White-blue-white flag

What about adding the white-blue-white flag to the selection of national flags?
For me the current Russian tricolour is now completely discredited and I do not feel happy to use it.

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I have noticed some members using the UN flag so maybe that is an option if you do not want to use the Russian flag.

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Itā€™s not a bad idea, but I would like to emphasize that I am Russian.

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I understand completely, but I donā€™t think it will be possible; I guess that some people from Belarus already asked to have the white-red-white flag instead of the current one which comes from the Soviet timeā€¦ And same apply for much more political flags, related to political parties.

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Mikhail! :wave:

Although I personally favor sticking to the standard national flags, just for the sake of easy recognition, I think I understand your motivation here, and if so, I can relate.

Sometimes, Iā€™ve had mixed feelings about using my own national flag (I made a topic about it a while ago; there were some nice contributions from others, and maybe you can find some comfort in it). There are times when I worry that other Postcrossers might interpret my displaying my countryā€™s flag as implicit approval of US culture and political policy as a whole, when in fact, I think we can do better. I prefer that people get to know me first, before assuming national stereotypes. (I think thatā€™s likely true for everyone!)

However, please let me reassure you: it is not your responsibility to form othersā€™ opinions of you before they have even given you a chance to express yourself! Your only responsibility is to be a friendly and authentic member of the community. People will eventually know what is important to you, no matter what flag is displayed! :blush:

If you want to emphasize that you are Russian, I donā€™t think there is any harm in using the Russian flag as it is. I know that Russophobia is quite rampant now in many places, and you may be concerned about people being cruel. No one should be bullied here (or anywhere!) because of their nationality or heritage.

Thatā€™s just my opinion, of course! If you would feel more comfortable displaying no flag at all, that is also an option that lots of users prefer.

I hope that helps, and that you always feel welcome here. :heart:

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I might be wrong but I think that not wanting to use the Russian flag might not be because one is worried about what others think. Sometimes when our national flags are being used to represent injustice, we donā€™t want to associate with it for the sake of ourselves and not others. We might feel that the flag itself has become offensive.

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@littlesthobo Thank you, Ali. You got it right.

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Personally, I have recently started using the flag. And only because participating in the tags, some users marked me without looking at which country I was from, and sending a postcard was impossible on their part, and the tags were marked further.

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@Inesainesa
Yes, that is the reason I still use the tricololor too.

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I can see why you want to use the white-blue-white flag, but I seriously doubt this suggestion will be implemented. I think it would open the door to people requesting all kinds of non-national/non-official flags, and then Postcrossing admins being accused of unfairness when they introduce some and not others.

A bit off topic, but I wish there were an option to just display the name of our country next to our username, instead of a flag. I will not display the American flag anywhere. Not in my yard, not on my car, and not even on my Postcrossing profile, because to me that flag is a political symbol that represents atrocious crimes committed by my government. If there were an option to just have it say ā€œUSAā€ in that spot, that would just be information about where I live, without anything else implied.

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@Tara_Bell
I really like your idea with the name of the country instead of the flag. I would be satisfied with such an option.

Ok, for now I decided not to display any flag at all. Thanks everyone for the discussion.

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They could avoid the whole issue by allowing users to upload their own flags. But I donā€™t know if thatā€™s possible on Discord.

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I think the flags available on Discourse (what this type of forum is called - itā€™s not something put together in-house by Postcrossing) are based on those available in Unicode as emojis. So the first step might be suggesting that the White-Blue-White flag (a beautiful flag!) become available as an emoji first. From what Iā€™ve read, it can be pretty tough to get a new emoji accepted and the process sometimes takes years.

If youā€™re curious, though, this link gives all the information on how to submit a proposal for a new emoji:

https://unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html

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But there are at least 4 flags available which I donā€™t see in emoji list!
Northern Ireland and three ā€œundefinedā€ flags: Germany/Austria; USA/Austria; Brittany

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Thatā€™s a great point! I didnā€™t know about those flags. I was totally wrong about the relation to unicode/emojis (though it would still be nice to have the White-Blue-White flag as an emoji! :smiley: ).

I searched a bit and found that the code for the national flags feature is available on github for anyone to look at it. The creator of the code (unaffiliated with Postcrossing) added all the flags. The ā€œundefinedā€ flags were made at the request of close friends on another forum. The images are just .png files, so I think theoretically any flag could be included as long as there was an image file for it :thinking:

National Flag code on github: https://github.com/Ebsy/discourse-nationalflags

Origin of the ā€œundefinedā€ flags is mentioned under the ā€œIssuesā€ tab.

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I worry about the safety of the Russian people who want to use white-blue-white flag.

I saw the news in Japan where some Russian people in Japan stood with Ukrainian people on the street with such a flag. There now seem to be negativity online about them because of it written by people who are opposed, which was also on the news.

So be careful !!

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I wear a white-blue-white flag badge and I have a peace sign on my backpack. I had no problems with this yet.

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