Goal

The WikiProject Sanitation seeks to provide up-to-date information to the general public and to people working in the WASH sector or related sectors. Topics that this project aims to improve relate to sanitation in the broadest sense: they include for example topics in the field of health, infrastructure and international development.

As with all Wikipedia articles we want to provide information to people which they can all read, appreciate, and respect, free of charge.

The project may cover sanitation issues around the world; however special emphasis is given to sanitation issues in developing countries and countries in transition as the need for improvements is greatest there. As can be seen by the list of articles below, articles of interest to this project range from purely sanitation-related topics (like sanitation, toilet) to articles that are more on the public health and medical side (like neglected tropical disease, diarrhea, helminthiasis), articles in the field of natural sciences (like groundwater pollution) and so forth.

Objectives

The objectives of this WikiProject Sanitation are to:

• Improve sanitation related articles on Wikipedia
• Add links to sanitation issues into articles where such links are so far omitted (for example article on malnutrition)
• Ensure that the lead paragraph of articles are written in basic, clear English such that they are understandable to as wide an audience as possible and can easily be translated into other languages as part of WikiProject Medicine Translation Taskforce
• Ensure people working in other sectors (medical, humanitarian organisations, public health, environment, agriculture) can find clear, up to date information about sanitation topics
• Engage researchers

Further information

What is a WikiProject? A WikiProject is a group of contributors who want to work together to improve Wikipedia. These groups often focus on a specific topic area, a specific location or a specific kind of task (for example, checking newly created pages). The English Wikipedia currently has over 2,000 WikiProjects, each with varying levels of activity. A WikiProject's pages are not used for writing encyclopedia articles directly, but as resources to help coordinate and organize the group's efforts at creating and improving articles. Further information on WikiProjects is here.

By quality and importance

More information Sanitation articles by quality and importance, Quality ...

WikiProject Sanitation assessment statistics Sanitation articles by quality and importance Quality Importance Top High Mid Low NA ??? Total FA 1 1 2 GA 1 2 6 9 B 4 29 52 58 4 147 C 3 37 99 178 2 319 Start 1 19 40 203 6 269 Stub 2 13 66 3 84 List 2 4 13 19 NA 1 5 11 275 292 Assessed 11 88 216 536 275 15 1,141 Unassessed 9 9 Total 11 88 216 536 275 24 1,150 WikiWork factors (?) ω = 1,363 Ω = 4.87 worklist • log • category

Close

The table to the right provides an overview of the Wikipedia articles that we deem part of this Wikiproject.

To view the article pages, you need to click on the column headers (top, high, mid, low importance) or row labels (e.g. level B, C, start, stub quality). This takes you to a new page where the articles are listed alphabetically.

Alternatively, you can access the articles with these links, which link you to the talk pages of the articles (from the article's talk page, click at the top left on "article" to then get to the article):

• Articles with top importance: Top importance sanitation articles
• Articles with high importance: High importance sanitation articles
• Articles with mid importance: Mid importance sanitation articles
• Articles with low importance: Low importance sanitation articles

You can access the articles grouped by their degree of completion or quality (from the article's talk page, click at the top left on "article" to then get to the article):

• Articles with a quality "Featured article (FA)": FA-class articles
• Articles with a quality "Good article (GA)": GA-class articles
• Articles with a quality "B": B-class articles
• Articles with a quality "C": C-class articles
• Articles with a quality "Start": Start-class articles
• Articles with a quality "Stub": Stub-class articles
• Articles that are classified as "list": List articles

By popularity (page views)

A list of popular articles of this Wiki Project (on a monthly basis) is available here: List of popular pages for this Wiki Project.

Here is another tool that can be used for this purpose: Massviews Analysis You can run it for all the articles in the category "Sanitation": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sanitation (however, this is not identical with the articles tagged with this WikiProject Sanitation)

A list of popular articles for all the Wikipedia articles is available here for a weekly time period: List of popular pages for all Wikipedia articles (top 5000)

And see here for a yearly time period: Popular pages for all Wikipedia articles (top 5000) for 2016. Previous yearly reports are avilable here.

