dave-- 01:08, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The paragraph on his heraldic career makes up a small part of the article, but it is within the scope of this project. I don't think it would do any harm to list him, even though it looks like heraldry wasn't the most important thing in his life... Inge 10:10, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll go ahead and add him, then. Thanks!--dave-- 13:29, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Featured Articles

message: I have created the article Heraldic crown mainly from bits and pieces from other articles. So it needs some work, but I also wanted to know if the name is any good. I feel something else might be better, but I can't come up with anything. Any opinions and suggestions? Inge 14:58, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Heraldic crown]] 

message: Earlier, I asked about image requests and you gave me a few suggestions involving banners. So I placed the  banner on a sample page that required a flag and coat of arms image - the Prussian Province of Jülich-Cleves-Berg. But this entry is not a heraldry entry, and so this banner is not really the right tool for the job. More complete entries on former countries and subdivisions (eg. the Prussian Province of Westphalia) contain the flag and coat of arms in an infobox - and the infobox automatically generated links  below these images to specific pages describing these images. These new pages ARE heraldry entries, or at least will be once they are created.
And so I have taken the liberty of making two banners that are more suitable for such an entry -  and . They are almost completely based on your brilliant  banner, but they are more suitable for the Former Countries and Prussian projects than I am involved with, as it also includes other details such as requests for maps. These banners include separate requests for flags and coats of arms which, when active, place the page in the same image-request categories as those used by the banner for THIS project.
These two projects are still in the early stages, and the banners have not been implemented yet. So I have two questions:
# Is it alright with you if I include these links to this project with these banners? This way we have a more suitable banner for our projects and, at the same time, we can help in building your lists of required images.
# For the subsequent flag and coat of arms pages that each such page will link to, shall we place the  banner for this project on those pages (with Needed-class status)?
I am a great believer in collaboration between projects, and I think that this is the best way to go about it. - 52 Pickup 18:42, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the praise! In fact, this code is very much a rip-off from WP:MILHIST, so Kirill Lokshin is the one to thank. I just patched it up and added a few goodies. Thanks again to Dr pda for being so kind to fix my blunders :) Back to your post. A1) Seems fine to me, doing so  will simply save work for WP:HV, so by all means have it sort into both WP:HV and WP:Prussia categories. A2) I'm not sure how much I love the Needed-class parameter but why not? Only problem I see is that another editor recently told me that empty pages could be speedy deleted, and I honestly don't know if a page with only the talk page active falls into this category. But it is probably just being too cautious. Anyway, setting up a stub article only takes a few minutes, so it is probably an academic issue. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 12:25, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Glad I could help. For the Former Countries project, the Needed-class is a very important one. Many entries either do not exist or are just redirects to similar-sounding-but-incorrect entries (eg. the Kingdom of Bavaria redirects to the modern German state of Bavaria), so I hope we don't have too much trouble with this class. We'll see how it goes. - 52 Pickup 16:35, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image requests for former country entries 

message: While looking around on the German and Dutch wikis, I discovered that some FOTW images are allowed because the original author has given permission. The FOTW artist Jaume Olle gave this declaration on the German Wikipedia which says that his FOTW images may be used here, so long as credit is given. He is responsible for a great volume of work on the FOTW site and so I will slowly reupload his work here - for example: 
If anyone finds such declarations from other FOTW artists, they should also post them here. It makes life a lot easier for all of us - 52 Pickup 18:52, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I also know that James Dignam (User:Grutness to us) and Juan Manuel Gambino gave us permission to use their images and I intentionally avoid tagging those images, since I spoke to them personally. Heck, some of my FOTW work is on Wikipedia, and i allow that. However, if you do upload images, try and not to use JPEG, but use PNG. Thanks. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 19:08, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is really quite simple. I don't think anyone has ever said that FOTW images can't be used, simply that permission depends on the copyright status and author of the particular image. If any image has been released under an appropriate licence, they can be uploaded with the correct licence information. The fact that they are also on FOTW is irrelevant. JPD (talk) 19:10, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: We still provide a source anyways, but if we get permission, we use the license of the image author's choice. So if Jamue wants X license to be used, then we use X license. I personally use CC-BY-SA for my image creations. However, I still see the images we got permission to use still being tagged for deletion by others, so there still seems to be issues in this department needed to be sorted out. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 19:19, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Any image which has the appropriate licence tag and evidence that permission has been given should not be tagged for deletion. If the permission details are on the image page and it is still tagged, the person tagging it for deletion has made a mistake. If it is tagged because the details aren't there, then the problem is the uploader's. If the images were taken from FOTW, then it should be mentioned as the source, but it is really irrelevant to the copyright question. JPD (talk) 12:08, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My concerns about FOTW images were raised by the first topic on this discussion page. Thanks for clearing up the matter. - 52 Pickup 16:38, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some FOTW images *are* allowed 

