Use of flags (was Re: Wiki page for country)

[Máirín Duffy]

On Tue, 2010-07-13 at 05:42 +0300, Matt Domsch wrote:
>  I think it'd be fine to use the front of fedoracommunity.org as
> the
>  jumping off point into all the various region-specific sites.  Some of
>  them may fall under fedoracommunity.org, but that fundamentally was to
>  avoid having people register Fedora-brand-related domains, and then
>  for us to have to request they sign a trademark license agreement too.
>   This gives contributors a way to set up sites w/o registering new
>  domains.  But in either case (registered domain, such as
>  fedora-uk.org, or a subdomain of fc.o), having the top of fc.o
>  aggregate them into a list makes sense to me. 
Since not all the websites have finished sites or distinctive designs,
Jef put together a mockup using flags for each country (with the caveat
it would need to be adjusted so the flags were a bit smaller):

http://schendje.fedorapeople.org/fedoracommunity/fedoracommunity.org.flag...

I know there's a lot of sensitivity to the usage of national symbols in
general; is it advisable to avoid the usage of flags or do you think it
would be okay in this instance?

~m

[Rahul Sundaram]

On 07/13/2010 07:56 PM, Máirín Duffy wrote:
>  Since not all the websites have finished sites or distinctive
> designs,
>  Jef put together a mockup using flags for each country (with the caveat
>  it would need to be adjusted so the flags were a bit smaller):
>
>  http://schendje.fedorapeople.org/fedoracommunity/fedoracommunity.org.flag...
>
>  I know there's a lot of sensitivity to the usage of national symbols in
>  general; is it advisable to avoid the usage of flags or do you think it
>  would be okay in this instance?
>     
Hard to say.  It is really dependent on the specific regions in
question.  It is better to confirm with them that the usage of flags is
uncontroversial or desirable

Rahul

[Fabian A. Scherschel]

I think flags are great, very visual and immediately understandable. As for
controversial, you can find dissenting opinions on everything you do if your
audience is big enough. We can't cater to *everybody* and the vast majority
of flags are actually quite "safe", IMO.

Fab



# Fabian A. Scherschel
# Host & Producer, Sixgun Productions
# Member, Fedora Design Team



On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 4:28 PM, Rahul Sundaram <metherid(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

>  On 07/13/2010 07:56 PM, Máirín Duffy wrote:
>  > Since not all the websites have finished sites or distinctive designs,
>  > Jef put together a mockup using flags for each country (with the caveat
>  > it would need to be adjusted so the flags were a bit smaller):
>  >
>  >
>  http://schendje.fedorapeople.org/fedoracommunity/fedoracommunity.org.flag...
>  >
>  > I know there's a lot of sensitivity to the usage of national symbols in
>  > general; is it advisable to avoid the usage of flags or do you think it
>  > would be okay in this instance?
>  >
>
>  Hard to say.  It is really dependent on the specific regions in
>  question.  It is better to confirm with them that the usage of flags is
>  uncontroversial or desirable
>
>  Rahul
>  _______________________________________________
>  design-team mailing list
>  design-team(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/design-team
>

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 01:36, Fabian A. Scherschel <fab(a)sixgun.org&gt; wrote:
>  I think flags are great, very visual and immediately understandable.
> As for
>  controversial, you can find dissenting opinions on everything you do if your
>  audience is big enough. We can't cater to *everybody* and the vast majority
>  of flags are actually quite "safe", IMO.
>  Fab
>  
It is the not safe ones and the semi-safe ones that seem to cause the
most energy/time lost. China/Taiwain, various Sri Lanka and Cyprus
ones.. I think have all caused issues. I also believe there was a
problem where certain flags may only be presented in some format or
would cause legal issues (or where the display of another flag would
cause issues to people inside of one territory or another).

So yes flags are nice symbolic things that tell people what they are
getting. They can also be a major problem at times due to that exact
reason. I would say that for 80% of the flags you are going to be
mostly ok. Its that 20% that you will need to either avoid and find
something else.




