Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Heraldry and vexillology/Archive 2023

FAs last reviewed from 2004 to 2007 of interest to this WikiProject
If you review an article on this list, please add commentary at the article talk page, with a section heading == URFA/2020 review== and also add either Notes or Noticed to WP:URFA/2020A, per the instructions at WP:URFA/2020. Commentary not entered on the article talk page may be swept up in archives and lost. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  17:13, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Flag of Hong Kong
 * 2) Order of the Garter
 * 3) Order of the Thistle
 * 4) Victoria Cross
 * 5) Victoria Cross (Canada)
 * 6) Victoria Cross for New Zealand

Good article reassessment for Black swan emblems and popular culture
Black swan emblems and popular culture has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Steelkamp (talk) 06:24, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

RFC on Belarus Section of Coat of Arms of Lithuania
There is currently Request for Comments in the Coat of arms of Lithuania article, regarding the content of the Belarusian section. It seems to me that participants in this Wikiproject may be interested. Link Marcelus (talk) 19:14, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Blazon/Coat of Arms of Dublin City
There is a discussion happening at Talk:Dublin in which the assistance of members of Project Heraldry would be greatly appreciated. Users are unsure which blazon is correct for the Coat of Arms of the City of Dublin, Ireland. CeltBrowne (talk) 20:59, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Australian universities
Help appreciated at Draft: Armorial of Australian universities. Robin S. Taylor (talk) 19:59, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Infoboxes: Poetic meanings
There has been a dispute on Sable (heraldry) regarding the Poetic meanings section. On talk, argues that the material should only appear in the infobox and that all other heraldry articles do it that way. I find no discussion of the matter here, and as I have stated on talk, not having a section in the text is against the guidelines at Infoboxes. Is there in fact a local consensus of this WikiProject that needs to be overridden, or has this just happened? I haven't checked other articles or their histories, but Giltsbeach's argument requires a broader discussion. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:58, 5 April 2023 (UTC)


 * The infobox manual of style is not absolute, and even says "there isn't perfect compliance with this guideline". The poetic interpretations are trivial and so don't need to appear in the body of the article. It was a fad. There is no reason to give so much focus on a long dead trend, it can cause confusion to readers who are not already familiar with the subject matter. I invite you to investigate the subject yourself. Giltsbeach (talk) 21:30, 5 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Where articles have trivia or "in popular culture" sections, the material is not included in the infobox, the reverse of what you are advocating. Because the infobox is a tabular summary of the article. The guideline page talks about exceptions, and they are all matters of sub-templates. This material is a simple list. I don't understand why you want to keep it out of the article text. Moreover, you are now once more edit-warring, asserting vandalism. Was a local consensus reached on this matter (as you assert on the article talk page)? And if so, what is the rationale for having it override the applicable guideline? I'm asking two questions of those active at / interested in this WikiProject, including you: (a) what is the reason for having this material only in the infobox—why should it not be in both places? and (b) why is this an exception to the rules on infobox contents, and where was this decided on the basis of those reason(s)? Yngvadottir (talk) 21:51, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
 * All of this has already been explained to you. I would again suggest you use your time to be proactive. Go out and find resources to add to the articles. Giltsbeach (talk) 11:46, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Except for your baseless assertion that triviality constitutes an exception to the rule (applicable guideline), no it has not. Discussion continues. And what resources? The material is referenced; you have not disputed that. Yngvadottir (talk) 00:03, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
 * You seem angry. Is everything ok? Giltsbeach (talk) 11:52, 7 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Prior to taking this to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Infoboxes, I did some research to see whether Giltsbeach's assertion that the other tincture articles have this information only in the infobox is correct, and if so, how the situation arose. From looking at Gules, the answer appears to be:
 * An unreferenced list of correspondences/associations was added to that article by an IP on 15 May 2006
 * By September 2018 this had been replaced by a somewhat essayistic general passage about the correspondences not being widely accepted, with a reference, plus the jewel and planet correspondences (state before Ssolbergj's edits on 30 September 2018).
 * On 30 September 2018, (courtesy ping; the user is indef-blocked for copyvio) created Template:Infobox heraldic tincture, for which Gules is the example, and added it to the article in a series of edits the same day. Theymade almost no other changes to the article in that series of edits (they removed the top image and made changes to the categories). The paragraph in the article text was not changed; they did it right with respect to the infobox guideline.
 * In the following edit, on 22 October 2018, removed the in-text listing against the infobox guideline, removed one sentence from the general paragraph and commented out the rest, marked the two correspondences in the infobox as needing citations, and made a number of other big changes, including removing the gallery. (Dbachmann continued to edit the article until it looked like this on 18 April 2019.)
 * The commented out general section remained until Giltsbeach removed it in the last of their series of edits to the article, on 6 April 2023. (I've fixed the error they made at the same time.)
 * As for discussion, I found a brief section on correspondences/associations at Talk:Gules from February 21, 2007, started by (who cites sources); the other participant was, who appears not to have edited since 2019. There followed a section at Talk:Tincture (heraldry), where no one objected to AnonMoos adding a table to that article (there is one there now) and adding correct information to every tincture page. AnonMoos's edit at Gules is here; they reduced the IP's long list to gemstone and planetand added a point about alchemical correspondences. And here exactly similarly at Sable (heraldry).) I find no discussion anywhere of either the role of the infobox or Dbachmann's edits. Insofar as there was a consensus reached by discussion, it appears to be that reached—with no other editors participating—at Talk:Tincture (heraldry) in February 2007, that there should be a table in that article and that the correspondences should be accurately and consistently listed in the individual tincture articles. There was then a silent consensus for the addition of the infobox and its inclusion of that material. But no discussion of Dbachmann's removal from the article text, and at least at the Sable article, there was no edit by Dbachmann and the section remained: see the text removed in Giltsbeach's first edit to that article, on 1 April 2023 (reverted by JalenFolf; I see now that Giltsbeach's edits that were reverted by Mako001 on edit-warring grounds left a briefer version of the section in place.
 * Apologies for length, but this demonstrates that the claim of consensus is baseless, and I wanted to ping others who have discussed the correspondences previously, partly because the last discussion was so long ago—and Dbachmann's deviation from the guidelines apparently went unnoticed—that this is an opportunity for the project to decide what form the tincture articles should take now, including the wording of the section heading and suitable sourcing. (Giltsbeach has also made layout changes that puzzle me, and there may be changes that could usefully be made to that infobox, such as adding back the former top images showing the tincture and cross-hatching, but what requires discussing is the removal of the text section.) Yngvadottir (talk) 09:02, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Andrew Stewart Jamieson
No idea what went down in 2010 & 2011 that the home office needed to get involved, but given the recent news coverage of the coronation invitation, should ASJ have an article? Arlo James Barnes 23:39, 6 April 2023 (UTC)


