User:Cop 663/Flagcruft sensible draft

This essay has been superseded by Wikipedia:Manual of Style (icons)

This is in my sandbox, but please feel free to edit it!

Some users enjoy putting flag icons into articles. While these can be useful in some circumstances, there are also problems associated with their overuse. The following are suggested guidelines for the use of flag icons.

General guidelines

• There is no need to use flags and country names. The only exception is in long lists of countries where the addition of flags may be useful for navigation as they may 'stand out' more quickly than the country name. (example) (example)
• The only reason to use flag icons without country names is in narrow infoboxes where they are useful as 'space-savers' to prevent lines overflowing onto two lines. (Example; compare the alternative)

Rationale

Problems with flag icons

• Superfluity: A country's name next to a flag of that country gives us the same information twice. Canada does not say anything different from Canada. Since the word is universally recognisable, and the flag may not be, the word is better.
• Bandwidth: Flag-heavy pages load very slowly for people with low bandwidths.
• Obscurity.
  • Only the best-known flags are universally recognisable.
    • You probably know what this means.
    • But if you were only given this, you might be lost.
  • Flags change. Some users believe that a person born in Canada prior to 1965 should get rather than , since the Flag of Canada was not in use until 1965. This makes the flag even harder to recognise to the average reader.
  • Not all flags are easily distinguishable, especially when reduced in size.
    • Australia and New Zealand.
    • United States and Malaysia
    • People's Republic of China and USSR
• Accessibility. For colour-blind people, or those who rely on text-to-speech software, flags are useless.
• Inapplicability. Sometimes, users do not have a flag to represent a particular geographical entity, and so invent their own or misuse existing ones.
  • For example, one user invented a North America flag, and others use the United Nations flag to represent the entire world. These are neither accurate nor recognisable.
• Politics:
  • There have been many heated debates on talk pages about the 'nationality' of people with complex life stories. Flags make simple, blunt statements about nationality. Words can express things in more complexity.
    • Example: is Naomi Watts British, English, Australian, or Welsh? She is none of these: she was born a British citizen in England, lived in Wales for a long time, then moved to Australia and became an Australian citizen. There is no flag for that.
  • Some flags are political statements and can associate a person with their political significance, sometimes misleadingly.
    • Example: Putting the Ulster Banner next to Liam Neeson's place of birth may be technically accurate,[1] but this highly politicized flag makes him look like a Unionist, when he is in fact an Irish citizen.
  • Similarly, some English people are patriotically English, others are patriotically British, others hate patriotism. Putting an English flag next to their name implies the former, but may not be accurate.
    • Example: Putting British and English flags on Eddie Izzard is misleading given his frequent campaigning in favour of the European Union and the fact that he has hosted a TV programme debunking English uniqueness.
  • Flags place unequal emphasis on location, especially in infoboxes. With a flag, Paul McCartney is English. Without a flag, he is an English rock singer and songwriter who was in The Beatles; the latter points are surely more important than his Englishness.
• Overload: Flag icons start to look silly when used to excess
  • Example: Bill Hicks.

When flag icons may be helpful

Without denying the points made above, there are situations when flags can be useful:

• They can be aids to navigation in very long lists of countries: the flag of the individual country one is looking for may 'stand out' to the eye more immediately than the name itself. (Example). (However, note that the country's name should also appear)
• They may be useful space-savers in narrow infoboxes, where the country's flag may take up less space than the name of the country itself. (Example; compare without flags).