Talk:United Nations

First sentence of the article.

The first sentence currently reads:

"The United Nations (UN; French: Organisation des Nations unies, ONU) is world's largest,foremost, and most prominent international organization."

There is a glaring need for the article "the" placed after the word "is" and before the contraction "world's". It bothered me that this type of error was made on a page as important as this one that it honestly distracted me from reading further. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lpais88 (talk • contribs) 04:24, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

You could have fixed it yourself, you know. Anyway, it's fixed now. However, it could use some sort of sources - yes, it is clearly obvious that it is true, but in an encyclopaedia we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of stating that any one thing is plainly obvious. --$\color {Blue}{\mathcal {M}}$$\color {Blue}{\vec {(e\ ,}}$$\color {Blue}t)$ = ? 13:11, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

There are more than grammatical errors there; that whole sentence is non-WP:NPOV and needs to be deleted:

• foremost is vague (pure opinion) and is being used as a WP:PEACOCK (or at least WP:WEASEL) word; has no business being here
• most prominent -- again, in whose opinion? (also a synonym of the sense in which foremost was used)
• world's largest -- how do you define this? Just because almost all the nations of the world are members doesn't make that so. Does it mean if you total up everyone who works for the UN (ambassadors and staff) you would get the largest number? Needs to be verified.

I deleted foremost already because it is so blatant, and tagged the remainder as not verified in the body. (Also read MOS:LEAD; it is unnecessary and undesirable to clutter a well-written lead with redundant citations to what should be in the body.) I now believe the whole sentence should go. There is nothing at all "plainly obvious" about those three statements. The lead sentence should actively define the topic, and not be a judgemental statement about it. The lead was just fine as it was before: "The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are ..." If the statement about being the largest can be verified, it should go third. JustinTime55 (talk) 21:15, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Flagicons in infobox

I've re-added the flagicons in the infobox, because it is relevant to show that the UN is an international organisation, and as such has individuals from various nations serving in its leadership. If you think otherwise, then let's hear your argumentation. --$\color {Blue}{\mathcal {M}}$$\color {Blue}{\vec {(e\ ,}}$$\color {Blue}t)$ = ? 14:55, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

I think it's great --Shax (talk) 21:21, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Localization, official languages

The process and the reason of taking the decision regarding localization the General Assembly in New York are not described. According to the logic, the General Assembly should be placed on neutral territory, or, more conveniently and efficiently - on the Internet. Also it is not clear of how the decision was made to approve the official languages, which are much smaller than the member countries. Thus discrimination of some nations and exaltation of others are observed on organizational issues - this may be added to the criticism. --Alex-korolev (talk) 09:24, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

The United Nations Headquarters, including the General Assembly, are on international territory, though it is a bit troublesome that it is in the middle of US territory. And your mentioning the Internet - the UN was created in 1945-46! And on the topic of the official languages, the place for that subject is Official languages of the United Nations. --$\color {Blue}{\mathcal {M}}$$\color {Blue}{\vec {(e\ ,}}$$\color {Blue}t)$ 20:02, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

This territory is controlled by army and police of the single country. So it is international but is not a Neutral territory. This allows USA to control the organization single-handedly, prohibit the entry for some members, for example. Other counties may have other opinion regarding existing organization controlling. The UN was created in 1945-46 but now is 2013! The efficiently organization structure of United Nations Headquarters may looks like a virtual media with physical realization on the server placed on a truly neutral territory with equal access for all countries. The number of official languages should be equal to the number of countries. At the present day discrimination of little nations exists. --Alex-korolev (talk) 08:42, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

You are arguing how thing should be. That is not the purpose of Wikipedia - we are here to tell how thing are. If you want to argue, go do it someplace else.--$\color {Blue}{\mathcal {M}}$$\color {Blue}{\vec {(e\ ,}}$$\color {Blue}t)$ 11:59, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

I offer to add more information about the topics pointed above. The criticism is superficial in the article(only about separate events), fundamental remarks on the effectiveness of the structure and work of UN should be added. --Alex-korolev (talk) 16:41, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Why do you have to ask? If you have some good sources, go ahead and add the info!--$\color {Blue}{\mathcal {M}}$$\color {Blue}{\vec {(e\ ,}}$$\color {Blue}t)$ 16:45, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately i'm not a specialist in politics or sociology and do not know good sources. But I see the way to do the article (and the UN) better. --Alex-korolev (talk) 17:03, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Going for Good Article status

