Talk:WASH

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 August 2018 and 10 December 2018.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:46, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 January 2019 and 24 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Mag2718.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:46, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Not sure if the new section on problems and solutions fits here
Hi CrystelHadley, I see you are working on this page which is great. I just have a bit of a concern, I don't know what your plans are with this page, but be careful that you are not doubling up with information that is already on other related pages, namely on sanitation and open defecation for example. Shouldn't this page focus in particular on WASH as a "sector", and perhaps spending on WASH and monitoring spending (eThekwini declarations for example) rather than trying to analyse the sanitation crisis per se? For example what is put there under "solutions" is just a snippet and there is so much more to it. But I am just not sure if this is the right page to expand on it? Maybe it is, I am not sure. But I would probably focus it more on issues of interlinking water, sanitation and hygiene - perhaps something about the historical develpment of the WASH sector, who are the key players etc. Perhaps we should link to the pages about Water_Supply_and_Sanitation_Collaborative_Council and Sustainable Sanitation Alliance, too? EvM-Susana (talk) 21:07, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, I see your point. Happy for you to take in the direction you proposed.I added the sections to try to give some order to the various snippets that people had added here, but if you think they're not helpful, feel free to change it. CrystelHadley (talk) 20:32, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Sections on failures
I think the sections on failed projects are probably better re-arranged by country (and then in chronological or in reverse chronological order) rather than by year. Then it would also make sense to show the countries in the table of contents. The year is quite arbitrary, as it's just the year of the publication, not the year in which the project was started or finished. What do you think, Rtpadge and SusanMDavis? Another option could be to present it as a table format, but perhaps that's too much effort.EvM-Susana (talk) 21:11, 20 July 2015 (UTC)


 * It's now re-arranged by country which I think is better. A table would probably be too complex. Now the question is if this entire section should be split off and made into one or two separate list-type articles, like "List of water systems failures". I am really undecided about this. I think list articles get fewer views by people. Shall we just leave it here for now? EvM-Susana (talk) 20:51, 17 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I have now split this content off into a new article called Failures of water supply and sanitation systems, as it was taking up too much space and focus on this page. EvMsmile (talk) 23:12, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

New section about WASH in Schools lack references
I've just put the following on the talk page of the new user who added content about WASH in Schools: "You have added a large chunk of text without stating where it comes from (you only provided one reference - is the rest of the text copied from the same reference? Direct copying is not encouraged. It might also be a bit too long. I will put the same also on the talk page of the WASH article. Please connect with us there. The content that you've added will need to be referenced better or might have to be trimmed down. " I think it's a good idea to have a section about WASH in Schools but it should cite several sources and be written in an encyclopedia way, not in a promotional or awareness raising type of way? EvMsmile (talk) 06:10, 4 December 2015 (UTC)


 * here are a bunch of references to pick from for the WASH in schools section: https://sanitationupdates.wordpress.com/2017/03/03/a-wash-in-schools-bibliography/ EMsmile (talk) 20:48, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Which part is written like an advert?
To User:DGG: You have added the tag of "advert" on this page. Can you please explain on the talk page why? Please point out which statements you object to. I did quite a bit of writing for that article, so I would appreciate your feedback, rather than just being lumped with the tag "advert". Thanks a lot. EvMsmile (talk) 11:44, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I changed it to the milder newsrelease. I consider it in large part advocacy for the importance of the issue. I agree completely about the importance of this, but WP does not do addvocacy, regardless of the worthiness of the cause.  Some of this is the general tone, but looking for specifics that might be fixable:


 * 1) the repetition of phrases implying urgency or importance, even ifn the same section, such as "Background"
 * 2) Unsourced statements implying judgement, such as " as it is easier to obtain media coverage on those days."
 * 3) The use of bullet points in some sections instead of paragraphs(and the similar one sentence paragraphs) --WP is not Powerpoint
 * 4) adjective such as "only" "fully" "main"
 * 5) The use of almost entirely WHO sources, and the presence of only one peer-reviewed paper.  DGG ( talk ) 13:28, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
 * As another point, I think it would increase clarity to move the history section up, to put it under the introductions, as the terms may not be really widely known.  DGG ( talk ) 13:28, 4 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks, now I understand better. I can try to work on this article. However, it is not true that the sources are almost entirely WHO. They are also from UNICEF and others, please re-consider that point. I have put history towards the end to be in line with the Manual of Style of WikiProject Sanitation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Sanitation). If you find that it is too much like an advocacy piece, then please also check sanitation and open defecation as similar criticism could apply to those, too. Or perhaps this is simply the nature of such articles that deal with public health issues in developing countries? EvMsmile (talk) 14:19, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I have re-worked the WASH in Schools section now (which was the only section that used bullet points). Yes, I agree that was way too much advocacy language in there. I will take another closer look at the rest of the article in the coming days - it shouldn't be too hard to make it more "neutral". EvMsmile (talk) 14:30, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
 * To DGG and all: I have done further work on this article. Let me know if it's better now and which sections would still need further work? I hope we can remove the newsrelease tag soon. EvMsmile (talk) 12:57, 5 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I have done some further work and have removed the news release tag. If you think that is unjustified then please provide details of what still needs to be changed here. EvMsmile (talk) 21:49, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Statement about failures of WASH systems
I have just deleted this sentence as it was changed wrongly from how it was before: ''Failures "in qualified human resources and in management and organization techniques, including a failure to capture community interest", are considered to be primary obstacles in the use and maintenance of improved water and sanitation systems in addition to the limits and quality of the currently available technologies. '' The sentence before had said: the main obstacle in the use and maintenance of improved water and sanitation systems is not the quality of technology, but the failure “in qualified human resources and in management and organization techniques, including a failure to capture community interest”

