I'm not going to make a big issue out of this and this is a real world issue which doesn't need to be dragged onto this website. However, to highlight/create awareness: the flag which has been assigned to NI is arguably contentious.
Northern Ireland has no official flag and the flying of flags in Northern Ireland is highly contentious as they are politicised.
The flag which is used on this website has not been an official flag since 1973 and is generally associated with one particular community in NI.
Some NI runners not from this community may have issues with this flag automatically being assigned to them based on their geographical location.
This is a complicated issue but I recommend this is looked into.
There are a lot of problems with the current flags on SRC. Hopefully there will be a flag revamp soon.
I am certainly no expert on Irish flag politics, but at a glance: [quote=Wikipedia]However, it is still used... to represent Northern Ireland internationally in some sporting competitions, like the Commonwealth Games.[/quote]
With that in mind, perhaps it is actually appropriate to use it here despite its lack of official status? Given that a speedrunning leaderboard is not conceptually much different than an international sporting competition. But yeah, flags and really locations as a whole on this site were not really done correctly in the first place and were pretty much never maintained, some kind of overhaul would be good. I doubt it's a high priority for the site owners at the moment though, so I wouldn't expect anything to change about this in the near future.
To clarify, the issue here is not necessarily the un-official nature of the flag being used.
The issue is that flags in NI are divisive and used as reflection of identity and certain political opinions. I cannot speak for everyone and I will not go into my personal beliefs. However, there are people in Northern Ireland who would not identify with this flag. This flag can be seen to represent one community and not everyone in the country. However, on this website it is being used to reflect everyone in NI even if you don't identify with it.
I will also highlight that the flag for NI has been changed to the current flag as it used to be St Patrick's Saltire.
Clearly personal identity is important on this website as an option for pronouns has been introduced and I suspect that in this case I've raised that it was either an oversight or lack of awareness of the sensitivities.
I mostly just meant that there's existing precedent for its use in this particular context. I get that it's complicated.
I chose to do my last history coursework on the Northern Ireland conflict... it was gruelling, but I'd like to imagine I have some understanding of the problem, and I agree with @Alowishus89 I agree with Shiken to an extent too, although sadly Elo rarely if ever takes note of small improvements to the site. It is however possible to select yourself as having no location if you strongly disassociate with the flag. I secondarily feel that adding a small cluster of further flags to identify with may spark unnecessary conflicts between runners about the relevant and different symbolism of each banner, whereas as disappointing as the unionist flag is, it may be useful just as a flag to distinguish the place the runner chooses to identify with having come from. And I'd finish with saying that no flag for a country is worse than one, despite the fact that the flag has a certain historical symbolism to it, that flaw is shared by many flags from different countries in the world.
Problem extends beyond Northern Ireland and it would be quite the task to fix them all.