By theme

The table below shows all articles that have been tagged with this WikiProject by thematic area (please do not add a new articles to this table unless you have tagged it with the WikiProject Sanitation on its talk page, except for terms in the last column which are for articles yet to be created):

We have grouped the articles that have been tagged for the WikiProject Sanitation by the following thematic categories:

• Agriculture and reuse
• Behaviour
• Concept or program
• Hygiene (includes cleaning products)
• Material to be sanitized or treated
• Medical and health

• Medical: helminths

• Organization, company, special UN Day or notable person
• Specific location, country or incident
• Technical, scientific
• Technical or technology

• Technical, standards and norms

• Technology

• Technology (toilets and sanitary ware equipment)

• List article
• Society and culture, e.g. movies, books, occupations
• Various, e.g. linguistic terms, historical terms, history articles, local slang terms, humanities

By thematic working group

The Sustainable Sanitation Alliance has 13 working groups which have the following topics:

Current members

The following Wikipedia users are members of this project:

1. Doc James (talk · contribs)
2. EvMsmile (talk · contribs)
3. mll_mitch (talk · contribs)
4. Bio-CLC (talk · contribs)
5. Cryacrem (talk · contribs)
6. David Allen Still (talk · contribs)
7. ASRASR (talk · contribs)
8. Gruster (talk · contribs)
9. Jknappe (talk · contribs)
10. RobynWaite13 (talk · contribs)
11. Kevintayler (talk · contribs)
12. FloNight (talk · contribs)
13. CFCF (talk · contribs)
14. Mregelsberger (talk · contribs)
15. IRSDPakistan (talk · contribs)
16. JoshMuirWikipedia (talk · contribs)
17. Akweaver32 (talk · contribs)
18. Dmrobbins10 (talk · contribs)
19. Efuhrm (talk · contribs)
20. lividlili (talk · contribs)
21. SatchieNZ (talk · contribs)
22. Meshuwa (talk · contribs)
23. Kutoid (talk · contribs)
24. NightLyrical (talk · contribs)
25. rkeerswa (talk · contribs)
26. exobarbiche (talk · contribs)
27. PlanetCare (talk · contribs)
28. EsLoSh (talk · contribs)
29. dowdowFR (talk · contribs)
30. Kalipza (talk · contribs)
31. KAH87 (talk · contribs)
32. YYlinde (talk · contribs)
33. RHrani (talk · contribs)
34. Matthias S (talk · contribs)
35. Ajpolino (talk · contribs)
36. rajivkraman (talk · contribs)
37. Salice84 (talk · contribs)
38. NahKone (talk · contribs)
39. Mmekidmfon (talk · contribs)
40. HtetPyae (talk · contribs)
41. Eruditescholar (talk · contribs)
42. Sparsh85 (talk · contribs)
43. Chaiwe (talk · contribs)
44. Rwebogora (talk · contribs)
45. Velella (talk · contribs)
46. Watercyclist (talk · contribs)
47. Wil540 art (talk · contribs)

Add yourself to member list

If you like the idea of this Wiki Project, then please become a member. All you have to do is to add yourself to the end of the list. For example if your user name is Mary13 then you would add the following to the end of the list (use the "edit source" button which you see next to the heading "Members" for this section):

# {{User|IsaacNyameke}}

This will look like this after you have saved your edit:

9. Mary13 (talk · contribs)

Adding member box to your user page

You can also show your support by adding the Project's "user box" on your user page. If you don't have a Wikipedia login yet, then do create one, as that makes it much easier to discuss articles, ask questions about edits etc.

You can then add this template {{User WikiProject Sanitation}} to your userpage. That code can be pasted in if you use the source editor, not VisualEditor. You can also add the template in VisualEditor by going to the "Insert" menu and inserting a template with that name. When you save the page, the result will look like this:

This user is a participant in WikiProject Sanitation.

If you don't like userboxes, you can also add [[:Category:WikiProject Sanitation participants]] to your user page.

Visual editor compared to source editor

When Wikipedia started it only had the source editor (tab "Edit source"). As of April 2015, a visual editor (tab "Edit") is available by default to users. If you can't see both tabs then you need to adjust your Wikipedia Preferences by clicking on "Preferences" at the top right, then click on "Editing" and at the pull-down menu next to "Editing mode" select "show me both editor tabs". This will let you choose between the Source Editor ("Edit source") and the Visual Editor ("Edit").

