I’m so committed to making sanitation content more readable that I go into recruiting mode, even at family dinners. “You, too, can make sanitation articles more readable.” I had my sister read the pit additive article (after dinner) and asked her what she thought. Predictably, she said: “I don’t have a clue what they even mean by “pit additive.”

When I told her it was the “stuff” people buy to add to their toilets to make the other “stuff” go away. She took me to her garage and pulled out a box. “This stuff?" she mused. "You mean, I'm adding a pit additive to my toilet? Why don't they call it a toilet additive?"

My perfectly intelligent sister, whose home uses a septic tank, had bought a pit additive. I asked her if, having just reading the Wikipedia article, she could tell me how effective these additives are. (Not very.)

Now she’s mad. She’s been paying for this stuff, and flushing it down the toilet without ever knowing if it made one bit of difference. "Who looks inside their septic tank? I’ve been flushing money down the toilet?” Now she's really mad, and I have a new recruit for Sanitation Wikipedia.

For starters, she took a photo of her pit additive box and we posted it right then and there. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_additive. The picture was worth a thousand words. We looked at the lead paragraph, which started with a 38-word sentence. The readability score was 36 out of a possible 100 on the Flesch readability scale. She got that up to 54 in 15 minutes.

ORIGINALLY:
A pit additive (or more accurately pit or septic tanks additive) is a commercial product which is intended to reduce sludge accumulation rate or to reduce odor and fly problems in septic tanks or wastewater treatment plants. There is little to no scientific evidence that shows that any of these commercial additives have the benefits claimed by the manufacturers. Pit additives are often, but not always, associated with the idea of "Effective Microorganisms" (EM).

NOW:
Pit additives aim to reduce fecal sludge build-up and control odor in pit latrines, septic tanks or wastewater treatment plants.. Manufacturers claim to use effective microorganisms (EM) in their products. Current scientific evidence does not back up most claims made about the benefits. Removing sludge continues to be a problem in pit latrines and septic tanks.

I hope I’m making this look easy. You add an illustration and make the sentences shorter. She's working on the lead paragraphs for three other articles now.

Take a look at our list of 70 topics . Do you like what Wikipedia is teaching the world about your favorite topic?

Thanks for pointing this out, Chris. I didn’t know about SimpleWikipedia.org, so I just did a little research. The view rates are quite low, but I can see how much easier it would be to translate from a shorter entry. The 2192-word article on cholera gets down to 812 words. That means people who go to simplewikipedia.org, or a translation from that site, wouldn’t get nearly the breadth and depth of information they can find on Wikipedia.org. As an FYI to SuSanA members, our Dashboard only tracks work done on Wikipedia.org.

What we can do to help translators is make WASH articles more “readable” in the first place. Shorter sentences and more straightforward language makes a world of difference to any reader. Wikipedia recommends a readability score of 60-70, out of 100 possible on the Flesch readability score.

This link will calculate a readability score for any text: www.readabilityofwikipedia.com/score. Thinking I better practice what I preach, I just checked my post for readability. Then I did a little editing to get to 63.

Here are some readability scores from a few WASH articles that get high view rates:

35 Water pollution
43 Cholera
38 Diarrhea
50 Feces
21 Public health
21 Emergency Mgmt
38 Composting toilet
22 Anti-microbial resistance
59 Pit latrine

Go here to see the readability scores for all of the WASH articles we're working on for World Toilet Day. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Sanitation_Wikipedia/2
Use the arrows in the column headings to sort from "most readable" to "least readable." We need to put someone on the "emergency management" article.

Our list of "contributors" is growing. Thank You, SuSanA.

Hi everyone,

I have been working on Wikipedia a bit lately, improving sanitation aspects on the Cholera page, where I stumbled across the Simple English language in Wikipedia, which I think may be key on our quest to improve sanitation, since many of our target readers may struggle with normal, complicated English.

... so I worked on the Simple English Cholera page
simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholera

... and then went on to "translate" the Dry Toilet page that I needed to link to
simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_toilet

Have fun,
Chris Canaday

So, are you all putting your fingers to the keyboards yet in order to be eligible for the US$ 500 honorariums for impressive contributors to Wikipedia??
Diane Kellogg announced it here in this thread last week: forum.susana.org/213-world-toilet-day-wo...-to-be-awarded#22801

Today I thought it might be nice to let you see and hear Diane talk about this at the recent SuSanA meeting in Stockholm. See here in the video of the meeting's recording:
Clicking here takes you to the right time in the video

Should my embedded link not work then go to this video and fast forward to 1:12:31 :



You also briefly see Carol McCreary in the video who is also a great supporter of this Wikipedia Santation Public Education Drive.

Please use this thread here to:
a) ask any questions you might have
b) tell us what you are planning to do on Wikipedia or what you have already started
c) lend moral support to each other (even if you have no time to contribute yourself).

Here is also the so-called Meetup Page in Wikipedia which gives you further details and tips on getting started:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Sanitation_Wikipedia/2
(we've recently overhauled it a bit; this is work in progress)

Regards,
Elisabeth

I've started this thread so that people can share what they are doing or planning to do as part of the Sanitation Wikipedia drive ahead of World Toilet Day on 19 November 2017 which I have posted about here .

Here comes the first example (please add further examples. What are you doing or planning to do?)

+++++++++++

Jennifer McConville, who advises thesis research on water and sanitation topics at SLU (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, had a great idea. First, she captured the interest of her colleagues by doing a presentation on Sanitation Wikipedia to her department. Given that support, she emailed PhD students to invite them to work on articles related to their thesis research.

Here's a great one-liner from her email: "This is an opportunity to really have an impact on public knowledge -- the 3rd goal of Universities, right?"

More people will read about your research topic on Wikipedia than will ever read your journal articles or project reports, right? Send other good ideas for leveraging the expertise of SuSanA members in the cause of public education to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Even better, go straight to SuSanA's Sanitation Wikipedia Meetup Page to register then start working on one of the articles listed there: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Sanitation_Wikipedia/2.