Talk:Gravity sewer

Proposed improvements
Thanks for creating this article, User:Thewellman. I have a few proposed improvements (I would do them myself but didn't immediately want to meddle with your newly created article!). Firstly I would adjust the section headings and their order to follow the Manual of Style (Sanitation), see here, e.g. History last and more generic section headings. I would also put only one image in the lead section. Also, I am surprised you didn't use the standard way of referencing (which most articles now use) but that you used a combination of "sources" and "notes". What's the advantage of that?`EMsmile (talk) 23:02, 23 May 2017 (UTC)


 * I question if the Sanitation project manual of style should prevail for an article of interest to several projects.
 * I'm neutral about the number of images in the lead section; but arbitrary placement rules may cause inefficient space utilization and/or separation of images from descriptive text in situations with a high ratio of image area to text area.
 * WP:REF didn't seem to mention a standard way of referencing; so I prefer to use an abbreviated page location citation with a listing of sources rather than repeating the entire source description with a different page in each citation.
 * In response to your edit description on the article page, duplicating history in more than one article may be appropriate because of the applicability to the diverse interests of multiple projects. Thewellman (talk) 02:12, 24 May 2017 (UTC)


 * What do the manuals of style of the other Wiki Projects say about the location of the history section then? If they don't stipulate it then let's follow the standard that is used in all the other sanitation-related articles (and in the medicine/health articles, too, by the way). Most laypersons don't primarily care about the history so with which justification should history come first? Let's bring it in line with many other articles on sanitation and public health. - Same regarding references, I think it's pretty much become the norm to have a section with references rather than a section with "notes" and "sources" (look around at other articles that have GA and FA status in the area of technology, engineering, sanitation, public health, e.g. here. - I don't understand your reasoning for repeating (again) the history of sewers if it's already covered in great detail in another article. I would just put a teaser/summary but otherwise ensure the reader clearly knows that further information can be found in the other article! Otherwise you're just doubling of the editing work that we all have to do. EMsmile (talk) 14:31, 24 May 2017 (UTC)


 * I truly have no preference about retaining the present citation format. I was merely responding to a question; but I interpret the WP:REF guidelines as discouraging changing an existing citation method because of the errors which may occur during format revision edits.  As another example of arbitrary format revisions, I question the benefit of revising this article to the Sanitation manual of style.  Although that style may be appropriate for medical, health, and sanitation articles; the other projects accept flexibility to select the format most appropriate to the subject.  Understanding of this article may be enhanced by preliminary description of the evolution of technology explaining the origin and persistence of obsolete methods and standards within modern infrastructure.  If, despite my objections, some duplication of historical description in multiple articles may be considered inconsistent with Wikipedia functionality, I would suggest that history might best be retained in this article and deleted from others; because combined sewers, storm drains, and many sanitary sewers are gravity sewers, while the latter subject is not a subset encompassed by any of the others. Thewellman (talk) 18:51, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes it is a less common reference format. Guideline simple supports a consistent style within an article rather than between articles. If everyone agrees to switch to a different style than that can be done.
 * Do we have another article that gives a good historical overview of this subject? Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 03:28, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I've been trying to streamline things so that the main history part is here: History of water supply and sanitation and then only aspects that are very specific for that type of sewer is repeated in the article. It's difficult with gravity sewers because so many of the other sewers are actually types of gravity sewers, so e.g. the history section of combined sewer might be better off under gravity sewer. There are many sewer types and each have a bit of history (which is OK, as long as they link to the larger history article, I think), see template here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Sewerage . Regarding placing the history section towards the end, I think it would be nice if all the sewer articles followed the same style, therefore, I think the history section ought to be moved (or renamed if it more meant to be as a kind of background/overview section. EMsmile (talk) 13:11, 30 May 2017 (UTC)