Petition for new country

OGS Development
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I meant here at OGS GaJ :smiley: :stuck_out_tongue:

Also we are certainly not trying to start a flame war, luckily we have such an amazing community here, that we can sometimes even get away with an edgy joke, without starting too much trouble. Appologies, if it came over as overly aggressive.

To anyone hoping for his/her favorite flag to be added please follow the tutorial above, to get a chance :slight_smile: Obviously everyone draws the line elsewhere, I assume that for some - or some years ago - even the pirate flag would be a rather distastefull joke, but then again on the other hand if you know you do not get along with people identifying with whichever flag, it gives you a chance to avoid them when you see it, not showing it does not change the fact that some people here identify with it, you just do not have that information avilable.

That said, I admit slight ignorance towards history of Texas (sorry about that), thus am unsure about what implications there are and now am kind of curious after the vocal disaprooval. The dislike is noted and I shall forward the concernes should there come to considering adding the flag, but if anyone wanted to PM me what seems so bad about it (or not) I would appreciate that :slight_smile:

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Hah! LOL now it makes sense :smiley:

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Mods, thanks for showing us how to submit a request. I’ll get right on that. Remember he Alamo!

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First off, I’d agree that Texas isn’t a country. I don’t think it would reasonable to include it without including all states/territories/provinces. Scotland, on the other hand, is considered a “country in the UK”, which makes sense to include.

Policy towards flags for countries that are not internationally recognized, like Transdniestria, seems like more of a grey area, though. What’s the best way to handle countries whose existence (or name) isn’t universally recognized? OGS recognizes Kosovo, for example (there’s two Kosovo entries, actually, which should definitely get fixed), and FYROM (soon to be the Republic of North Macedonia) is listed as just “Macedonia”, which is moderately problematic for Greeks. Northern Cyprus and Taiwan also have flags.

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The flags are for fun, and partly for converying some loose information.

I’m pretty sure you’ll find each proposal assessed on it’s merits. There is nothing that says just because one state’s flag is added, then all have to be.

OGS doesn’t “recognise Kosovo” in a political sense. OGS recognises that someone from Kosovo wanted to identify that way, and provided an opportunity to do that. Same with “Lord Howe Island”. It’s interesting and fun to bump into someone with a Lord Howe Island flag, and realise that maybe they live on a tiny Island, or maybe their ancestors did… conversation starter, that’s about it.

GaJ

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29

Where to begin. The title of this post should be “Petition for new flag”, not “Petition for new country”. Having a flag on OGS is not what defines a country as a country, and many of the flags on OGS are for principalities, unions and city-states, as well as fictional entities. Having your flag recognised on OGS is not a step towards secession, contrary to what the title of this post implies.

While I appreciate that you place us noble Scots above Texans for some reason,

I take issue with this. For starters, OGS having a flag is not “acceptance as a country”, as I have already mentioned, but that is not why I take issue.

My main issue is that you seem to have a problem with the inclusion of the Texan flag due to political implications. Let us consider that Northern Ireland is a country which exists as a result of the British occupation of the island of Ireland. Yet the flag of NI is included on OGS. If I suggested that I should leave OGS due to the inclusion of the NI flag, I would not expect to be taken seriously, much less any action to be taken as a result of this.

Furthermore, this issue cannot be avoided as all flags are tied to some collective identity, and politics follows naturally from this. Consider what the American flag means to people in Iraq and Afghanistan; or what the flag of Saudi Arabia means to Yemeni people. Yet, would we even begin to consider that these flags should not be allowed on the basis of offending the political sensibilities of users?

Once we start to disallow flags because we do not agree with the political alignments they represent, we begin to walk a dangerous line, and, except in extreme cases, all flags should be allowed.

Hardly. Clearly, if the Texan flag were added, the flags for the rest of the states would have to be included too.

Then, you would be tacitly endorsing the politics of each individual state by inclusion or omission, which is also not a good road to go down. In my opinion, it has to be all or nothing on this one.

Anyway, my point is that the inclusion of a flag by OGS is not an endorsement of the policies or actions of that entity.

I, for one, am grateful that OGS have included the Saltire as a flag, because Scotland is often overlooked as “just a part of the UK”, and, I am impressed that they even have the flag of Western Sahara, which is occupied by Morocco and struggles for recognition of any sort. Keep up the good work in this area, and all the best to the OGS team and everyone posting on these forums. Peace.

p.s.

Thankfully for us, that referendum was advisory and not legally binding, so we may escape the sorry mess that the UK has become, yet!

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30

Yes, my bad. I assure you that this mistake was unintentional, just a misunderstanding on my part. I wanted to make the point that the referendum was in no way illegal (unlike others I can think of), and that secession was also possible through democratic means and without violence.

I know you see no issue with the Texan flag and, incidentally, I guess I would not have issue with a “TX, United States” flag, or that of any other state for that matter. I’d fail to see the point though, because you’d be adding 50 states in the US, but why stop there? Why not do the same with Canada, Russia or China? they have equally big (if not bigger) 1st level divisions of their territories, and two of them are federal just like the US. I’d rather keep it simple (Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales being a notable exception to this, apparently, because they are often enough portrayed individually as to be almost traditional).

Now countries like Western Sahara, the Palestinian Territories, Kosovo or Taiwan are controversial enough, but they’d otherwise be unrepresented for the most part, having their flags I think is fair enough in deference to the people living there. But I didn’t even mention those places in my post, I intentionally mentioned those places where Russia is involved somehow, because I thought that would be something some Americans might take issue with, let alone Texans.