 * This seems more like a discussion to have at WP:AN than a project dedicated to flag design and heraldry. Maybe try there instead? Primefac (talk) 07:25, 7 April 2023 (UTC)


 * My line of thinking was that if the article was [re]created, WPHV would likely be the ones most maintaining it since Jamieson is a heraldic artist. But I can ask at a noticeboard too, or at deletion review (WP:DRVPURPOSE #3). Arlo James Barnes 16:19, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I am not sure what exactly happened in 2011, though having had personal interactions through the International Association of Amateur Heralds and other groups with ASJ and his then-wife during that time period I can hazard a fairly well-educated speculation (upon which I will not elaborate). Given that the full-protection reasoning given on July 2, 2011, includes a note that there was an OTRS ticket that was in the legal queue, my speculation may be correct. I have a feeling that this article may not be recreated. However, if it is, I ask that I not be pinged to work on it due to any potential WP:BIAS I may have. — Jkudlick &#x2693; (talk) 15:35, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
 * My mistake, I missed his profession, though I still think (referring to Jkudlick's comment) that this would be better-discussed at a more admin-related board. Primefac (talk) 17:49, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

South Africa
Draft: Armorial of South Africa. Any help appreciated. Robin S. Taylor (talk) 20:54, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Project-independent quality assessments
Quality assessments by Wikipedia editors rate articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a class parameter to WikiProject banner shell, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.

No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to WikiProject banner shell, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.

However, if your project has decided to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass WPBannerMeta a new custom parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:31, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Flag of Indiana
Flag of Indiana has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Onegreatjoke (talk) 17:07, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

WP:BOLD changes to Template:Infobox heraldic tincture
has been indeffed for tendentious editing. They recently made several changes to Template:Infobox heraldic tincture and concomitant changes to its documentation. I have provisionally reverted these so that they can be discussed and consensus reached on whether to reinstate any of them. Yngvadottir (talk) 01:05, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Flag of Svencionys - might be a hoax
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3AFlag_of_%C5%A0ven%C4%8Dionys.jpg

I think this file might potentially be a hoax - the only place where I can find it is https://www.fotw.info/flags/lt-vlsvv.html (which is a self published source). There's also a little bit of the flag shown in. The depiction in the photo shows that the flag might be legit but then again the flag is barely shown on said photo. If anyone has any other sources showing this flag of Svencionys please let me know. -- Shadow  of the  Starlit Sky  21:38, 30 May 2023 (UTC)


