We Don’t Need A Flag

After having been sent a positively underwhelming amount of flags for my embryonic flag contest - three - I must decide not to go ahead with this. If people don’t want it, it won’t be me forcing it down their throats. Anything as symbolic as a resident flag needs to have significance to a lot more people than those who reacted, sent in their stuff, or spread the word on other blogs.

No, I won’t publish the flags that have been sent in. The designers may want to use them for other purposes or future contests.

I would like to thank Harper Ganesvoort, Gatz Morang and ArtOf Manga for sending me their creations and I would like to thank the many bloggers who have helped me bring this contest to the attention of more people than I can reach by myself. It didn’t work, but thanks to you people I can at least say it didn’t fail due to lack of attention.

We Need A Flag! (updated)

[Update, may 11th: I received the first two entries, and both of them interesting and thoughtful! Thanks for sending these in! With my own design, that makes three. Don't worry, voting will be anonymous]

Let’s face it. We never had a flag - that was a logo on a stick and it would look good outside a Linden Lab office, but it was hardly what you’d call a real flag. And now even the name of the famous logo is copyrighted, so use of it as a symbol for all of us is right out. It’s “theirs” now…

The other day I was building an airplane and airplanes often carry a national flag. Now I have a choice of flags to use, being that I am a Dutch person living in Italy. But what if I want to sell my plane? How many non-Dutch people will want to have a Dutch flag on their plane? How many different textures would I have to make?

Suppose you are building a grand square on your sim and you want everyone to feel welcome there. A grand square looks good with flags, so how many different ones are you going to stick in the ground there? Five? Ten?

And let’s not forget the many army and police roleplayers. OK, so especially toy cops are not my friends, but they could do with some uniforms with a flag insignia. It just looks good, believe me, I am not impartial to the looks of a well-cut uniform.

Therefore, we need a flag representing Second Life Residents. But I can’t do that by myself - I cannot expect to post my design here and have everyone rally behind it and adopt it as the flag for all of us. So I need your help.

What can you do? First and foremost, start designing! More on that later. Secondly, of course, link to this blog on your own blog or copy the text, spread the word, translate it in another language, get the ball rolling. And third, I need people to judge the flags, or to judge a shortlist of flags if many come in. I’ll seek out some specific people myself but I think that average Residents should be a part of the selection process. Why judges? I want to avoid the inevitable: people pushing all their friends to go vote for their flag. It’s not a popularity contest. I will make sure the vote is anonymous - no names attached to flags. Of course, judges cannot run in the competition.

The fourth thing we may want is some prize and I’ll be happy if any of you has anything on offer. This includes Linden Lab, but I want to make clear that this will be the flag of the Residents, not of the Lab. If Linden staff want to participate in any way, they can as far as I am concerned - they are Residents - but I will not actively seek any Linden support or endorsement at all. I would like to one day go to M or Philip or Robin and present our flag to them!

Now about the design. I had a whole list of personal things I wanted to say, but it’s better to keep you all open-minded. I respectfully point you to the website of Flags Of The World which is a great source for information and inspiration. Please note that all elements in a flag have a meaning - and I would think it’s a good idea to explain your flag when you send it in.

Some things however need mentioning. I don’t like timewasters, so an all grey Lag Flag is not going to the judges. Neither are flat-out copies of existing national flags. I don’t expect you to know all city-, provincial-, regional and other flags, but straight copies of country flags should be avoided. Another thing I do not accept for judging is a red flag with a white circle and a black symbol in the middle - ha, ha, it’s a faux Nazi flag. Don’t waste your time on that, or mine. And finally, any flag with a religious or political symbol, or a combination of those, can never represent all the Residents, and so is not worth the effort.

Keep in mind that your flag should represent all of us, as diverse as we are in age, background, location and culture.

Sending in a flag for this competition means that you waive all copyrights to it, should it be chosen as the winner. Anyone must be able to use it. Please send your designs to residentsflag at hotmail dot com, do NOT forget to mention your Second Life name and watch this spot for more news!

(Second Life and Linden Lab are trademarks of Linden Research, Inc.)