When should I use which editor?

Use the source editor (tab “Edit source”) when you want to:

• copy content - including references - from one Wikipedia article to another
• have full control about how the page looks
• add special things like tags on talk pages (note the talk pages only have the source editor anyhow)
• reduce the amount of edit conflicts when working on the article together with another person (as it locks only the section but not the entire page)
• enjoy the feeling of working with source code

Use the visual editor (tab “Edit”) when you:

• want to correct typos and minor wording changes
• want to add images to the article using the Insert > Media button at the top of the page in the edit mode
• are working on an article pretty much alone, without other people wanting to edit it at the same time (as the entire page gets locked)
• are scared of seeing source code

Ten simple rules for editing Wikipedia

These Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia are worth reading when starting out as an editor on Wikipedia.

Use the Style Advice for sanitation-related articles

Please consult the Style advice for sanitation-related articles for advice on editing and formatting articles related to sanitation. Giving all sanitation articles a similar, consistent structure and style helps readers to quickly find what they are looking for.

Add references

Improve readability

The readability of many Wikipedia articles is low, meaning they are difficult to understand. Here are some examples how you can help to improve the situation:

• Replace long words with short words whenever possible.
• Reduce sentences to 15-20 words. Sometimes it's as simple as turning one long sentence into two short ones.
• Reduce paragraphs to 5-6 lines. Readers skim over dense, non-stop text. Paragraph breaks offer white space and give readers a chance to breathe.
• Consider converting passive voice to active voice.

A helpful tool is Hemingway App. It highlights long and complex sentences, passive voice verbs, and adverbs (which are often, but not always, unnecessary). It also provides some statistics and a grade-level reading score. It doesn't choke on jargon which is important. If you want to try it, then just copy your text, go to the website, and paste it into the middle of their webpage (as if to replace the description/instructions there).

Another tool to check the readability of a specific Wikipedia page is by using this tool (webfx) or this tool (online utility) (we used to recommend this tool (readability of Wikipedia) but it no longer seems reliable as of July 2020). Then, see if you can improve the readability score. On the 0-100 scale, higher is better for the Flesh reading ease score. Aim for at least 55.

Improve the lead section

What Wikipedia calls the "Lead" appears first--just before the table of contents and the first section of every article. Help to improve the lead section of Wikipedia articles.

The lead section (also known as the lead or introduction) of a Wikipedia article is the section before the table of contents and the first heading. The lead serves as an introduction to the article and a summary of its most important contents. The lead is supposed to summarise the article in four easy-to-understand paragraphs. More information about the lead is here.

Be aware that it's the content of the lead that gets used in digital assistants like Siri or Amazon’s Echo, or indeed Google’s own efforts to provide answers to questions using voice assistants, the Google Knowledge Graph, Google answer boxes and so on (source and more information here).

Some readers only want an overview. A good lead will inspire people to read more.

The lead should:

• be like an "executive summary" for the article (similar to an abstract for a journal paper)
• have up to 4 paragraphs (each paragraph no longer than 6 lines).
• include hyperlinks for key words (so readers will click and go to other Wikipedia pages).
• use short clear sentences of no more than 15-20 words.
• achieve a Flesch readability score of 60-70.

You can assess the quality of the lead by looking at readability (using Flesch score and this website), the image and image caption used, and comprehensiveness.

An example of a good lead in terms of length is the one for pit latrine (although readability can still be improved!).

Add images

The official guide to adding images in Wikipedia is here. There is also a short video about adding images available here.

