Template talk:UN document

New way to access UN documents

There is a new - more official - way to access UN documents, using DocBox. The URL for DocBox is: http://doc.un.org/DocBox/docbox.nsf/GetAll?OpenAgent&DS=<symbol> , for example: DocBox for A/64/L.44/Rev.1

The advantage of DocBox is that it shows both PDF and MSWord/Original format for all 6 languages at once rather than just for English pages. It is also, obviously, up to date, since it connects to the original document repository.

The disadvantage of DocBox as compared to undemocracy is that it does not allow to display specific page within a document or highlight a specific area on the page. It is also not validating symbols, so putting a wrong symbol in will just return a page of dead links.

I don't know whether/how DocBox should be coded into the template.

--/Alex/ (talk) 02:35, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

This site doesn't seem to be functional anymore, either.—D'Ranged 1 VT^alk 14:53, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Links

Entering "General Assembly" in the body field generates a link to General Assembly, which is a redirect to a disambiguation page. Entering "Security Council" generates a link to Security Council, which is a redirect. Can we fix it so that entering "GA" renders United Nations General Assembly, and entering "SC" renders United Nations Security Council? Cheers, Sideshow Bob Roberts 05:11, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Broken?

As of 20th November 2007 the external site (undemocracy.com) that supported this template seems to be broken ("on strike"), see here. What shall we do? -- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk} 23:40, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Links - country

When Georgia is added to the speakernation field in this template, it generates a link to Georgia, which is a disambiguation page. It should generate a link to Georgia (country). Thank you. DuncanHill (talk) 09:33, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Fixed.--Patrick (talk) 10:48, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. DuncanHill (talk) 10:50, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

This is an interesting issue I'm going to need to deal with in the system which generates these links when I get the time. Possibly it should be done by removing the automatic double brackets around that field.Goatchurch (talk) 15:23, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

I think Georgia is the only country for which the country name is a disambiguation page, so it seemed easiest to treat it separately in the template.--Patrick (talk) 22:45, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Interwiki link to Vietnamese Wikipedia

{{editprotected}}

Please add an interwiki link to the Vietnamese version of this template:

[[vi:Tiêu bản:Chú thích tài liệu LHQ]]

Thanks.

 – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 21:21, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

 Done SkierRMH (talk) 00:30, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Bold

There should be no bold print in this template. Thanks. Str1977 ^(talk) 13:23, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Old topic but I agree. I don't see where MOS:BOLD supports any boldface in this template. Ibadibam (talk) 18:57, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Can't link to Special Sessions

I want to link to A/RES/S-23/3 in Feminization of poverty, but the template doesn't seem able to handle session numbers with a dash in them.  —Chris Capoccia ^T⁄_C 11:52, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Status of undemocracy.com

Does anyone know the status of undemocracy.com? Seems like it's not updated anymore. – Danmichaelo (talk) 11:05, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

It's dead, Jim.—D'Ranged 1 VT^alk 14:44, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Template non-functional in its current form

I've put a notice on the documentation page not to use the template for now and posted at one of the template editors talk pages to see if it can be fixed. undemocracy.org is dead; the template now links to completely blank pages.—D'Ranged 1 VT^alk 14:55, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

It's fixed!

WOSlinker graciously updated the template and it's fully functional again, linking directly to the documents at the United Nations website. He managed to edit the code so that currently transcluded versions of the template now point to the right place. Many thanks!—D'Ranged 1 VT^alk 21:49, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Request: Introduce the quote parameter

Currently this template does not recognize the quote= parameter, so no piece of text can be quoted when using this template. Could somebody kindly update the template? Thank you.(talk) user:Al83tito 4:04, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

user:Al83tito, added. Frietjes (talk) 14:42, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

URL parameter

It would be helpful to have |url= to augment or override the link generated by the template using |docid=. For example the following citation links to a PDF containing page images without accessible text:

United Nations General Assembly Session 46 Resolution 119. The protection of persons with mental illness and the improvement of mental health care A/RES/46/119 17 December 1991.

However, an accessible HTML version of this resolution is also available on the UN website. The behavior might be similar to that of {{Cite journal}} when it is used with both |pmc= and |url=. —Shelley V. Adams ‹blame
credit› 18:23, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 16 January 2018

I think this line is causing problems:

V = '''Verbatim report'' |

The superfluous quote messes up the formatting. The result can be seen here. Uglemat (talk) 17:53, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Done — JJMC89 (T·C) 02:50, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Idea: use un.org/documents instead of/as well as un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp

I just changed someone's use of the cite web template into a use of this template and was disappointed to find that the clean-looking, text-based https://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/41/a41r031.htm was replaced by a scanned pdf without copyable text: http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/41/31 .

This probably breaks accessibility.

I suggest using the former, at least where the PDFs are scans. --mathieu ottawa (talk) 14:13, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

@Mathieu ottawa: your link is down but it's archived. I don't understand what happened – On the UN Digital library GA Res 41/31 is only available in crappy pdf, and I can't find any trace of plaintext copies on the UN site (of which half the pages on the main site map are dead links anyway) or on the general web. This decades' resolutions are all in pdf-only form too, though at least the text is searchable. Apparently the UN has a plan to make all its documents machine-readable, but of course it's just a proof of concept that they commissioned with no timeframe (and no date on this webpage, but from the depositories linked it's from 2020). What's weird is that in the FAQ (which is a labyrinth) they say the ODS searches the full text of docs, even though there's no client-accessible plaintext. And we can laugh at how terrible big public bureaucracy can be and that the UN maybe gets some of the worst bureaucrats from the worst countries, or how some are actively trying to sabotage its effectiveness (*cough*India*cough*), but this is just strange to cut off accessibility that they apparently once had.

Also, the archived site was searching in ODS, and that's what I did originally by resolution number, but I tried again through full-text and it seems to break the search – it either takes nearly two minutes to return results or throws an error if you use too many words. Even scrolling through results takes about a minute to load each page of 20 hits, with about a 50/50 chance of timeout. And now 30 minutes later I've figured it out – if you search full-text in ODS you will not get A/RES/41/31 as a hit (though you will hit several related 1986 docs) – it seems its plaintext has simply vanished from their system.

I'm working on the EU legal templates now and while most Eastern European e-document systems are terrible or nonexistent, this is simply worse. SamuelRiv (talk) 04:49, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Broken links

Currently the links produced with this template lead to missing pages (e.g., http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/520/Rev.18), perhaps they should link undocs.org instead (e.g., https://undocs.org/Home/Mobile?FinalSymbol=A%2F520%2Frev.18, or some other way to search those). Defanor (talk) 15:37, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

I echo the same happening to me today. Thank you. Al83tito (talk) 19:28, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Still broken today. Will replace usage of it with "cite web", which works. Perhaps kludging a |url= parameter into this template would at least let articles continue using this otherwise-unmaintained template while still making the documents accessible. Gnuish (talk) 18:34, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

This template should never have been TE-protected anyway, since it's used in less than 1000 pages. {{cite act}} is an appropriate CS1 wrapper (although I should change it to fit the correct metadata) that you can use as an alternative to {{cite web}} [edit: or {{cite report}} may be better]. SamuelRiv (talk) 19:05, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

I changed the template to link to undocs.org instead. I tested it on United Nations Security Council Resolution 252; all three links in the reference section there work now. Joriki (talk) 13:25, 30 June 2024 (UTC)