message: Should these two topics be explicitly included in our project? I feel that seals are an integral part of heraldry as it is one of the modes of utilising and displaying coats of arms. The topic of United States heraldry is also a good example of why seals should be/are part of this project. When it comes to monograms I am not as sure. They are frequently used as an identification in stead of a coat of arms, but they break more with heraldic rules. Might a division between royal monograms and private mongrams be in order? I know the use of personal monograms is more frequent in the Norwegian royal familiy than personal coats of arms. Inge 10:25, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd certainly include seals as they are one of our sources for medieval heraldry. Right now I'm assembling a series of medieval coats of arms largely based on seals (I might add them or a version of them to wikipedia at some point). While modern seals are not always connected to heraldry I guess they'd still fit. As to monograms I really don't know. Here in Luxembourg I'd certainly list the grand-duke's monogram in connection with his coat of arms (it's also used on the military flag), but I have no idea where else that might be applicable.--Caranorn 12:46, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not really sure about the monograms (except perhaps royal ones) but "seals" in the U.S. meaning of the term surely belongs here. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 00:38, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The king's monogram is used extensively on military insignia and banners in Norway. Since that seems to be the case in many monarchies I believe it is relevant to us. So should we add ...seals and royal monograms... to our scope on the front page? Inge 12:04, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Monograms and seals 

message: Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory.  This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you.  B2T2 20:24, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Project directory 

message: Much of the category tree has been checked already. The great majority of these articles located in the "missing" categories have already been tagged and the these categories have a great deal of overlap. (category tree removed).
:Tagging complete! I've checked  and all its children using AWB and tagged the missing articles. More than 90% of all articles had already been tagged with the project banner, and in my run today, only around 3-5% of the articles were untagged (640 articles checked). Very nice work everybody! Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 22:19, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Flags

message: This project has now grown to almost 40 members which is great. We are also close to completing the more boring work of tagging and assessing articles so we've made a good start. It is a lot more fun actually writing and improving articles. Most of us have lots of knowledge we can use here. If anybody needs a little inspiration, the list of tasks contains many different things to dive into. Creating images, writing blasons, creating and improving articles on the sciences themselves, coats of arms, flags, people and so forth. Getting this project up to this high level has taken less than two months! Something many other projects could envy us :) So what is the road ahead? After we finish assessing the remaining articles we need to look at ways to keep the interest towards this project up and increase the participation. This is an initiative for a brain storming on what we should do next so I'll just throw out some ideas: How do we motivate other members to participate? Should we give individual members personal tips on topics related to their field of interest? Should we establish task groups? Should we establish a group of people responible for the Portal maintenance? Should we establish an improvement drive?Inge 12:27, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I guess a lot will depend on the level of participation. The assessment is/will be a huge help for improving articles - for example articles in the B-Class articles category shouldn't take too much effort to bring to GA status, A-Class articles should be easy to bring to FA status etc. Some sort of Project peer review/A-Class review would be a good idea - both GA and FA have Wikipedia processes for approval, but A-Class doesn't. It would be nice to get the Portal integrated into the project a bit more, e.g. if you write a new article, list a DYK-type fact at the suggestions page (which I just realised I didn't look at when updating the Portal this month), likewise if an H&V article has recently made GA or FA status that add it to the suggestions page for the selected article/biography. If suggestions have been made, then the monthly updating of the portal doesn't take much time; the time comes from having to hunt through all the H&V articles to try and find feature-worthy ones (although this will be helped by the assessment now). Some sort of improvement drive/Collaboration of the (time period) etc could possibly be helpful, though it may be just as useful to set a series of priorities. As I think I've mentioned before, I like the SMART goals set by the Chemistry Wikiproject. --Dr pda 00:05, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The project so far and the road ahead 

