Tonight I wrote some code to display country flags for each player on the teams and pairings pages. Here's an example:


To make your country public, click your handle on the upper left of any TeamLeague page when logged in. You can then select your country from the list. (Players who identify with multiple countries can only choose one, sorry.)

Please note that this feature is completely optional. Players will never be required to publicly share their country.

Great idea, Wil!!!

Sweet. :)

I was always curious of where some people are from :P (nice addition btw)

BTW, would it be possible to include the GMT offset?

I think it could help abouding offering unreasonable times if people care to do the conversion

That is an interesting suggestion, but in discussions, we have generally believed "just" using server time instead of adding more time zones may inadvertently add confusion.

For me, I would make the same offers that work for me, regardless of GMT, and read my opponents' offers and work toward what works for both sides.

I think it looks really nice. It's just a shame there is no Scottish flag

Now there is! I added support for the following flags which are not in the ISO 3166-1 list:

Catalonia, England, Kurdistan, Scotland, Somaliland, Wales, Zanzibar

I should note that the division of the world into countries, the definition of a country, and the assignment of flags to countries are inherently political topics.

I hope that such issues do not arise in TeamLeague, because TL has traditionally been agnostic to borders. However, if the availability or non-availability of certain flags becomes controversial, I will probably disable the display of flags entirely.

Hi,

I like this small new feature :).

In case it gets controversial, I would much prefer that the disabling of the flags may be done per user, not for everyone, so that everyone might decide for themselves. (But I understand this means more work...)

I don't think non-availability of any flags was ever that controversial and if anyone did they can just leave it blank (since none is an option found at very top) or as in my case as I have two nationalities just choose other one. Only reason I kind of mentioned it is that FIDE includes it and I was unsure how closely it was intended to align.

Thanks for additions and sorry if it sounded vaguely controversial. It was also interesting to learn about ISO 3166-1 list :)

I wasn't implying that you made it controversial, just that discussions of flags can quickly become political. For example, I had a request to add a flag for Quebec, which I think I will decline, because my source of little flag images doesn't have one for Quebec. But I really, really do not want to be taking a position on why Quebec "deserves" a flag more or less than Kurdistan, say.

At this point I do not plan to add any more flags, because adding to the list would be technically difficult. But I want to acknowledge that any "list of countries", whether ISO, the FIDE list, or the list I used for TeamLeague, is itself a political statement. My goal in adding the flags was to make the TeamLeague pages look cool, not to make any political statements. Thus I ask for understanding by anyone who disagrees with the list I used, given that it is impossible to please everyone.

I just noticed that if you hold your mouse over the flag, it shows that flag's country.

Cool :)

OK, I added a flag for my Québécois friends, but no more! :)

And the Basque Ikurriña. Sigh.