Talk:Safely managed sanitation

A separate page or together with "improved sanitation"?
@User:Waternote: Are you planning to set up a separate page for this topic? Could be done although I doubt there would be enough content, and might overlap with other articles, such as sanitation. Perhaps both terms could be treated together in the article on improved sanitation as they are closely related. For the time being, I think a redirect is that right thing to have. EMsmile (talk) 23:30, 18 February 2021 (UTC)


 * @User:EMsmile: Yes I did plan a separate page, I've made a draft and I've added citations most recently. Apologies for the longish reply. In short my argument is that there is sufficient content and the redirect is causing some significant confusion in both concept and operationally. The problem is that these are not the same concept and in fact significantly different from one another. An improved sanitation facility is a requirement but not enough for a safely managed service and the difference is enormous as the latter (safely managed) is a service level while the former is a type of infrastructure (facility). Improved sanitation is a concept used in the goals from the MDG era (though historically interesting) that has been replaced by the SDG goal 6 that specifically aims for a level of service (basic and safely managed) and not a class of infrastructure (improved). The overall SDG 6.2 goal is for safely managed sanitation since basically the world community recognized that the MDG goal did not ensure an appropriate level of sanitation. It is important not to confound these concepts as they were changed deliberately through a quite an inclusive consultation process run by the UN with many stakeholders. For the reader, this is unclear as there are links from the main sanitation article to safely managed that are redirecting to improved sanitation because of the redirect. As far as I can tell, safely managed is included in a single sentence under the Sanitation article. That article is getting very long and covers much more, I wouldn't want to extend it. I think safely managed sanitation deserves it's own piece. Can I share the draft I prepared for your consideration? As a side note, as wikidata is increasingly used fill in infoboxes and I would like to explore keeping the country infoboxes up to date with the latest JMP country reported data. Much of this information is out of date across wikipedia articles and it should be automated in a template. So as soon as we start reporting the figures of safely managed sanitation for example in an infobox on a country page derived from wikidata, I think it is important to have these things clearly defined and sorted both in wikipedia for users and wikidata for infoboxes.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Waternote (talk • contribs) 23:07, 25 February 2021 (UTC)


 * @User:EMsmile: I've figured out how to add the draft to my sandbox so you can see my proposal. I hope this works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Waternote/sandbox — Preceding unsigned comment added by Waternote (talk • contribs) 23:17, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
 * @Waternote, thanks for this. I agree that "safely managed sanitation" and "improved sanitation" are not the same thing but I don't think a separate article is warranted for something that is just a definition of a term. The article you have set up is alright but it will never grow into a "proper" article, right? Therefore, wouldn't it be better to just include the information here and then place a redirect?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation#Safely_managed_sanitation Or it could also be included here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goal_6 . Or another option might be to rename this page to "safely managed sanitation": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improved_sanitation  (and then explain both terms in the same article, as one builds on the other). This would mean the term "improved sanitation" would redirect to "safely managed sanitation" in future. : opinions? EMsmile (talk) 02:56, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * And the idea about the country article info boxes is an interesting one. But those country articles are tightly guarded. They might object to this kind of information being included. Already, I am struggeling to get any information about climate change included in those country articles. EMsmile (talk) 02:56, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * @User:EMsmile, what would be the good practice in terms of making it a full article? Would it need more history and some of the findings in the last years? There is quite a bit to say I think. We could have the definition, some history and some of the findings. There is also criticism of the concept. An article on "Sanitation service levels" would probably encompass improved, limited, basic and safely managed but also would be very general as these concepts are specific to global monitoring. There are many country flavours as well. When I look at both the SDG article and the Sanitation article, I fear that adding more information there would just make it too dense for the reader. Also both articles had authors that tried to link to Safely managed sanitation thus implicitly expecting a fuller description elsewhere. For example here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goal_6#Target_6.2:_End_open_defecation_and_provide_access_to_sanitation_and_hygiene. There is a lot of content out there on safely managed sanitation but I'm not an expert on what justifies a full article here. I find some too long. I think I would in any case make one on "Sanitation service levels (global monitoring)" or something like that would be a better umbrella term for these different concepts. I would probably prefer a separate article and the umbrella one but we could also just have the one. I find "Sanitation" too broad and long already.
 * I bet those top level country pages are hard to influence. Makes sense. There is an infobox that was already developed for WASH but is not getting updated on WASH specific country pages (maybe something similar for climate change?): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_Ghana — Preceding unsigned comment added by Waternote (talk • contribs) 13:04, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * @User:EMsmile, Just looking at it now with fresh eyes again and I think we could extend the section on the Sanitation page in the short term. Will that create an imbalance between the text under each concept? We won't be able to go deeper into criticisms etc. Also it will be important to redirect both pages to their respective sections. One option: Extend the sanitation page a little but also make the umbrella page on "Sanitation service levels (global monitoring)" with more content on the evolution of the historical and current concepts and the findings. Waternote (talk) 13:28, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Sounds all very interesting what you're saying. I checked the current size of the sanitation article and it's not too long yet: Prose size (text only): 24 kB (3577 words) "readable prose size". It could be twice as long before getting "too big" by Wikipedia standards. So I think it would be good to have information on safely managed sanitation in there - a few paragraphs. Later it could still be split off into a separate article if needed (I still think that the information in "improved sanitation" could be on the same page, under a different name; i.e. modify/expand/hijack the improved sanitation article?) But for now, I would suggest that you put your planned content into the sanitation article. Also information on service level and global monitoring. My concern with creating new niche topic articles is that they may languish with low view rates for a long time. I prefer to include new/important content in larger more widely clicked-on articles to try and educate people. Only create spin-off sub-articles if there is really loads of information. The article "sanitation" gets about 900 views per day which is relatively high. FYI EMsmile (talk) 13:46, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * @User:EMsmile, great. I will add to the Sanitation article then. I propose we also then be consistent and also keep improved sanitation in there too. I think it is a good idea to consider modifying/expanding the improved sanitation article under a different name related to global monitoring of sanitation since I think it may reflect better the actual content and I could also add to that. Are you ok with these steps: 1. I add content on safely managed and improved sanitation to Sanitation 2. Redirect from here to the right section on safely managed sanitation and redirect from Improved sanitation to the right section in Sanitation. Would you do that? 3. Consolidate content on the global monitoring from the current improved sanitation article in a sandbox perhaps to see if we have sufficient content for a separate page or if we have a section under Sanitation? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Waternote (talk • contribs) 09:07, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, that sounds like the right way forward, Waternote. Please go ahead. - There is also the article on improved water source by the way. So if we later set up a new overarching article we should think carefully about its name and scope. Or maybe we don't need a new article but rather build up a section in Sustainable Development Goal 6? That might be better.  EMsmile (talk) 03:13, 5 March 2021 (UTC)