A picture is worth a 1000 words. Adding images can greatly increase the value of Wikipedia articles. Many sanitation-related images already exist in Wikimedia Commons which is the image repository for Wikipedia. Here is what you need to know:

• Adding an image from Wikimedia Commons to an article is very easy: Go to the article where you want to add an image; then click on "edit" at the top of the page (i.e. use the visual editor, not source editor); then "insert" (at the top, second row), then select "Media" from the drop down menu. You can now select from images that have been found, or add another keyword into the search field to find more images. Click on the image that you have selected, then click on "W - Use this file" at the top middle. Then copy the URL text to your Wikipedia article, e.g. [[File:Pharmaceutical personnel per 1,000 population, OWID.svg|thumb|Pharmaceutical personnel per 1,000 population, OWID]].
• Make sure you use a clear image caption, sticking to the rules provided in the Manual of Style for captions.
• To add your own photo to a Wikipedia article, you have to first add it to Wikimedia Commons. To do so, click on "upload file" to the left of an article, then click on "Commons Wizard" in the left column of the table that appears. Follow the prompts from there.

Everything on Wikipedia comes under the open access licence CC BY SA and Wikipedia is very strict about copyright rules. All images have to be under the CC-BY SA or a more open licence, like CC-0.

Therefore, you can only use images that are either your own or those that have been released under this open access licence (CC BY SA). If the image is yet to be released under this licence, it can be done by e-mail to the person who owns the photo: "Are you willing to release this image under the open license CC BY SA? If so please respond yes and we will take care of the rest and make sure you get proper attribution". Once you receive the "yes" by e-mail you forward the e-mail trail to: [email protected] . Another option is to use the online copyright release form which is accessible through the Wikimedia Commons image uploader.

Two more places to find sanitation images:

1. Choose from SuSanA’s flickr photostream. All of SuSanA's photos are already included in Wikimedia Commons (see here for further background and here). Therefore, you can simply add an image by finding it in Wikimedia Commons, usually by typing in the title of the photos into the search field in Wikimedia Commons.
2. Your own photos or those of colleagues or friends who have given you permission (see above). You can add them to Wikimedia Commons by clicking on "Upload file" to the left of the article. Alternatively, you can also upload them to Wikimedia Commons here. We recommend that you also add those photos to SuSanA’s flickr photostream because from there, photos are regularly (about once per year) transferred to Wikimedia Commons.

Translate articles into other languages

Plenty of people are working on articles in the English Wikipedia. The sanitation community of practice needs more content in other languages. French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Hindi, Indonesian, Odia, Russian, Swahili, Urdu, Yoruba, Twi... all welcome here.

• What sanitation-related pages do you want people in your home country to be able to read in their own language? You can see at the left of the article which other language versions already exist for that article.
• Be a translator, please. You will make a lasting contribution to sanitation.
• Check out this video on using the Wikipedia translator tool here
• Another useful page for new translators, including translation guides for different languages, is here.

There are short videos available which explain how to use the translation tool on Wikipedia: Video 1, Video 2, Video in Spanish

It is fairly easy to translate in Wikipedia. After signing up as a user, tick Translation in the Beta Menu, then go in via the Contributions Menu. The program gives you a first draft of the text (which is not very good), but the important thing is that it maintains the links to the bibliography and tries to recreate the wiki links to words.

You can see at the left of the article which other language versions already exist for that article. If you want to know how many Wikipedia articles exist already in lesser known languages check here.

Remove inappropriate external links

Some articles attract inappropriate links, such as internet chat boards and advertisements. You can review the external links in any article, or you can use Special:Linksearch to find articles containing a specific link, such as *.clinicaltrials.gov or *.groups.yahoo.com . Details are available in the full guidelines for all of Wikipedia and also the specific guidelines for medicine-related articles.

Apply the "Manual of Style (Sanitation)" to existing articles

Help us improve all sanitation-related articles by using the Manual of Style (Sanitation) which is explained here. Using standard headlines on all articles as much as possible makes it much easier for readers to access and absorb information quickly.

• Use the Manual of Style for your work editing pages or creating pages.
• Select specific articles and gently adapt them to the Manual of Style, particularly in regard to headings used.
• If you plan to make major changes to an article, do explain your plans on the talk page of the article first. Then ideally wait a couple of days to see if there are any objections from other editors.

Update country-specific articles on "Water Supply and Sanitation"

Previous Wikipedians have created an amazing List of Wikipedia pages on Water Supply and Sanitation You'll find one article for each of 86 countries, but some articles are incomplete or outdated.

