Talk:Ensign (flag)

Removed "US Yacht Ensign"
I removed this example image from the article, and replaced it with the red ensign (because that's a valid example of a special yacht/merchant ensign). The reason is that the so-called "US Yacht Ensign" does not exist. There used to be such an ensign, and it looked like this, but it never had any real legal standing as a national ensign, and it was abolished entirely in 1980.

Many US vessels do in fact wear this flag as an ensign. In US waters, this is OK, because small pleasure boats don't need an ensign in US waters; so you could wear the Mickey Mouse flag if you wanted to. However, any documented vessel, or any vessel in international waters, must wear a legal ensign, which for US vessels is the Stars and Stripes. (Don't get me started about the number of US yachts insulting the flag by flying it on the flag hoist as a courtesy or signal flag...)  — Johan the Ghost seance 20:41, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Proposed merger
I just don't think that naval ensign is a big enough subject in its own right to merit an article; it could easily be a sub-section of ensign. So, unless anyone has any ideas for a major expansion of naval ensign, I suggest merger. Note that we don't have articles on "civil ensign" and "merchant ensign". — Johan the Ghost seance 17:09, 16 March 2006 (UTC)


 * In the meantime we have Civil ensign and I would suggest expanding the article naval ensign. There is a lot to show there, but I have to collect and check information on this topic first. --Mevsfotw 23:24, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Circular Reference
The State Ensign link on this page redirects back to this page. Not sure how to fix. 67.169.40.217 (talk) 03:24, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for pointing that out. I've removed the link, since there is no separate state ensign article. Alkari (?), 12 November 2014, 23:26 UTC

Sri Lanka
The naval ensign of Sri Lanka is in the table at about half the size of the others. I know how I'd fix that for a normal File transclusion; but the  layout, which apparently makes the bare lines into template calls, just incorporates additional parameters like   or   into the caption. would probably work, but that would require changing all the lines into the rather more complex syntax. It would also complicate future edits of the gallery: inserting or deleting an image anywhere except the very last position would require changing all the positional numbers in params like
 * [as in the second example in Template:Gallery/doc)
 * and (if used)

So... If somebody on this project knows how to fix the size problem, please be bold!

I'm putting a pointer to this Talk entry at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Heraldry and vexillology.

To discuss this, please me. --Thnidu (talk) 00:33, 7 April 2015 (UTC)


 * I think you've misunderstood the nature of this flag. It is a plain white flag with a canton (small upper-left quarter) showing the national flag. So the problem here is not the size, which is fine, but the fact that the perimeter is not sufficiently defined. The solution is probably to add a thin black border; and indeed, according to |the file on Commons, "It is easy to put a border around this image", simply by adding the word "border". Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work within a gallery ... so back to you to find a technical fix. GrindtXX (talk) 00:59, 7 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Ah ha, thank you very much. I had already noticed that problem with several other ensigns that have a lot of white area at the border, but all the others on the page have at least one point of another color at each edge. ...(Sigh.) --Thnidu (talk) 22:14, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
 * FIXED! :-D I switched the gallery from HTML-style  to Template:Gallery, and that puts a thin grey border around every image. It wasn't as hard as I expected: a one-line Perl script made all the changes at once. I don't know how to change the border style within the template, if it's even possible, but it isn't essential. --Thnidu (talk) 22:42, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
 * the image border style is fixed in the Lua module that does the actual gallery-building, so making this property available for modification would involve coding changes. Perhaps an alternative version with more options could be created, but there’s no simple way to override its current behaviour AFAICT.—Odysseus 1 4 7  9  00:03, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the info, . I'm not ready to learn another programming language. --Thnidu (talk) 02:41, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 05:13, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Ensign of Vietnam People's Navy.svg

usage symbols
✅ § National ensigns gives three vexillological "usage symbols" but doesn't explain their use: An explanation would be welcome. --Thnidu (talk) 18:04, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
 * civil ensign (usage symbol FIAV 000100.svg)
 * state ensign or government ensign (usage symbol FIAV 000010.svg)
 * naval ensign (usage symbol FIAV 000001.svg)

Requested move 18 February 2023

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: Moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Silikonz 💬  22:05, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

– There is WP:NOPRIMARY topic either by pageviews or longterm significance. The military rank has also been around for hundreds of years. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 05:32, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Ensign → Ensign (flag)
 * Ensign (disambiguation) → Ensign
 * Support. I agree that the military rank is of equal significance, so there is no primary topic here. But I would move the flag and rank articles to the top of the DAB page, similar to the Georgia page. Rreagan007 (talk) 16:25, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Support. I agree the rank is at least as significant currently and probably for the foreseeable future. the current DAB seems reasonable in terms of prominence for the rank and flag, but I think tweaks would be fine too. Skynxnex (talk) 16:38, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Support - There's no clear WP:PRIMARYTOPIC between the two, not in such a way that would warrant this article being at the primary name. This title being a DAB page perfect sense. - Aoidh (talk) 20:26, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Support the rank has more views (22,299) than the flag (3,658)[].  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 17:19, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Support. I see no reason not to move it, considering that there seems to be no WP:PRIMARYTOPIC here. Judeinator9001 (talk) 21:10, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Support per nom. BD2412  T 05:45, 21 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Support per nom. Estar8806 (talk) 02:25, 24 February 2023 (UTC)