message: Now that all the heraldry and vexillology articles have been tagged, it is apparent that there are a large number of Gallery of flags of X or List of coats of arms of Y, the purpose of which is largely to collect a set of images onto one page for easy comparison. The question arises - how to assess these articles? Do you assess them as stubs because they have little text? but on the other hand once you have listed all the flags of Y what is there to do to improve the article? A discussion on this started a few weeks ago at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Heraldry and vexillology/Assessment, but all two of us didn't make any decision. I now think that adding a List class to the assessment is probably the way to go. Comments? Add them here to keep the discussion together. --Dr pda 00:05, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessing lists

message: While assessing articles I've found a couple which have been duplicated under different names. Both are flag-related, which is not my area of expertise. If the vexillologists among us would have a look at Adolf Hitler's personal standard and French Navy ensigns and pennants I'd be grateful. Dr pda 00:05, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Duplicate articles

message: Greetings, all. The articles Personal standard for Adolf Hitler and Führerstandarte have been merged into the article Adolf Hitler's personal standard. I apologize for any confusion that this has created for you. Justin Eiler 00:22, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No problem at my end. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 00:30, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flag article merges 

message: Good news, the first peer review for a H/V article since the projected started is now at Wikipedia:Peer review/National emblem of Belarus/archive3. Though the article is mostly written by me, any help is welcomed. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 00:40, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  First peer review 

message: Just in case anybody hadn't noticed: WP:HV currently has two articles nominated for Good Article status:
* Coat of arms of Canada and
* Ottoman flag
Looks like a good start. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 19:40, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Good Article nominations 

message: I have a technical question. Is it possible to watch categories on the wikipedia and receive notifications in one's watchlist when another article has been added? Would I just "watch" the category in question? Thanks.--dave-- 13:40, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think adding a category to your watchlist would just watch for changes on the category page itself. The closest thing I can suggest to what you want is to go to a category page, and click the Related changes link in the toolbox (below What links here). This leads to a Special page, e.g. for :Category:Heraldry, it is Special:Recentchangeslinked/Category:Heraldry. It's difficult to tell if an existing article has just been added to the category (unless of course the edit summary says this), but newly created articles show up with an N. Also this only works for pages in the category, it doesn't show changes to any sub-categories; you need to check the Related changes for them separately. (You may be able to create a subpage in your User space which has links to all the categories you are interested in, and then use Related changes on this, but I haven't tried it.) Dr pda 13:57, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Well it worked pretty well for the first try. I found that both John Anstis, younger and John Guillim had been created and added to the Officer of arms category. Great idea.--dave-- 14:09, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Watching Categories... 

message: ::Is there a wikipedia policy on using "a" or "an" before the word heraldic. In general, I would say that I painting is a heraldic masterpiece, but I've seen people write that something is an heraldic gem. Is this a difference between British and American usage, or am I just weird?--dave-- 14:53, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I usually use "a" because from what I was taught, you use "an" if the word after it begins with a voule. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 20:09, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed, that's the usual rule, however, some h-words are an exception, even, it appears, where the h is pronounced.  The situation is complicated by several factors including historic use as well as differences in current use.  For a good discussion, see this link, which actually started from someone's use of "an" with heraldic: . └ OzLawyer / talk ┐ 20:43, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: A or An, that is the question

message: I've been cleaning up a few entries here and there but I'm seeing a lot of entries where dex/sin seems to be chosen at random.
* Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh -v- Worshipful Company of Fishmongers#Arms
I don't know if everyone can keep their eyes peeled. Alci12 19:56, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure what you're talking about. I assume dexter and sinister. Obviously the Prince Philip article gets these confused and in general seems to be written by someone with little knowledge of heraldry. The fishmongers though appears to be correct (regarding dexter/sinister). All heraldic entries in the Prince Philip article could use a rewrite, but I'm not the one to do it (I'm much more used to blazonning in french, and I usually don't blazon from an image (I do rewrite old blazonning in a more modern fashion/language if needed, correct obvious errors (usually based on text, not images (unless of course those are historic, like a seal for instance)) etc.).--Caranorn 23:31, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Only that picking a few at random it was approx 50:50 right:wrong so I'm assuming that there must be a good many more and that members here are the most likely to be reading the articles concerned. I was heading out and didn't expect to be online this weekend so was just hoping that many eyes would make a check quicker. Alci12 12:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dexter/S 