This is not quite the same... The original sentence was actually copied from this website: http://reliefweb.int/report/world/horses-and-water-anyone-learning-evaluations-wash-programs

There a reference of Nieves (1980) is quoted but I couldn't find that reference.

Perhaps someone wants to dig deeper into this and add some good up to date content to the page. EvMsmile (talk) 21:49, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Further references for WASH in Schools
If someone has time, you can use these 4 reports as references for the WASH in Schools section: http://www.wateraid.org/what-we-do/our-approach/research-and-publications/view-publication?id=8851e0b6-7a36-4102-8630-4555130e750d EMsmile (talk) 22:51, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Updating Reference in the Lead
The lead needs a more current reference for the very last sentence. can anyone add the updated numbers? PlanetCare (talk) 15:38, 25 October 2017 (UTC)
 * We should cite the JMP (2017) report (in the lead and in the main text), see here: file:///C:/Users/Elli/Downloads/JMP-2017-report-final.pdf. Wikipedia reference would look like this: EMsmile (talk) 10:10, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Further work needed on the new section on evidence
User:WishWash has added a new section on evidence which is great. However, we need to be a bit careful that we don't write it like a literature review... Some of the wording is difficult to understand for a layperson, including myself (and I am not even a layperson on this topic). It might help if you wikilink important terms, like "randomised controlled trials". Also some statements are lacking a reference. We need to carefull decide how much detail we want to provide here, how many different studies and examples to cite. It might be better if we focused on a few overarching studies or conclusions, if they exist. - For comparison, take a look at how it's done on the article for mass deworming. EMsmile (talk) 10:14, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Sub-headings need improvement
We are not meant to have the same sub-headings in different parts of the article. At the moment we have twice "Problems" and "Solutions" (once for the schools and once for the healthcare settings). I can't remember exactly why not but I was told this is not good Wikipedia style. I am trying to come up with a way to solve this. Any ideas? EMsmile (talk) 23:30, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I've changed that now. EMsmile (talk) 11:52, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 12:39, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Unsafe drinking water 03.jpg

Content added about women and water supply
I have just moved the entire text of Water supply and women in developing countries into this article here. There is now some work to do to restructure things so that we don't have redundancies and the content appears in the right places. I will work on that in the coming days (if anyone can help, please do).EMsmile (talk) 03:21, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I am currently working through this. I am finding lots of repetitive content, outdated references, references with broken links etc. So I am working on updating all this and ensuring more recent references are used.
 * I think I'm done with this now. EMsmile (talk) 04:18, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

