Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United Nations/Archive 2

question
I realise that this page may be quite inactive, but I'll give it a try. Is it good practice to add honorific titles such as "His Excellency" before the names of world leaders? Please refer to List of delegates to the Millennium Summit-- Ed  ¿Cómo estás? Reviews? 03:31, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I suggest you look at Manual of Style, especially Manual of Style (biographies). My own interpretation (I don't claim to be an expert on this!) would be that the honorific title can be used in such places as the List of delegates to the Millennium Summit but should not be used in the title of a biographical article.  For example, see Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, which does not include "Her Majesty" either in the title of the article, or at the beginning of the first sentence. Kahuzi 08:20, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I just realized that I might have been using the honorifics, especially with the "Sir"s. To avoid complications, I guess I should just remove all of them.-- Ed  ¿Cómo estás? Reviews? 23:46, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Diplomatic incidents
Category:Diplomatic incidents has very recently come into being, and has a mere two articles located within it. As an active member of WikiProject Military history, and someone interested in politics and diplomacy in general, I have for some time wondered about better categorization of those events which, though not military in nature, have crucial effects upon diplomacy. There are already complex trees of categories for terrorism, state terrorism, assassinations, and the history of foreign relations of many separate countries, but I still think it may prove useful, and pertinent, to create, and populate a complex of categories for diplomatic incidents, and particularly for events which, even when not directly "military" or "diplomatic" in nature, have profound effects upon those spheres. (Some examples include the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, the USS Maine, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the kidnapping of several Israeli soldiers last year, and the Namamugi Incident, just to name a few.) Thoughts, ideas, suggestions? How might we best label these articles so as to indicate their roles in spurring greater diplomatic or military events? Thank you. LordAmeth 17:37, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
 * First and foremost, we must define the term "Diplomatic incidents". Does this mean the arrest of a diplomat? An attack on an embassy? Assasination of a diplomat? An event that causes a conflict between two states/countries/nations? Embargo on trade? No matter what the answer is, it is clear that we must define the category on great detail.-- Ed  ¿Cómo estás? 02:07, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
 * lol. I had a sense I'd get such a response from posting on the UN WikiProject. I'm a pre-modern historian, so I'm not talking about such tightly defined formal legal definitions as have arisen in modern times, regarding the modern forms of embassies, diplomats, formal embargoes as declared by UN Resolutions... I'm talking about events, violent or not, which have a dramatic negative or tumultuous/disruptive effect upon international relations disproportionate to the extent of the events themselves. These can range from the sinking of merchant vessels, hostage taking, kidnappings, assassinations, terrorism of various sorts, to cultural misunderstandings.

President Bush vomiting at a formal dinner with the Japanese government is an incident of a diplomatic nature (though I'm not sure if it's a notable enough event that it has its own article). The Namamugi Incident of 1862, in which an Englishman was killed, and war broke out between Japan and England, all because the Englishman did not observe the proper Japanese cultural protocol of dismounting and bowing when a feudal lord (daimyo) passed by with his procession. Another fine example is in the early 1600s when the Japanese shogunate refuses to use Chinese imperial calendar years in correspondence with Korea, thus implicitly denying the cultural or political superiority of China - this was fully unacceptable to Korea, and diplomatic overtures were rejected. This, too, is an "incident" of a diplomatic nature. And in all of these cases, it took no more than a single person acting in a manner deemed culturally or politically inappropriate by the other party, which led to serious diplomatic repercussions.

I agree, of course, that some sort of definition is necessary - we must figure out exactly what we should consider a "diplomatic incident". But I think that in the process of doing so, we must be careful not to become too mired in modern-day terminologies or definitions. The UN, and the modern-day system of IR, is only about 60 years old, and does not represent international relations through the ages. LordAmeth 10:05, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Inactive Project?
I feel that this wikiproject needs to be revived. Discussion has been scarce, and (no offense) some of our articles are horrible. I suggest that we open up a collaboration. We can also create more infoboxes, as suggested above.-- Ed  ¿Cómo estás? 16:38, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
 * It looks inactive, even the Sec Gen has not been updated. Also, there is at present no way to categorize which articles have been tagged with WikiProject United Nations. Chris 07:29, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

There is a proposal on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Foreign relations to merge this inactive WikiProject into the Foreign relations WikiProject. Any input from this project is appreciated.-- Ed  ¿Cómo estás? 03:56, 14 April 2007 (UTC)


 * There's a huge Model UN community around the world. If only one percent of them got into WP this would be one of the largest projects.  I feel it is only a matter of time before they finally connect.Goatchurch 10:32, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Assessment table
I set up a v1.0 assessment table for the project. It only has a few articles listed in it now, but it will add all of the unassessed ones when the bots and job queue catch up. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 22:13, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Merges talk page templates
I have merged WikiProject United Nations with WikiProject International relations so that articles are put into both projects when they are added to the UN project. Just add the perameter "|un=yes" to an International relations banner. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 03:50, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

US Amb to UN
I tagged all US Ambassadors to the UN with WikiProject International relations|un=yes per latest info at WP:INTR Mikebar 12:11, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Subset of WikiProject International relations?
Is this wikiproject basically a subset of WikiProject International relations? The reason I ask is, I was thinking of creating a free-market economics sub-project under WikiProject Economics but wasn't sure if there was precedent for it. Thanks, Sarsaparilla (talk) 22:17, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
 * All articles in this are automaticly in WP:IR. Check out the wikiproject banner used at the top of this page to see how this is set up.  There are lots of other precidents, like in WikiProject Australia and WikiProject Canada, which have all of their states'/provinces'/teritories' wikiprojects as subset projects.  I think WikiProject Biography does something similar.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 00:01, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

New category and stub proposal
I've created Category:United Nations Economic and Social Council (and hope I didn't step on any toes by doing so). I've also proposed a split of Category:United Nations stubs at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting. Picaroon (t) 05:11, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
 * UN-bio-stub now exists. Picaroon (t) 02:10, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Would anyone be interested in collaborating to bring the Universal Declaration of Human Rights article to FA status in time to get it posted to the Main Page as TFA for December 10, 2008, which is Human Rights Day and the 60th anniversary of the Declaration? Sarsaparilla (talk) 14:41, 27 December 2007 (UTC)