Talk:Model United Nations

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/Archive 1

[edit] Merger proposal

Looking at the three articles on individual conferences (Geneva International Model United Nations, Harvard United Nations simulations, and National Model United Nations, from Category:Model United Nations conferences), I don't see any reason not to merge the articles for the individual conferences into a short list of summaries within this main article (as part of eventually improving this article itself): first, the conferences' articles all have to give the same explanation for context about what happens at a conference in general, and, second, not counting those shared explanations, each article only really includes about two sentences of appropriate information (Geneva: official status, Harvard: oldest, largest in US, NMUN: largest again), along with a lot of self-promotion.
(So, essentially, reasons: "Text" and "Context"). Wikimancer (talk) 23:48, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I do agree the articles all give little information about those conferences. However, I believe there is too much information to cramp it all together in the main article, especially considering they might grow in the future. Since those conferences are visited by hundreds of students every year, some might want to add some information and they will either start the single articles again or continue stuffing the summaries on the main article.
Although the articles as they are now are not very useful, I believe merging them will make it harder to further develop them and finally make them useful. I do however regard as helpful a short list with very (!) short summaries in the main article. Deivo (talk) 20:06, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I would contend that those articles could actually just be condensed into a list or table with location, date founded, etc. and a "Notes" sentence on notable history/status ("official NGO," "oldest," and "largest"); I would also specifically disagree that there should be much that could be allowable information added to be expected, considering what I think should be a goal of discouraging the addition of ephemeral personal takes and information on conferences.

Incidentally, I'm also going to bring up the argument for the record that, in the context of the "Conferences" or "Notable Conferences" section here that these articles would ideally become, the measure for inclusion of individual conferences should categorically be notability (where the opposing argument could be that listing conferences by sponsoring colleges and organizations could be helpful in illustrating prevalence and community, e.g.) per WP:NOT#LINK, WP:SPAMMER, and WP:DIR. Wikimancer (talk) 04:24, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

You're right that a lot of "information" by participating students might be just personal notes etc. which violate NOR. What I wanted to refer to is committed students actually looking for information from independant sources about the different conferences. Deivo (talk) 22:55, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Considering the bareness of those last three currently existing conference articles, though, is there really any encyclopedic information that exists, or could exist, to be added though? Specifically, I would make the point that, considering the nature of the activity, there isn't much significant information to be reported about specific conferences by independent sources beyond, again the few notable characterizations of those three-ish well established conferences. Wikimancer (talk) 03:29, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

So long as the content can be saved in the merge without pushing this article to the point where a split would be warranted, I don't see a problem. Case for WP:NOTE is fairly difficult to make for any of these conferences, although less so for the ones mentioned here. Many of the others, however, may warrant attention first - did someone already get rid of the articles about the less prominent East Indies MUNs? MrZaius^talk 21:27, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

In reverse order: I did my best to go through the articles that link to this article, as well as to "MUN" (the articles left to delete mostly with the latter) and (nominated to get and) got all the little conferences and groups I could find deleted. To your first point, I'll try and put up a table with the basic information to be merged for approval to illustrate potential conciseness. Wikimancer (talk) 03:29, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm actually going to have to oppose the merge proposal. While I can appreciat trying to consolidate coverage of MUN on wikipedia, I think this specific proposal opens up a pandora's box of spammers. I can't tell you how many times in the past year I've had to remove conference links and bogus copy and I'm sure many of you have had to do the same. I think integrating conferences in only welcomes more of that. Additionally Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Regional organizers and events of Model United Nations established that conferences should be notable each on their own merits and I think having each have its own article is the simplest way to ensure that. Mystache (talk) 23:44, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd say that point itself would be a reason for merging: it's much easier to watch for and revert non-notable conferences on this one page than to keep scanning "What links here" for the new articles that seem to have been able to slip by pretty easily (judging by the number (three) of those kinds of articles I was still able to find yesterday). I think I could also extend the scope of my pre-emptive argument from April 11 a few paragraphs up to address your point. Wikimancer (talk) 03:29, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Having a list on the main article doesn't prevent people from creating new articles though. But well, I guess you could just delete anything that's not on the main article. This would be, however, not much easier than it is now; furthermore, valuable information might be lost and it might exasperate people who want to contribute to WP. Deivo (talk) 09:19, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