And yes, history is violent and messy. Countries have invaded one another since forever. We can’t help that. Some country flags can be offensive to some folks, and we can’t help that either. What most sites do is defer this issue completely and take, say, only flags for countries recognized by the UN or something similar. Now that come to think of it, what most actually do is put a flag for every territorial internet domain. That seems fair enough a rule, and also explains why Svalbard and Jan Mayen has its own flag (and even then OGS uses just the Norwegian flag).

Anyway, none of this is the case in this thread. I think when the op said:

he was being unambiguously clear. My emphasis on the word independent; if that is not separatist, I don’t know what is.

I don’t think we could afford to have just any flag. Flags mean things as much as words. There are flags that are better avoided, and yes, precisely because of what they represent. The Confederate flag (which I’m waiting for someone to ask for inclusion any time soon) is closely tied with slavery, for example. What about the never-to-be-mentioned-again National Socialist Party flag? What about the USSR flag? What about all those flags that someone would gladly put beside their username? Is this really the place for that?

No one is arguing that if you allow those flags to be used here, then here is where the revolution starts. No one is arguing that the people who hold these opinions would suddenly change because their flag isn’t there. All I’m saying is that if you take the bother to create the sprite, add the item in the list box, putting the option there to be seen by everyone, you are tacitly accepting them. It would not be a neutral action, it would be favoring one side much as some would not like to acknowledge that.

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Maybe we could start by asking the OGS team what the purpose of this field is. Is it to connect with people who belong to the same go federation? Who speak the same language? Who are on the same timezone?

I don’t see how a field expressing a political opinion would have its place on this server.

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What do you mean with ‘field’? You mean the flags?
There is no other purpose outside of giving users a visual indicator of where they are from (or not from).

Clearly a Texas flag is controversial (and i get how it would be) so i don’t see the motivation for OGS to stoke that particular fire.

Users can make their own avatars, just put a texas flag there if its that important to you

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I mean the choice field that can take values such as “unspecified”, “Switzerland” or “House Targaryen”. You call it “flag” and others call it “country”, honestly I don’t see its name displayed anywhere.

I am confused. To take an example, what would “Red Cross” tell me about where they are from or not from? Also, to clarify, when I ask for the purpose, I am asking why OGS makes this field available, not just what it means.

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If you don’t want to specify where you are from you can pick an option that is not an actual location , like the klingon federation or whatever. For those who want to set a national flag, they can do so.

There is no purpose other than provide a little more information for the users to share, if they wish.

I don’t see why there is so much confusion around this.

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As someone who is currently using the Jolly Roger, i personally see no harm at all, if OGS were to add the flags of German and USA states, flags of the republics, oblasts and such of Russia, or flags for the regions of Finland. And so on. World has a bazillion of different flags in use, so why not to have them all on OGS?

Of course adding all flags would mean a lot of work for someone, but why not?

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well the work to add them for one, and the potential headache of addressing ethnical and political divides. I don’t see how its worth it just to give ppl more options

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When I read the post that started this thread, the tone of inoffensive humor seemed pretty clear to me. Many in the US are aware of a running joke of Texas being “like a whole other country”, and I’ve never met anyone who seemed to take it in an extreme way.

Based on strong feelings expressed in this thread, some people seem sufficiently troubled by their awareness of some people who do take it seriously to not allow room for the more light toned humor. But the harmless humor is genuine, and we risk losing some “quality of life” component to human interaction when humor is curtailed to excess.

It’s just something to consider.

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38

Allowing “fun” or “pride” flags but not allowing the Texas flag would seem like an arbitrary censorship to me.

As Coke points out, the joke about Texas is a well known one, and if a person is offended by seeing the Texas flag, they literally could not travel to Texas without being offended on every street and sidewalk.

As Wikipedia says The flag, flown at homes and businesses statewide, is highly popular among Texans and is treated with a great degree of reverence and esteem within Texas.

An argument that “it might cause offence” is simply a nonsense argument, countered by “Sure, so might saying ‘good morning’, but would it cause significant offence? No.”

There are without doubt some proposals that would be denied due to the potential for significant offence.

For this reason, there is also a grey zone. Someone would have to decide, when confronted with a grey zone choice.

Personally, I think a state flag is more likely to be knocked back on the grounds that it would open the floodgates for requiring to have hundreds more as each state in each country is proposed.

As if that would happen. I can’t think of another state that I know of in the world that cares as much about it’s flag as Texas - this likely would be a blip of one or two me-toos and that would be it.

GaJ

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<cough> I’m sure we can inflate the flags database up to 1GB or more …

Here’s the emblem of the municipality where I live, consisting of nine villages, in the Lüneburg Heath in Northern Germany.

Emblem of Bispingen

LogoBispingen

I can haz it?

<jk> :wink:

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It’s very pretty. I might wear it as a symbol of my friendship with my dear friend in Bispingen!

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German heraldry is awesome. Everywhere is sooooo much older than the states. Although, the town I live in has a system of rock walls, statues and chambers buried under the farms. So strange. I refuse to admit your beer is better, though. Texas bock is world class.

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Ha! I was wondering how I could submit a request for a new country. Let’s hope this is the best spot!

I’d like to request for…WAKANDA!

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