-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.
“The core skill of innovators is error recovery, not failure avoidance.”
Randy Nelson, President of Pixar University.
"We have a strategic plan. It's called doing things.""
— Herb Kelleher, founder Southwest Airlines

[Fabian A. Scherschel]

OK, speaking as a student of political science here... Isn't there the exact
same issue with country names? And yet we use those...

Or am I missing something?
Fab



On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 5:07 PM, Stephen John Smoogen <smooge(a)gmail.com&gt;wrote:

>  On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 01:36, Fabian A. Scherschel
> <fab(a)sixgun.org&gt;
>  wrote:
>  > I think flags are great, very visual and immediately understandable. As
>  for
>  > controversial, you can find dissenting opinions on everything you do if
>  your
>  > audience is big enough. We can't cater to *everybody* and the vast
>  majority
>  > of flags are actually quite "safe", IMO.
>  > Fab
>  >
>
>  It is the not safe ones and the semi-safe ones that seem to cause the
>  most energy/time lost. China/Taiwain, various Sri Lanka and Cyprus
>  ones.. I think have all caused issues. I also believe there was a
>  problem where certain flags may only be presented in some format or
>  would cause legal issues (or where the display of another flag would
>  cause issues to people inside of one territory or another).
>
>  So yes flags are nice symbolic things that tell people what they are
>  getting. They can also be a major problem at times due to that exact
>  reason. I would say that for 80% of the flags you are going to be
>  mostly ok. Its that 20% that you will need to either avoid and find
>  something else.
>
>
>
>
>  --
>  Stephen J Smoogen.
>  “The core skill of innovators is error recovery, not failure avoidance.”
>  Randy Nelson, President of Pixar University.
>  "We have a strategic plan. It's called doing things.""
>  — Herb Kelleher, founder Southwest Airlines
>  _______________________________________________
>  design-team mailing list
>  design-team(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/design-team
>

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 09:29, Fabian A. Scherschel <fab(a)sixgun.org&gt; wrote:
>  OK, speaking as a student of political science here... Isn't
> there the exact
>  same issue with country names? And yet we use those...
>  Or am I missing something?
>  Fab 
Humans are 99%  irrational, illogical creatures of passions and 1% a
being convinced they aren't any of those things.Thus humans have a
tendency to die more for a flag than a country name. It is a highly
symbolic item that gets people very worked up even more than names
(even those do work people up.) You can label something Formosa,
Taiwan or even the Republic of China and get only some grief.. put the
flag on a list of possible keyboard types and you get complaints to
your national embassy (as more than one Linux distro has supposedly
found out).

Then you have things like former rebellion flags or flags of countries
not recognized by the rest of the world, etc etc. Again all of these
are corner cases but when they come up its a pretty much kernel halt
until dealt with.


-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.
“The core skill of innovators is error recovery, not failure avoidance.”
Randy Nelson, President of Pixar University.
"We have a strategic plan. It's called doing things.""
— Herb Kelleher, founder Southwest Airlines

[Fabian A. Scherschel]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 8:44 PM, Stephen John Smoogen <smooge(a)gmail.com&gt;wrote:

>  Humans are 99%  irrational, illogical creatures of passions and 1% a
>  being convinced they aren't any of those things.Thus humans have a
>  tendency to die more for a flag than a country name. It is a highly
>  symbolic item that gets people very worked up even more than names
>  (even those do work people up.) You can label something Formosa,
>  Taiwan or even the Republic of China and get only some grief.. put the
>  flag on a list of possible keyboard types and you get complaints to
>  your national embassy (as more than one Linux distro has supposedly
>  found out).
>
>  Then you have things like former rebellion flags or flags of countries
>  not recognized by the rest of the world, etc etc. Again all of these
>  are corner cases but when they come up its a pretty much kernel halt
>  until dealt with.
>
>  
OK, fair enough. I was just saying you can't worry about everything. I'm
pretty new to Fedora so if we have experience in this regard already, I will
of course bow to that. :)

Fab