I've added a trial section, so to speak, for "Notable conferences" to model what the merged content would look like (actually, this version would pretty much be it; I already included all the details to be added from the articles in question). I tried to sum up a warning for the concerns about inclusion in this issue in a comment at the beginning of the section (based on the warning at the beginning of the External Links section). Wikimancer (talk) 06:02, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

As part of a consolidation effort for organizations that are part of the Harvard International Relations Council, I have merged the information presented in Harvard United Nations simulations into the new, umbrella article. That being the case, I have removed the merge proposal for the Harvard page here. Optimusnauta (talk) 05:33, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Conference Notability (again)

Considering we now have a conferences section, like it or not, were going to have to establish guidelines for inclusion. Any ideas? Mystache (talk) 22:17, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

So, I just removed the first inappropriate addition to come up, and I tried to put up a more definitive "NOTE TO EDITORS" at the top and bottom of the section. As for the process of assessment, I think it could just be made an issue of WP:SPAM: if an item (and, correspondingly, a link) is added, it must be accompanied with information that contributes beyond simply elaborating on that one specific conference (I'd say a primary qualification would be whether the conference in question would be worthy of inclusion in either one of the articles it links to or in the "History" section of this article). On the same subject and as a measure of that thought, I think it could also be a good idea just to warn editors who add inappropriate conferences with the good-faith spam warning tag. Wikimancer (talk) 21:04, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

How the section on notable conferences does not include THIMUN is beyond me. This is a horrible article. 218.170.10.193 (talk) 11:09, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

So edit it. Mystache (talk) 17:42, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I would suggest the following criteria for notability. As long as a conference meets one of these conditions, it is considered notable.

1. Participant size greater than 2000; I only know of a few conferences who get to this level
2. History greater than 50 years, i.e. almost as old as the UN itself
3. Takes place at the UN Headquarters; this essentially means UNA-USA MUN, NMUN, NHSMUN
4. Has NGO status, which might just mean GIMUN, though I'm not sure

By this metric, THIMUN and NHSMUN need to be included. Moreover, I believe HNMUN also started as a League of Nations simulation, so its "Founding" might date earlier than 1955. This might also have been the case with Berkeley as well.

BestDelegateDotCom (talk) April 19 2008 3 PM EST

Those sound fair, and should keep the list from getting prohibitively long. I'm not sure GIMUN's NGO status makes it notable as a conference, though it did make it notable as a wikipedia article, and for now thats satisfactory for me. Mystache (talk) 14:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

We should think about the reform of the criterias, whilst the idea of MUN is spreading arround the world. It is not true that only the MUN's in the USA are so noticable. I think this table lacks the inclusion of BERMUN and WAWMUN, which are the two most noticable conferences in Europe after THIMUN. They are hosting arround 1,5 k of delegates annually, which gives them the third or fourth place at the highschool level globaly, by the criterium of number of the delegates.

wojtigup (talk) MAY 8 2008 12.00 GMT —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.121.68.23 (talk) 10:57, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll be one of the first to say the guidelines aren't perfect. But I think we can also agree that about 1500 delegates is not 1500 delegates and 1500 is certainly not 2000 -- both are several magnitudes away from each other. I'm also not sure what kind of position that puts these conferences ordinally on a global scale (even if just of hs conferences), but I do think it would be significantly lower than third and fourth (cf unausamun, nhsmun, beimun, bmun, ymcamun, and naimun, just off the top of my head)

Nonetheless, the list should be representative of a global perspective as per wikipedia policy. And at the same time, it also can't be endless, lest we risk becoming a linkfarm and having to delete all of it and start over. Understanding these parameters, I'm open to any suggestions to modify the thresholds. Mystache (talk) 20:39, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, suggesting changes to the guideline is not changing the guideline. Please uphold current standards until there is consensus amongst the editors. =)