As part of an article improvement drive for WProject Human rights, I'm hoping to bring this article to GA status in the next month or two. It'll still be a few weeks before I start doing any major rewrites (if major rewrites are even needed), but I wanted to start out by asking regular editors/watchers of this article: what do you feel still needs to be improved here? Is there anything you'd like me to focus on? -- Khazar2 (talk) 14:02, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Looking over the article in more detail today, I feel like things are in reasonably good shape and already approaching GA status. I'll try to address the citation needed tags in the next few days, and start double-checking citations where I can. More substantially, I'd like to expand some historical content and reduce the focus on the past decade a bit. (To give one example, the "Greening the Blue" initiative doesn't seem like a major enough milestone in the UN's sixty-year history to merit its own section.) If anyone disagrees with any revisions I make, of course, feel free to revert me and we can discuss here. Thanks to everyone who worked on this article before me; looking forward to working with you all, -- Khazar2 (talk) 16:29, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I see you citing a lot of books. I've always found such citations on Wikipedia very troublesome - books are generally not so easily available on the internet, and we can't be realistic in expecting people to own giant libraries so they could check the validity of our claims. Could you try to use more urls as sources?--$\color {Blue}{\mathcal {M}}$$\color {Blue}{\vec {(e\ ,}}$$\color {Blue}t)$ 17:37, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Hm, that's an unusual request. I understand your point, but books are often more comprehensive, stable, and authoritative than internet sources, and are extremely standard for GAs and FAs. (My experience as a GA reviewer has been that Google Books and Amazon search allow me to verify most offline citations in any case.) That said, I don't have any problem with you adding supplementary URLs if you like, and I'll avoid replacing any links to reliable internet sources with book citations alone. -- Khazar2 (talk) 17:54, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Agreed! --$\color {Blue}{\mathcal {M}}$$\color {Blue}{\vec {(e\ ,}}$$\color {Blue}t)$ 18:11, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Two proposed changes

Two changes I'm hoping to start implementing today:

1. To expand the "Creation" section into a more general "History" section. I don't want this section to overpower the article, but we should at least mention some notable events of the organization's history--Congo intervention, Dag Hammerskjold's plane crash, Korean War, etc.--and give an overview of how the organization has evolved over its lifetime.
2. To reframe the "Criticism" section as "Evaluations of the United Nations"; it seems to clearly violate WP:NPOV to include a section of negative material without also including positive evaluations. For example, the many Nobel Prizes parts of the organization have won appear to be largely omitted, whereas Dore Gold alone seems to get 2-3 paragraphs.

Let me know if anyone has any thoughts or objections, and, of course, feel free to revert and we can discuss further. -- Khazar2 (talk) 12:39, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Getting close

I feel like we're getting close to where this will be ready for a GA nomination. So far I've focused on sourcing what's already there, winnowing parts that suffer from WP:RECENTISM or excessive detail, and adding a history section and a broader range of evaluations. I'm now pretty confident about what's there--but is there anything left that's missing? Let me know your thoughts. -- Khazar2 (talk) 12:20, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

As a note to self, something about the UN panels on climate change should presumably be added. -- Khazar2 (talk) 12:25, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Sri Lankan Civil War

I've again removed a second paragraph describing the UN's failure in Sri Lanka's Civil War that seems undue weight to me. I do agree it belongs in the article, and I in no way mean to trivialize the magnitude of that failure. It's simply that in an article of this scope, adding an extra paragraph on any of the UN's interventions or noninterventions unbalances things. For example, the failure in Rwanda gets one sentence, as does Bosnia. The Korean War and First Gulf War get a sentence apiece. The UN mediation failures in the Six-Day War get a third of a sentence. Somalia gets half a sentence. The Congo intervention gets two sentences, but only because it's necessary to mention that the Secretary-General died in it. The Suez crisis gets only half a sentence. In nonmilitary terms, Dag Hammarskjöld gets only one sentence and Kofi Annan gets only a sentence or two, and Kurt Waldheim isn't even mentioned in the prose yet. I don't mean to say that any of these things aren't important; it's just that there's a tremendous amount of ground to cover, and this is written in summary style.

Perhaps more can be added on some of these when I expand "Peacekeeping" later today, though; certainly the material could be added in the expanded form to the UN Peacekeepers article. -- Khazar2 (talk) 11:01, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

I haven't noticed the discussion here when I was adding the content back. But if you could allow once sentence on Bosnia why you haven't allow at least on for Sri Lanka. I am adding one sentence on Sri Lanka.HudsonBreeze (talk) 11:36, 21 November 2013 (UTC)