Talk:Flags of the World (website)

message: Posting this here, because I assume that most FOTWer Wikipedians will have this page in their watchlist: How about a WikiProject or WikiPortal about flags, or perhaps (to broaden the scope) about heraldry and vexillology? Pros/cons? --Palnatoke 21:55, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, there's :commons:Commons:WikiProject Flags already, but that's only for flag and coat of arms images... —Nightstallion (?) 14:56, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: WikiProject Heraldry and vexillology now exists, and the Heraldry portal has been rebranded as the heraldry and vexillology portal. Feel free to join in and help out. Dr pda 14:58, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Project/Portal/? 

message: I'm not sure this selection (or any other) could be NPOV or verifiable... JPD (talk) 02:54, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a tricky one. As a FOTW list member for many years I feel some mention really needs to be made particularly of the strong Portuguese-language component to FOTW daily business, but how to make it anything other than OR is tricky. AFAIK FOTW don't keep demographic records of list members. Grutness...wha? 23:11, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It's definitely OR, it's also a bit hard to decide which groups are "notable" in a NPOV manner. Why Russians, but not Germans? Are we judging on numbers, posts, or is it a subjective judgment on the contributions of various members? While I can see the point of emphasising that it isn't just for native English speakers, how relevant are the native languages of contributors anyway? Nationality and geographic areas of speciality would seem more relevant. JPD (talk) 11:33, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "notable minorities" 

message: As this website continues to be cited in Wikipedia articles or on Commons as if it were a reliable source of information for texts about or images of flags, I wanna set the record straight: there has been a consensus that it is a generally unreliable source as early as 2011, and this was confirmed twice in 2013. The website's hosts also explicitly make no attempt to keep the content self-published by its users reliable: "we disclaim any responsibility about the veracity and accuracy of the contents of the website." That doesn't mean it can never ever be cited (because some pages on it might cite reliable sources), but users are advised to exercise extreme caution when citing it in articles, or basing their self-made flags on it and embedding them in articles. This also doesn't effect the general notability of this article; it survived a 2020 AFD, so this article can stay up.
Note: Although Commons takes no sides in accuracy questions (:c:COM:NPOV), all images of flags uploaded to Commons "must be realistically useful for an educational purpose" per :c:COM:EDUSE. That means self-made-up fictional flags that have no current or historical usage serve no educational purpose and may be deleted as out of scope. The burden of proof in such cases appears to be on the doubter/critic rather than the uploader per the essay :c:Commons:Verifiability ("The author's or uploader's claims are normally accepted unless there is reason to doubt them. (...) in some cases (such as an unlabeled photomontage that amounts to a hoax), send the file to Commons:Deletion requests." Therefore, if it can be demonstrated that some flag was just made up and not in historical or current use, just referring to a page on FOTW probably won't count as a relevant defence in favour of keeping the file. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 16:01, 2 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Listed as generally unreliable at [[WP:RSP#Flags of the World]]