• Find a country that you care about in this list.
• Edit the content in the article to make the information more complete or more current, and add references.
• You can also use the SuSanA discussion forum to invite others to help update information.

Link to "Water Supply and Sanitation" articles from country articles

Wouldn't it be great if the average user could find information about water supply and sanitation when they look up a country article in Wikipedia?

• Add a subsection in "infrastructure" to a country article, where you mention some key fact about water supply and sanitation in that country (with references) and then create a link to the water supply and sanitation country article.
• For inspiration check out the examples for Philippines here and China here.

Options for people with slow or intermittent internet access

• Make a list of wording changes, citations to add, typos to fix, open sources images to add, etc. Then ask someone you know who has more reliable internet to make the changes on your list.
• If you can't find someone to make those changes for you, email your list to [email protected] and make the same request.
• Another option: Work in WikiFundi which is an offline editable environment that provides a similar experience to editing Wikipedia online.

Set up student assignments

If you work in a university (or similar) environment consider setting up a student assignment to create or improve articles related to sanitation. Anyone considering using Wikipedia for student assignments would do well to read through the guidance at outreach:Education. There are a lot of resources available as well at the outreach:Education/Resources page, and anyone setting up a programme should make use of the meta:Programs & Events Dashboard to help organise the assignments. Means exist for putting organisers in touch with experienced Wikimedians, either locally or online.

If you put this: Template:Student on the talk page of a new editor who is a student, they get some helpful hints for student editors (set up by the Wikiproject Medicine).

If you are interested in learning more on how to use Wikipedia in teaching, have a look at the example courses listed below.

Examples of university courses

Examples of courses where students edit Wikipedia pages on water, sanitation, hygiene (WASH) topics:

• Ecological Factors in Design - University of Southern California (Spring 2016)
• Epidemiology - University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire (Fall 2016)
• Gender and Economic Development in the Third World - United States Education Program (2012)
• Oral and Written Communication - University of San Francisco (Fall 2016)
• Cultural Representations of Sexuality - UC Berkeley (Spring 2017)
• Environmental Justice Section 102 - University of California, Berkeley (Spring 2017)
• Physiology of Plant Behavior - University of Washington (Spring 2017)
• Ecology 275, Wednesday Lab - University of Regina (Fall 2017)
• Introduction to Policy Analysis - UCSD (Fall 2017)
• Expanding WikiProject Medicine - University of California, San Francisco (Fall 2017)
• History and Theory of 20th Century Landscape Architecture - University of Oklahoma (Fall 2017)
• Research Process and Methodology - New York University (Fall 2017)
• Introduction to Environmental Sciences - Louisiana State University (Fall 2018)
• Communicating Your Science - University of Cincinnati (Fall 2018)
• Animal Behaviour - Memorial University (Fall 2018)
• Perspectives in Multicultural Literature - California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI) (Fall 2018)
• Health Policy - University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) (Fall 2018)
• Intro to the Work Environment - Harvard University/Harvard Chan EH262 (Fall 2018)
• Plants and Human Health - University of Michigan (Fall 2018)
• Research, Writing, and the Production of Knowledge - College of DuPage (Spring 2019)

Examples of Wikipedia course instructors

• User Polypompholyx, a professor at Imperial College London, UK
• User Dianaceballos, a research scientist in the Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (Harvard University, USA)

Collaborate

• Stay in touch. Put this page on your watchlist, and feel free to communicate on the talk page.
• Recruit members. Assist in public relations and outreach by recruiting editors interested in medicine to contribute to Wikipedia (m:Wiki Project Med is a non-profit corporation that shares this goal). Invite good editors to join us. Personal messages are best when inviting Wikipedia editors.

Work behind the scenes

• Tag the talk pages of sanitation-related articles. Add {{WikiProject Sanitation|class=|importance=}} to the article's talk page and assess the article according to our assessment scale.

