Talk:Human waste

Re-focus the article on the human waste (materials)
I think it is good to have an article on human waste but I think it needs to be refocussed. At the moment is is gliding towards being another article about sanitation and the importance of sanitation, thus doubling up on other pages isn't it? EvM-Susana (talk) 20:59, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Rename the page to human excreta?
It's been proposed to rename this page to human excreta (even though it is more commonly called human waste, but this might be changing slowly). See also discussion [|here]. Another suggestion was to create a new page on "human excreta" but personally I am not very much in favor of that. - In any case, we need a better link to here from e.g. the article on waste, and excreta. Excreta actually redirects to excretion which is not really ideal. Perhaps we should have "excreta" redirect to here? But we also have animal excreta. Therefore, should we rename this current page to "excreta" (remove the redirect to "excretion") and add a section on animal excreta? - Doesn't really make sense that "human excreta" exists (redirects to "human waste") but that excreta redirects to excretion.
 * I can't really see that having a separate page for Human excreta or Human waste does anything other than duplicate content, possibly written in a very slightly different way. I think Excreta and Waste are different things so would not be in favour of redirections of either. Some could conceivably be trying to understand how to use the term Excreta and be given a very wrong impression if it ends up on a page talking about human feces. I'd also disagree that there is a problem with a redirect from excreta to excretion, given that those terms have a much wider usage outside of the way used in sanitation.  So in conclusion, perhaps there should be more prominence on those pages mentioned with regard to human sanitation, but I would not support changing any of the redirects and emphasises of any of these pages, because we're in danger of confusing the reader and possibly annoying other editors who use the terms in other contexts.JMWt (talk) 11:11, 1 June 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't quite understand your point: are you saying the existing page on human waste should redirect to "excretion" and the content be merged into there? Did I understand you right? If yes, then I would disagree. The current page on "excretion" is far too broad to be helfpul for someone looking for "human excreta" and I think a separate page on "human excreta" (or on "human waste" but not on both) is indeed needed. EvM-Susana (talk) 11:48, 1 June 2015 (UTC)


 * no, I think only one page out of Human feces, Human waste and Human excreta is needed. Excreta should stay as it is.JMWt (talk) 11:51, 1 June 2015 (UTC)


 * you suggested above that excreta redirect here rather than to excretion. I think both terms have important usage outside if human sanitation. JMWt (talk) 12:00, 1 June 2015 (UTC)


 * I would say that "human excreta" should be integrated with a sentence and hyperlink in the excisting article of "excreta/excretion". At the moment it just appears under "See Also" and that's because I added it there yesterday.EvM-Susana (talk) 12:14, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree with this suggestion. I just don't agree we can assume that everyone looking for excreta will all be looking for human excreta.JMWt (talk) 12:40, 1 June 2015 (UTC)


 * The article on human feces is alright but I don't think it can replace an article on human excreta as excreta is the sum of feces and urine. The more I think about it, the more I think the article on human waste could be renamed to the more correct and possibly overarching term human excreta and the explanations about it being a waste or not could be explained inside of that article.EvM-Susana (talk) 12:14, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
 * OK, I can be persuaded about human feces but disagree that human waste be renamed even if human excreta is more correct. I would bet that a lot more people are going to be looking for human waste than human excreta.  If we are going to have one rather than the other, I'd keep human waste as the more common term and redirect human excreta to it.  Whichever way we do it, the point is that the terms are interchangeable so we do not want one page to sound like it is given one "political" meaning as opposed to the other. They should redirect to one page, which should make it clear about the implications of calling it "waste".  JMWt (talk) 12:40, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