New publication on WASH and health
There is a new WHO publication from 2019 on WASH and health which is very relevant here: https://www.susana.org/en/knowledge-hub/resources-and-publications/library/details/3744 (Johnston, R., Prüss-Ustün, A., Wolf, J. (2019). Safer Water, Better Health. World Health Organization (WHO), Geneva, Switzerland). I am planning to take some health information from there but I am unsure how to do so to avoid dublication: we have health content also in the articles on sanitation, Waterborne diseases. We need to somehow define one central place where we talk about diseases stemming from lack of WASH and then refer to it from the other places. Thoughts, User:Doc James? EMsmile (talk) 04:18, 5 March 2020 (UTC)
 * User:EMsmile not sure. Some of the content should be in all three places. Am currently working on integration of Our World in Data content. We just uploaded a few thousand graphs and maps. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 04:21, 5 March 2020 (UTC)
 * @User:Doc James My suggestion is to create a new Wikipedia article on "Health impacts from lack of sanitation and clean water" (title to be determined) where ALL the details about health impacts from lack of sanitation, clean water and hygiene would go. Then we can link to there from the other articles rather than dublicating similar information in three articles: WASH, sanitation, Waterborne diseases, even hand washing. EMsmile (talk) 05:15, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I've done some more work on this. So far, I have built up the health information here in the WASH article and reduced it in the other articles, and rather added better linkages. So we might not need a stand-alone article, but just use the WASH article as the main one where the information on health aspects should be bundled. EMsmile (talk) 06:48, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Merge Water issues in developing countries to here?
I am suggesting to merge the article Water issues in developing countries to here as I see a lot of overlap between the two articles. I think it would enrich WASH nicely. That other article has 25 kB (3979 words) "readable prose size", WASH has 30 kB (4561 words) "readable prose size". So a merged article would be a bit long, but I think there is content that can be culled/compressed. EMsmile (talk) 04:35, 4 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I have decided against my suggestion. Reason being that the article Water issues in developing countries could be seen more as an overview article that talks a bit about water resources, water pollution, water treatment. Whereas the article on WASH focuses on access to drinking water. EMsmile (talk) 02:11, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Suggestions for article improvements (June 2021)
I have some suggestions regarding further work to improve this article:
 * further work is needed to streamline with drinking water, to ensure the same information is not repeated across several articles;
 * article still needs more content about access to drinking water (probably a bit too biased towards sanitation at the moment).
 * the lead needs to be longer and be a better summary of the aticle. EMsmile (talk) 00:47, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * these changes have now all been implemented. EMsmile (talk) 10:30, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

New content on climate-resilient WASH
I plan to add new content on climate-resilient WASH, drawing for example on the resources by the REACH project, see here: https://reachwater.org.uk/resources/. Over time, this will probably be developed into a spin-off article. EMsmile (talk) 09:45, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Update: I have now added the climate and water content to water security and linked across to there. Better to have this information bundled in one place, not two. EMsmile (talk) 10:00, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Climate change water adaptation approaches - Senior Seminar
— Assignment last updated by Wildgooseontheloose (talk) 23:22, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi, I am not sure what your plan is but do take a look at the water security article as the climate change content might fit better there. EMsmile (talk) 10:01, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Question about formatting of references
Hi User:Boghog, I have a question about this edit where you changed the formatting of references (with a bot, I assume)? I am just trying to understand what is the reasoning here. I use the route cite > add a citation > automatic (and then add the DOI, URL or ISBN). Is that automatic tool regarded out of date? EMsmile (talk) 07:30, 7 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Hi User:EMsmile. Thanks for your message.  The tool that you are using is not out-of-date.  The script that I am using amoung other things, standarizes the author format.  If you prefer, I can switch back to the original last1, first1, ... format. Cheers. Boghog (talk) 07:57, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi User:Boghog, I don't really have a preference but I don't understand the difference. How would you explain the standardized author format? Perhaps you can send me a link to your script description? What's the advantage? Also, I had an edit conflict with your edit about half an hour ago and over-wrote your edits (small formatting edits) as my edit was rather big and I didn't want to redo it. Sorry about that. I was doing a major overhaul of the WASH article today and yesterday. EMsmile (talk) 10:22, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi User:EMsmile. A link to the tool that I use to generate citations is here.  The main advantage of using Vancouver system vauthors parameter is that it enforces a consistent style of citation formatting. last, first will accept anything including full first names, first name initials with or without periods, with or without a space between first and middle name, and complete "!@#$*&%^" gibberish. vauthors will throw an error if the name does not completely conform to the Vancouver system.  In addition, I was manually templating a signficant number of untemplated web citations in this article that included authors. Manuall templating of authors with the vauthors is a lot easier.  No problem with overwriting my formatting references.  You are adding a lot of vaulable content which take precidence over formatting. That said, if you prefer last, first, I will add those back. Boghog (talk) 15:51, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'm fine with those formatting changes. Wondering if the tool ("cite > add a citation > automatic") should be adjusted accordingly so that an additional run of a bot/tool would not be necessary. By the way, if you have any suggestions on making the WASH article more understandable for lay persons, please let me know. I fear that it still contains a lot of technical language and perhaps some jargon. If you're an outsider or non-expert to the topic you might be in a good position to point out sentences that are difficult to understand. EMsmile (talk) 09:09, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

New publication about WASH in healthcare settings (Aug 2022)
A new report has come out, with the headline: "Half of health care facilities globally lack basic hygiene services – WHO, UNICEF". See here. This information should be added to this article (I just don't have time at the moment to do it myself). EMsmile (talk) 08:20, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Where to cull and condense a bit?
This article is now on the long side: Prose size (text only): 52 kB (7892 words) "readable prose size". Does anyone have suggestions for where content could be culled or condensed or moved to an existing (or new) sub-article? I've done a little bit of culling today, trying to remove repetitive content, "development cooperation speech", or superfluous detail. EMsmile (talk) 10:44, 16 October 2023 (UTC)