The following "work behind the scenes" tasks relate to the WikiProject Medicine and have not yet been adapted to the WikiProject Sanitation:

• Help evaluate articles nominated for deletion. Help identify deletion discussions that relate to medicine. Figure out whether these articles with unclear notability should be deleted.
• Sort stubs. See the list of specific stub templates. Replacing {{stub}} or {{med-stub}} with a more specific template is very helpful.
• Improve categorization of articles. Several popular Wikipedia categories like Medicine and Category:Diseases and disorders need people to sort articles into more specific subcategories. Tools like HotCat may make this easier.

Give out awards

Writing good sanitation-related articles and trimming poorly cited article content can be hard work! Why not reward someone you've seen do some good work in the area? Any editor may present an award to any person as a reward for and public recognition of good work (we have yet to created awards for the WikiProject Sanitation but in the meantime we can use those of the Wikiproject Medicine).

Example: I could copy this barnstar onto the talk page of another user if that user has done good work on revising the page on sewage sludge.

Other ideas from WikiProject Medicine

The following applies to the WikiProject Medicine, but over time we may build up similar points for this project:

• You could help with missing articles or redirects. You might even claim the trophy! You could help us come up with technical ideas/solutions for improving Wikipedia content at m:WikiProject Med/Tech
• Add high-quality references. Correct and reliable references are vital. Adding references is easy with this tool (which is explained in detail here and also see step 5b of WP:MEDHOW for an alternate method). Just submit the PubMed ID, ISBN, or other identifier, and copy and paste the resulting output (xxxx) into the page between <ref> xxxxx </ref> Alternatively, if you use Internet Explorer or Firefox (2.0+), then Wouterstomp's bookmarklet can automate this step from the PubMed abstract page.
• Check for retracted papers. See Category:Articles citing retracted publications for articles that may wrongly cite retracted publications.

Banner

A banner to raise awareness of the app is here. Discussion is here.

It looks like this:

We have an offline version of our healthcare content. Download the app and access all this content when there's no Internet. (other languages)

The consensus was to not have a banner at the top of the article but rather at the bottom right under external links: {{offline|med}}

Past events

• Online edit-a-thon during Global Goals Week for all 17 SDGs, including SDG 6 on water and sanitation.
• 1 September to 30 November 2017 for World Toilet Day on 26 November 2017, see here. Use this hashtag on twitter: #edit4toilets
• Sustainable Sanitation Alliance Edit-a-thon for World Water Day March 2017 @ SuSanA Platform Worldwide, see here. On twitter: #edit4impact

Upcoming events

None scheduled

Content related

The following Wikipedia "templates" are sometimes added to the end of sanitation-related articles and need to be kept up to date:

• Template: Natural resources - the command to be used in the source editor is {{natural resources}}
• Template: Pollution - the command to be used in the source editor is {{pollution}}
• Template: Public health - the command to be used in the source editor is {{public health}}
• Template: Toilets - the command to be used in the source editor is {{toilets}}
• Template: Sewerage - the command to be used in the source editor is {{sewerage}}
• Template: Wastewater - the command to be used in the source editor is {{wastewater}}
• Template: Waste - the command to be used in the source editor is {{waste}}

Other interesting templates:

• Template: Simple living

User related

So far, we have not created templates for the Wikiproject Sanitation, but if needed, one could adapt these ones from the Wikiproject Medicine.

• Welcome messages (all of these copied onto a user's talk page):
  • {{subst:WPMED-welcome}} - Welcome message for new Wikipedians (with invitation to join us) old, basic
  • {{subst:WPMED welcome}} - Welcome message for new Wikipedians (with invitation to join us) - newish, with video
  • {{subst:MedWelcome}} - Welcome template to greet new Wikipedians and invite them to join WikiProject Medicine. - includes general intro links
  • {{subst:MedInvitation}} - Invite for established Wikipedians to join WikiProject Medicine.
  • {{subst:MedGreeting}} - After editor added to participation list.
  • {{subst:Welcome medical student}} - For welcoming new editors who appear to be students associated with a course
• [[File:New medical editor.ogv|thumb|thumbtime=2:59|right|320px|Welcome to Wikipedia and [[WP:MED|Wikiproject Medicine]]]] A video that can be transcluded onto the pages of new users.

Barnstar

• {{subst:The Sanitation Barnstar|1=message ~~~~}}—awarded to editors who've made significant contributions to Sanitation-related articles.