message: I've worked on this link-labeled COA template; could someone tell me if the labels are correct, or if there's anything else that can be added? Thanks.--Qyd 19:01, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks nice :) Inge 09:43, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

text: What type of figure would you suggest for the crest? (I don't realy know what's traditional)--Qyd 22:27, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Replaced with a two-headed eagle; scaled down crown to a coronet. --Qyd 21:01, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Very nice image. Thumbs up. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 23:24, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Done. You're right, it isn't even that common. --Qyd 19:48, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Coat of arms map 

message: Is it about time to break this category into subcategories such as "Irish officers of arms," "English officers of arms," and "Scottish officers of arms?" I think so.--Eva bd 22:44, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I suppose it depends on how many we have and how that would split might be too small Alci12 12:32, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Officer of Arms Subcategories?

message: I would like to incorporate the info represented by Template:SelectedHeraldry into the WP:HV template to reduce talk page clutter. It's already partly there, but only for selected articles, not selected biographies. I propose to add a "portalbio" parameter to the template to handle this.  Further, I'm unclear why the portal selected article text is only displayed in the WP:HV template when the article is FA; some of the portal selected articles are B class, maybe even start. Any objection to either of these changes? Gimmetrow 04:42, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Have at it, Gimme. That sounds like a great plan.--Eva bd 15:23, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Go ahead. I think the reason for the current situation is that that part of the template was copied from the MilHist one. Having said that, however, I think it is a good idea to restrict the selected articles if possible to FA class but at least to GA class articles or above. As well as showcasing the best heraldry and vexillology articles, this (may) provide an added incentive to work on getting articles up to this standard. Also now that just about everything is assessed it is much easier to find the FA/A/GA articles. Dr pda 15:45, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

text: That feature was copied from the Milhist template, but I left it intentionally so only FA articles would get a "portal" link. This is also what the template description page says. If people think this is an issue, feel free to change away. But please update the description page as well if you do. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 12:16, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  OK, portal info is displayed for FA/A/GA articles. For the rest, portal info is hidden, though it still causes a drop-down box with an empty line, as at Talk:Colin_Cole_(officer_of_arms). Gimmetrow 01:05, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template maintenance 

message: Is it OK with ya'll if I archive this talk page? It is getting a bit on the long side.--Eva bd 15:42, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Archive

message: Hi there, these are two redundant articles which I can not figure out. Does anyone have a preference to which one remains? Please comment at Talk:Flag protocol. Thanks, --Flying Canuck 23:47, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: (comments  moved to Talk:Flag protocol) JPD (talk) 18:56, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Flag etiquette]] vs. [[Flag protocol]] 

message: Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention.  Badbilltucker 22:31, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia Day Awards 

message: Recently, I discovered on the German wiki :Image:Führt kein Wappen.svg which is used in town infoboxes when a CoA image is required but no CoA exists for that town (as opposed to the image simply not being known). I'm currently working on upgrading the infoboxes for German towns on the English wiki and using this image is not really such a good idea. Does anyone know of an English version of such an image? If not, would anyone be game to make one? I was thinking of using :Image:Dummy coa.png, but perhaps that does not make it clear enough that the town in question does not have a CoA. What do you think? - 52 Pickup 22:31, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Instead of using some placeholder image, I'd suggest fixing the infobox template itself so that CoAImage (or whatever it's called) is an optional, not required, field. --ScottMainwaring 22:50, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The German solution is not elegant, but it does serve a purpose by informing that the entity (unlike most others of its kind) never held any arms. IRL, it took me a long time to discover that at least one municipality in Denmark has never held any arms (if anybody wonders; it was Søndersø). I'm not sure how this this information can be best conveyed otherwise. By adding a note in comment form within the infobox, perhaps with a little "do not delete me" notice? If anybody has better ideas, I'm all ears. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 23:17, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  If there is no CoA...