 * See Talk:Švenčionys_District_Municipality for more information if necessary. -- Shadow  of the  Starlit Sky  21:39, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Glossary
It strikes me a huge gap in the 'pedia that Glossary of heraldry, Glossary of heraldry terms, and Glossary of heraldic terms, Heraldic terms, Heraldic terminology, Heraldry terms, etc., are all redlinks. If any topic called for a glossary, it is surely this one. For our most-developed example of a glossary and how it's built, see Glossary of cue sports terms. MOS:GLOSSARY covers the basics. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:22, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

PS: Glossary of vexillology exists! But all sorts of obvious alternative names need to redirect to it: Glossary of vexillology terms, Glossary of vexillologic terms, Glossary of vexillological terms, Vexillology terms, Vexillological terminology, etc. are all redlinks. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:26, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Sir Tony Blair
Heraldic sculptor Ian G Brennan has updated his website to reveal his model of Blair's crest. Robin S. Taylor (talk) 09:53, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Garter banner
Graham Usher (bishop) recently Tweeted a photograph of St George's Chapel.[] Behind the banner of Sir Thomas Dunne is one I have not seen before. I presume this belongs to Lady Amos. It is obviously per saltire Gules and Or but I don't recognise the symbol on it. Robin S. Taylor (talk) 20:28, 27 May 2023 (UTC)


 * They appear to me to be gyroscopes. What is Lady Amos' background? — Jkudlick &#x2693; (talk) 21:17, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * On her page it says "Amos has said that she wants a reference to education and learning, a personal passion, as well as something about Guyana, the place of her birth, and her longer term lineage in West Africa. She also would like something about global affairs." Maybe they're supposed to be globes, given that most of her political career is in international relations. Obviously the banner doesn't tell us if she has supporters, a badge or a motto.Robin S. Taylor (talk) 11:17, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Her crest has now been revealed on Ian G Brennan's website. Robin S. Taylor (talk) 09:56, 25 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Looks like a celestial globe (with the zodiac). —Tamfang (talk) 04:16, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I would imagine it's an Armillary sphere/Celestial globe which could symbolise trade and travel, and would fit with that she talked about in the above quote.  Cakelot1  ☞&#xFE0F;  talk  07:00, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Blair and Amos
Baz Manning has published photographs of the Dean of Windsor's tables, showing their arms as Companions of the Garter. [] Robin S. Taylor (talk) 20:16, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Unsauced changes to Blutfahne
Blutfahne was recently renovated by an uninlogged user and it did not provide any sauce. Im too busy (lazy) to fact check the changes myself (also not an expert), but i thought it would be worth bringing it here in case someone want to take a look at it. Ciao. Blockhaj (talk) 08:33, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Transfer public domain images to Commons
A lot of coat of arms of places in Massachusetts are on Wikipedia under fair use. However, since in Massachusetts these images are public domain, they should be uploaded to Commons with the license tag PD-MAGov. – Illegitimate Barrister (talk • contribs), 15:33, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

New user possibly uploading fake/fictional flags
I believe that User:2022 jansin (started editing August 11, 2023) on commons may be uploading fictional flags to the site (their upload log). I cross-referenced some of their uploads and found zero evidence online that they exist. In some cases, they actually uploaded these to places which have official flags (their representation of the Flag of Edmond, Oklahoma). The flags they are uploading sometimes don't match the regional styles (ex. tricolors for US flags). As well as that, they have uploaded duplicates of flags even when the original is available on commons (ex. Flag of Prague, Oklahoma). For now, they are only adding these flags to gallery pages on commons but they have managed to upload almost 100 images in three days, which is concerning if they are indeed fictional. I apologize for posting this here but I couldn't find a suitable place on commons to post this comment. Thank you for your time and attention; have a great day! DiscoA340 (talk) 16:29, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Good to report it here, since people care here. :-) I would think also that commons:Commons:Administrators' noticeboard is a good place to raise such concerns.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:33, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Nearly all now deleted. —Tamfang (talk) 04:08, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Anachronistic flags
It came to my attention that such as File:People's Armed Police Flag.svg and File:Rocket Force Flag of the People's Republic of China.svg had been used in time periods before their adaption (2018 and 2016), such as Sui Mingtai. Please advise if there is any guideline on this. Thanks! Mys_721tx (talk) 01:32, 24 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Semi-related, there's a conversation at Talk:Yuan dynasty about whether it's aligned with the idea of a national flag infobox parameter to add a flag image to . Someone who knows things about flags may want to weigh in. Folly Mox (talk) 16:29, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Style questions
Should we normally be capitalizing the heraldic metal as "Or" to distinguish it from the everyday English conjunction "or"? I see this frequently but not universally in heraldic source materials. Our own articles vary widely on this, sometimes even in the same article.

