Talk:List of sovereign states by date of current flag adoption

Link to Flag pages rather than countries if available?
What are the opinions on the links going to the flag pages for the countries rather than the National pages?Naraht (talk) 17:41, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Where such pages exist, I believe the links should go to the flag pages (i.e., Flag of Denmark, Flag of the United States). After all, people coming to this page are likely interested in flags. ... If there is no separate article on a nation's flag (are there any flags that don't have articles even?), the question is do we red link it, or link to subsection of a nation's article that deals with the flag, or to the nation in general? — Michael J  20:19, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
 * ✅ using flagof. Nepal had to be handled differently because the image doesn't size correctly using flagof. Ibadibam (talk) 23:32, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Significance of Changes.
I think the statement that "Minor changes to flags (such as the change of a colour's shade or a minor addition to the flag (e.g. a star to represent new states)) do not count as a new adoption of a flag unless done for political reasons" is odd as surely adding stars to represent whole states being added to the union is at least kind of political. The UK only added the additional read stripes to represent Ireland being included in its Kingdom, which is smaller than most of the US states added, so I will make the UK flag 3rd and the US one 4th. --Omarraii (talk) 21:26, 13 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree that changes of a colour's shade, the detail on an emblem or the script of a motto can be considered minor changes. The addition (or removal) of a star however usually marks a significant change, both in the flag design itself as in the symbolism. A new star on a flag often represents the annexation or recognition of a territory, ethnic group an other major entity. Especially the phrase "unless done for political reasons" leaves room for a lot of speculation. For example, how can it be justified that the 8th star on the Venezuelan flag is considered a major change while the 14th until the 50th star of the US flag is not considered a major change?
 * --User:Renetus 8 June 20011


 * I agree that political reasons is a cop-out definition - it seems to state that the update of the US is merely a housekeeping exercise, whereas changes to the flag of other nations can be labelled 'political'.
 * Hence, for at least certain flags it may be appropriate to split the list into two - first adoption of a flag with fundamentally similar characteristics, and secondly adoption of flag in current form. So, for the USA the flag was originally adopted in 1777, but the most recent form dates back to 1960. For the UK, it would be something like 1701 and 1801. The first list could also encompass nations who have restored a historic flag, for instance Georgia, where the five-cross flag apparently dates back to the C13th, but was only most recently adopted in 2004. --82.44.20.184 (talk) 21:50, 25 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Renetus -- Changes to the U.S. flag after 1818 were done according to a plan laid down in 1818, so such changes were not reversing the flag adoptions of earlier times (as is the case with most flag changes), but were carrying out a past decision... AnonMoos (talk) 01:55, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

First and last column
I updated the list with two extra columns to give it a bit more room for details. The last column lists small changes, like the addition or removal of stars. The question remains if a change like that should be considered as a new flag adoption. On the one hand, it often (but not always) marks a significant change; like territorial expansion. On the other hand it doesn't alter the basic design. Either way it needs to be consistent for the US, Iraq, Venezuela and other countries that only changed their flag by adding or removing stars. I think it is best to leave political significance of a change out of the discussion because that only makes it more debatable. --User:Renetus 16 Feb 20012

Major vs. minor
The problem with making this distinction at all is that changes can be interpreted differently depending on what the government is trying to convey. The Flag of Bulgaria has changed emblems from era to era, but the fundamental white-green-red tricolour design has never changed since 1879. The additions of stars to the US flag have represented important shifts in the political makeup of that country, but the flag itself is considered to have remained conceptually consistent. But flying, say, the c.1947 flags of the US and Bulgaria would meet with significantly different reactions: the first is a silly mistake; the other is a major political statement.

The mechanism by which flags are changed is inconsistent from government to government. Depending on a country's political system, a flag might be changed by executive order, act of legislature, royal decree, constitutional amendment, or an entirely new constitution. The list uses adopted, but doesn't clarify what constitutes adoption. Whether a change is "minor" is a matter of interpretation of the people of a particular country, and that's not an easy basis for maintaining a list like this one.

I think we could either set a hard legal standard that any government action that establishes a new design for its flag constitutes a new adoption, or abandon political and legal arguments in favor of clear and politically neutral vexillological criteria for classifying a major or minor change.

Case studies
In theory, the classification of these changes according to our list inclusion criteria (LIC) in the article lead should be the same as the way they are actually treated in the list, but as you can see there are several discrepancies... So how do we handle this? If we say that any government action is a new adoption, then they're all major. Or we could work on design criteria, so that all changes of a particular type are treated equivalently (e.g. Venezuela's new star has the same significance as the US), but in the absence of an independent vexillological standard it runs the risk of being original research. Ibadibam (talk) 20:19, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm kinda split on how do label the UK. Is it 1801 or 1606? Does the addition of the St. Andrew's Cross constitute a new flag or just a modification to the existing one (like the US flag)? – Illegitimate Barrister (talk • contribs), 15:17, 27 May 2019 (UTC)


 * I feel that attempting to classify changes as 'political' or not is fraught with issues and results in this list feeling inconsistent - which is not what we want. I feel the rules would be fairer if they were based simply on how flags have changed visually.
 * For example the United States has its current adoption date in 1960, as that is when the star representing Hawaii was added. Chile's is listed as 1817. However, Chile removed the coat of arms from its flag and updated the star in 1854. Chile's change represents a more significant visual change than the United States, if not political. To me it would seem more consistent if they were both listed as their later date.
 * I feel the first column should have current adoption as the most recent date the flag has been updated, perhaps exempting only proportion changes or changes in shade (although not changes in colour). The second column would remain unchanged. What do people think? Mspence835 (talk) 15:26, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

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Addition of English Flag and Date
@Earl_Andrew

Hey. Why did you revert my edit for the date of the adoption of the English flag? I provided a source for the information and think the content is relevant. England is an extant sovereign state with a flag, so why remove it from the list?

Jamgoodman (talk) 14:43, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
 * England is not a sovereign state. -- Earl Andrew - talk 14:55, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Seconded. Where on Earth did you hear that England was a sovereign state? – Illegitimate Barrister (talk • contribs), 15:14, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Footnotes/ references / column 2
The more references tag not necessary here in that the list is essentially a summary of the more detailed flag information which is linked to on each of the pages listed in column 2Zymurgy (talk) 19:19, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
 * WP:LISTVERIFY would appear to differ. Ibadibam (talk) 15:00, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Discrepancy between the US and other flags
So for the US, the adoption of the current flag design is said to be in 1960, which is indeed true for the newest fifty star version. However, for a flag like Nepal, the adoption date is 1743, which is for the oldest version of that design, and the newest version without the faces is listed in the third column only. So, shouldn’t the US date of 1960 be changed to the date of adoption of the first version of the Stars and Stripes? Joseph andretti (talk) 01:11, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, it should. -- Rockstone  [Send me a message!]  10:05, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

Afghanistan
Does the Taliban Afghanistan flag count as a flag change or is the old republic one still the true flag? Hikerblunt01 (talk) 16:11, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Lede and Table are unclear
I don't think the lede does a good job explaining the table, and/or the table makes no sense. For example, the table lists France at 2020 (change of shade of blue), the lede explains changes of color shades are only listed in the last column.

How is this supposed to work? --84.132.156.94 (talk) 12:37, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Georgia
Georgia flag is dated 1120s. 108.30.14.88 (talk) 20:26, 21 February 2023 (UTC)