[Commons-l] Flag of Neologism

[Gregory Maxwell]

Some time ago a person just made up a flag for Herefordshire
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herefordshire) and uploaded it.

The flag is erroneously represented as the official flag on both the
NL and PL wikipedias:
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herefordshire
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herefordshire

Since no official flag exists (as far as I can tell) this flag shows
up right at the top of a google search result:
http://www.google.com/search?q=herefordshire+flag

Several low-rent vendors have picked up the flag and started selling
it, apparently under the belief that it was the official deal. The
original author of the flag posted on the internet bragging about it:
http://forum.watmm.com/topic/52097-fucking-nice/


The file was placed for deletion on commons, but people are voting to keep it:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Flag_of_herefordshire.PNG


I've long been an advocate of commons having a wider mandate than the
Wikipedias, such as accepting original works where the Wikipedias
wouldn't. However, I think that keeping this is an abuse of the
expanded mandate and that accepting this kind of misleading work puts
commons policy in conflict with the needs of its primary customer.

I'm of the view that commons should never be used in a manner which is
dishonest or misleading, and that the expanded mandate compared to the
Wikipedias should be primarily about the noteworthness of the covered
subject matter, not its truthfulness.