Second, how should mottoes/slogans be presented? I most often see them, in running prose in sources, as title case: "Sola Nobilitas Virtus", but sometimes also as sentence case: "Sola nobilitas virtus". In a few articles here, I'm running into them in all-uppercase form as "SOLA NOBILITAS VIRTUS", mimicking fairly common display in heraldic art and Scottish crest badges, but this is clearly against MOS:ALLCAPS. My presumption without any input yet is title case, but I'm open to arguments to the contrary. E.g., if enough sources use sentence case, then the title-case treatment may not meet the MOS:CAPS threshold of "only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia". I don't personally have on hand a large library of modern heraldry works, so I'm not really in a position to do a statistical analysis of source usage on this.

If there are various other style considerations, it might make sense for the wikiproject to put up a WP:PROJPAGE essay on heraldry writing style.

— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:30, 26 August 2023 (UTC)


 * The "or" of heraldry could be title-case italic gold serif  and my brain would still misparse it as the common conjunction "or" a substantial proportion of the time, which I've just confirmed by reading the preview of this sentence. Folly Mox (talk) 16:37, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Sigillographie de l'Orient latin
Hey, everyone. Does anyone have the book Sigillographie de l'Orient latin by Gustave Schlumberger? It contains a seal of Abbess Ioveta, the only depiction of her known to me, at or near page 122. It is in public domain so we could upload it to the Commons and use it in our article. Ping me if you have it or know where to access it, please. Surtsicna (talk) 07:37, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

No delsort for this project?
I wanted to add Articles for deletion/Piast Dragon to a relevant del sort list but I could not find one? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 03:08, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Factually correct? Afghanistan 1980 flag
See Talk:Flag of Afghanistan. I am highly dubious of the factual accuracy of a flag shown in this article. Hnfus34 (talk) 17:48, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Royal standards of Canada
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Royal standards of Canada that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. ASUKITE 16:32, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Is britishcountyflags.com a reliable source?
Hi, not sure if this is the right place to put this, but I was just wondering if https://britishcountyflags.com/ is considered a reliable source for editing flag-related pages, specifically those related to british county flags (obviously). I've looked for attribution for where they get their information and found none, and also could not find an e-mail address to get in contact with them and ask for primary sources. Laura Kinder (talk) 11:36, 6 December 2023 (UTC)


 * At the bottom of the main page are the words Blog at WordPress.com. Without additional attribution on the site, we have to presume that it is not a reliable source because it is user-generated content. — Jkudlick &#x2693; (talk) 15:52, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, appreciate the response. Laura Kinder (talk) 23:47, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Life peers
After spending several hours trawling through Debrett's Peerage 2015, I have added blazons for another twenty-five life peers:
 * Lord Cullen of Whitekirk
 * ''Lord Davies of Abersoch
 * Lord Davies of Stamford
 * Lord Deighton
 * Lord Dholakia
 * Lord Dixon-Smith
 * Lord Evans of Watford
 * Lord Faulkner of Worcester
 * Lord Faulks
 * Lord Feldman of Elstree
 * Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
 * ''Lord Freud
 * Lord Gardiner of Kimble
 * Lord Gold
 * ''Lord Kalms
 * Lord Kestenbaum
 * ''Lord Leach of Fairford
 * Lord Loomba
 * Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market
 * Lord MacLaurin of Knebworth
 * Lord Mawhinney
 * Lord Neill of Bladen
 * Lady Nicholson of Winterbourne
 * Lord Noon
 * Lady O'Neill of Bengarve

Help with illustration would be much appreciated. Robin S. Taylor (talk) 14:18, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

One of these flags is incorrect
In the latter half of the Empire of Brazil's existence, was their flag this or this? Flag of Brazil implies that it's the former, but I've no idea. The two have several differences. Ed [talk] [OMT] 02:32, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

More life peers
Two weeks later I went back to finish my trawl and found another eight: Robin S. Taylor (talk) 11:22, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Lord Powell of Bayswater
 * Lord Ramsbotham
 * Lord Tugendhat
 * Lord Wade of Chorlton
 * Lord Waldegrave of North Hill
 * Lord Watson of Richmond
 * Lady Wheatcroft
 * Lord Wolfson of Aspley Guise