Thanks for keeping us thinking about water and sanitation information on Wikipedia. Elisabeth. Refereed journals have their place, but the readership is no where near the thousands of readers Wikipedia attracts each day. Well worth the time.

Esther Shaylor is working on the SDG6 article to update the references using JMP 2017. I'm going to work on the Resource Recovery article to see if I can make it more readable. It's getting a 21 out of 100 on the readability index: not good. I'll keep asking around to find people who might have an hour or two to work on one of the topics.

To All:
Can you suggest any PhD programs related to Water Pollution or Ecosystems? We'd like to reach out to thesis advisers for help in identifying Ph.D candidates who might spend an hour or two on one of these articles. The number of views will surge on World Water Day and it would be good to improve those in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks,

Diane

World Water Day on 22 March is about one month away. To contribute to the World Water Day (WWD) celebrations as SuSanA members, a few of us are aging going to work on selected Wikipedia articles. The aim is to help with public education on key water and sanitation topics. Wikipedia is used by lay persons, journalists, students, researchers, "normal people" etc. all over the world to inform themselves about current topics. Let's ensure they get good and easy to read information when they go to "our" water/sanitation topics!

We've learnt from our last Wikipedia drive (see here for World Toilet Day in November: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Sanitation_Wikipedia/2) and are this time making our efforts more focused, just looking at 10 articles instead of 70 last time.

Here are the 10 Wikipedia articles we are proposing for the drive between now and 22 March (more could be added but only if you are willing to volunteer your time, and if we swap it for one on the list):

1. Water pollution en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_pollution - high views (5600 per day) and related to WWD theme of 2018
2. Gastroenteritis en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastroenteritis - high views (5300 per day), good entry point; likely to only need readability improvements mainly
3. Ecosystem en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem – high views (3000 per day) and related to WWD theme
4. Nature-based solutions en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_Based_Solutions - as this is the focus of 2018 World Water Development Report (but has only low views)
5. Fresh water en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresh_water - about 1000 views per day; topic is related to WWD theme
6. Sustainable Development Goals en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals – medium to high views (2600 per day)
7. Sustainable Development Goal 6 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goal_6 – does not have high views but we need to push this one
8. World Water Day en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Water_Day - needs some improvements
9. Antimicrobial resistance en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_resistance - important topic; we made a start on it and could now focus on readability mainly
10. Resource recovery en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_recovery – we started on that one in the last round

Maybes (but only to be added if we removed one from the list above):
- Wastewater en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wastewater - 700 views per day; important general topic
- Drinking water en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_water – 1000 views per day; important general topic
- WASH en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASH – does not have high views but we need to push this one
- Wetland en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetland - related to the theme of World Water Day this year

What are the next steps?
- Finalise the list of 10 we want to work on (please give us your feedback)
- If you want to join the initiative, e-mail us on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or reply in this thread
- We will record the baseline quality score for these 10 articles (using our existing scoring system) and decide on a target value for improvements by 22 March. It could be that we mainly focus on improving the lead and the readability score only.
- Get to work (we might used a closed LinkedIn Group to collaborate)
- Celebrate our achievements on 22 March, knowing that we have contributed to public education on water and sanitation topics!

Any questions or comments? Please don't be shy, just put them into this thread.
This initiative is open to anyone, whether novice or expert. If you don't want to edit directly in Wikipedia you could also go via the tracked-changes route in Word. We are particularly inviting early career people and students to join us! *

Regards,
Elisabeth

* as well as females please (I still find it mind boggling that the ratio of male to female editors in Wikipedia is 9:1 (source: medium.com/freely-sharing-the-sum-of-all...commons-44b20d0a9618)! Even here on the forum we have far more males than females making posts (scroll down to the bottom of this page and see the ten people who have been most active in the last week; it's usually 8:2 males to females). So speak up, please, ladies, don't be shy but make yourself heard! B)