I'll need to check up on the Wikipedia guidelines on this, as it's a general issue... i.e. do we have to use the more commonly used term as the page name or can we use the more correct name. E.g. when I look for medical terms in Wikipedia, it often redirects me to the more "correct" term and as a user, I don't really mind. E.g. I might search for "helminth infection" but am redirected to "helminthiasis". Here is another good example: I look for "heart disease" and I get redirected to "Cardiovascular disease". Therefore, it seems to me that at least for the medical articles, the correct medical term is being used, not the popular term. This would speak for calling it "human excreta" not "human waste", wouldn't it? Perhaps Doc_James, could you enlighten us further? EvM-Susana (talk) 12:51, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
 * We try to use the common term except when the common term has more than one meaning and than we use the technical term.
 * Thus we use vaginal yeast infection (common term)). But not heart attack because that may mean cardiac arrest or myocardial infarction. Human waste is thus IMO the better term with human excreta redirected to it. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 12:57, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree with the Doc, but then maybe it makes little difference (in terms of what is seen when seeking information in the searchbox) if the one page is redirected to the other. JMWt (talk) 13:02, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Going by that logic, it may even be more important to rename the page, as the term "human waste" has more than one meaning: It can refer to bodily waste or to waste produced by households (like kitchen waste, plactics); that's why there is currently a hatnote as well. Come to hink of it, could it be an issue with non-native English speakers? I am thinking of the quivalent term in German and there is none, we would speak of "human bodily waste products" and when we read "human waste" we also think of solid waste from households. Perhaps it is different for native speakers? Interestingly, this page has only one link to another language (Italian), even though the right page to link to in the German Wikipedia would actually be this one: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exkrement or this one: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ausscheidung or this one: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exkretion (I have only recently discovered how it works to link a page to its equivalent in another language) EvM-Susana (talk) 13:33, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
 * In British English, "human waste" would only ever be referring to human feces and urine. Household waste would be municipal waste. Others can say how the term is used in other forms of English, but I'd be surprised if it is used for anything other than human feces and urine. Thoughts, ? JMWt (talk) 13:39, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Hmmmm, interesting. I was just looking at a Google Search how the term "human waste" is used and found that it's also used as another term for wastewater, septage, sewage sludge and biosolids by journalists, see e.g. here this newspaper article (so I guess also any type of mixture of human excreta with water, or by-products from sewage treatment plants): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/25/poop-gold-human-waste-metals_n_6936262.html It would be interesting to find out if native English speakers use the term in a different (perhaps more narrow) way than non-native English speakers. Perhaps also a question worth discussion with sanitation experts over on the SuSanA discussion forum (www.forum.susana.org). This might help in our deliberations of a) should the page be re-named or b) what content it should actually contain if it's not re-named. EvM-Susana (talk) 16:07, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree with this, most non-specialists do not distinguish between those terms. I was also contemplating whether it would be used for hospital wastes, but I think that would be very unusual, this would normally be called clinical waste or human remains. JMWt (talk) 16:18, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for your insights. After reading the various ideas I have to say that I am fond of the title of the article being changed to "human excreta" and then "human waste" being described therein. I also like the idea of a redirect that sends folks searching for "human waste" to the "human excreta" page. As I see it, "human excreta" is the more descriptive term while "human waste" is something that society has come up with to sanitize the object(s) of discussion. Thinking about it further, this points to how "human waste" is actually the more "political" of the two terms. So, I'm in favor of calling it what it actually is rather than what some of us choose to call it.Gruster (talk) 23:45, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't agree, for reasons discussed above. I am not sure how we are going to find consensus on this. JMWt (talk) 08:33, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
 * It would be good to get some further opinions on this matter (now also being discussed here). But as a starting point, I think we need to improve the content of this page. I have made a start at it, but it needs further work. We should not go into too much detail on the various aspect but use this page to point people to other relevant pages. It might be possible (and better) to include those aspects which Gruster had proposed for a new page on "human excreta" into this page and then to see where it takes us in the longer term. I think we should start off with a good page on "human waste" and perhaps later branch off a page on "human excreta" if the page on "human waste" gets too long or too complex. EvM-Susana (talk) 21:25, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Here is the link to the draft page on "human excreta" - just wondering if there are bits and pieces, or references that could be integrated into the existing article on "human waste" while keeping it encyclopedic in nature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Human_excreta EvM-Susana (talk) 11:45, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Add more information and references
I think it would be a good idea to add more research about human waste. As I read this article it's lacking citations, which makes it hard to navigate, and makes the references used below unreliable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Th1529 (talk • contribs) 03:11, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
 * It's true the reference list is short and weak. But a lot of the content would actually be found in the wiki-linked articles from this article, for example in fecal sludge management and human feces. So the question is which information would we need to add to this article to make it better without duplicating content from the sub-articles? I see this one as a high level overview article. Thoughts by User:Doc James? EMsmile (talk) 01:52, 21 October 2019 (UTC)