Talk:Water privatization in Brazil

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 Water privatization in Brazil was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Reviewed version: May 3, 2008
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The article is comprehensive and supported by numerous references. However, in order to become a good article the article would benefit if the following issues were addressed:

  • The tone of the article and the selection of the particular aspects highlighted does not reflect a neutral point of view, but reveals a bias against private sector participation in water supply and sanitation. This is evidenced, among others, in the choice of "specific cases" and in the section on "access", which uses words like "notoriously" and makes speculations such as "is likely to negatively affect if...".
    • Not much I can do about the specific cases, as this was an attempt to be comprehensive (as far as English langauge sources would allow). I will remove the word "notorious" and be clearer about attributing the last example. Tommorrow, I will make a table of all the concession agreements thus far, and reduce the current content of this section to "Notes" or something in that table. Unfortunately, there may not be much to note for the others, beyond the basics. Savidan 04:01, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
      • Glad you will add a table of all concessions. The issue remains that the selection is a deliberate and biased collection of horror stories that makes the article unbalanced.--Mschiffler (talk) 01:51, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
  • The popular term "Water privatization" is misleading for two reasons. First, the article is not about the privatization of water itself, but about the management of infrastructure. Second, privatization is the transfer of assets ownership from public to private hands, as it occurred for example in the privatization of the water industry in Water supply and sanitation in the England and Wales. The private concession agreements in Brazil are different. They are about private management of infrastructure, while asset ownership remains in public hands. For these two reasons a more accurate title would be "Private sector participation in water supply and sanitation in Brazil". Another more appropriate term is Public-Private Partnership (PPP), which the article mentions briefly in the section "opposition" without clarifying how PPPs and privatization are different.
    • This article is (in its ambitions) about all forms of private sector involvement. In common parleance, privatization is used as an umbrella term (as is definitely the case in Brazilian literature: academic, proponents, and opponents); more specific terms are used in most instances in this article. I think that "Concessions and PSPs and PPPs in water provision and management in Brazil" would be too cumbersome a title, although your point is well taken. I will try to make clear in the text that (what you describe as) privatization proper has not occured. Please let me know if there are any specific examples in the text which refer to specific things inaccurately as privatization. Savidan 04:07, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
      • I appreciate the changes in the text you made. However, you overstate my point to make it sound a bit ridiculous. An accurate title of the article would be "Private sector participation in water supply and sanitation in Brazil". Thist terminology is very common among professionals For an example see the following OECD publication. Now it is true that the public debate is not always accurate in its terminology. I am not sure if an encyclopedia should strive to emulate inaccurate public debates or strive for accuracy. What would you say?--Mschiffler (talk) 01:51, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
        • I am not entirely opposed to "Private sector participation in water supply and sanitation in Brazil" but I think that the main issue for me is the imprimatur to "use common names" at WP:NAME. Privatization clearly is far more commonly used in the media and public discourse (which, I agree, is sometimes just misinformed), but in this case, also frequently used in by academic sources, proponents, opponents, etc. Savidan 22:56, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
  • The article so far shows no evidence to back up the statement that PSP in WSS in Brazil has "so far yielded only minimum improvements". The statistical studies mentioned should be quoted in more detail, making clear at the very minimum what criteria have been used, what timeframe was studied and which utilities were analyzed.
    • I've added, I think, more information than anyone would want to know without just reading the article itself. Savidan 04:32, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
      • Just adding a generic mathematical function does not resolve the underlying problem of your argument. It seems to me that Faria et al. used a cross-sectional analysis, i.e. they compared public and private utilities at one point in time. This neglects the problem of selection bias, i.e. that the owners of the best utilities in Brazil (such as SABESP in the state of Sao Paulo) did not see the need to involve the private sector, while thus in trouble called in the private sector. It is the opposite of the alleged cherry picking, which by the way is not described in at least one of the the sources you quote on this topic (Olivier). In order to back up your argument you would have to use a time-series analysis to show how efficiency has changed over time. Moreover you equate efficiency improvements with results, while results need to be measured taking many more dimensions into account.--Mschiffler (talk) 01:51, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
  • There are a number of political statements in the article, which would benefit from being preceded by writing "According to XYZ...". The section on access contains a few such examples.
    • I've attributed those. Please be more specific if you have further grievances in this area. Savidan 04:34, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
      • Will check the article again.--Mschiffler (talk) 01:51, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Most of the history section is not about private sector participation (PSP), but about the history of the Brazilian water and sanitation sector in general. It may be useful to merge most of the history section into the history section of Water supply and sanitation in Brazil.
    • This is something I considered at length before posting the article; in particular, I think the history of PLANASA and municipal concessions to state companies is vital to give contexts to municipal or state concessions to private companies. I'll look through this again and merge whatever looks extraneous, but I think that broad context is appropriate for this topic. The dam section, however, I have elected to merge. Savidan 04:36, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
  • A few sources (such as Parlatore and Olivier) are insufficiently referenced or are "grey literature", so that it is impossible to verify them.
    • It turns out these are available online. If you have problems finding any other sources cited, I would be happy to email them to you (use the "email this user feature" to let me know your email). Savidan 04:50, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
  • The lead section states that in Argentina the regulatory structure was well developed when PSP was introduced. This was actually not the case.
    • I have clarified the statement and added the exact quote in the source I am referring to. Savidan 04:55, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
  • The recent events section mentions "attempts...to establish an effective and unified regulatory agency". Introducing a single federal agency for the regulation of water supply and sanitation has never been attempted to my knowledge.
    • I've changed "agency" to "framework." However, the ANA might qualify as one such potential agency ("A National Water Agency (Agencia Nacional de Aguas e ANA) was created in 2000. However, the main function of ANA is to monitor the utilization of water resources. Its role as a regulator is yet to be defined" Sabbioni, p. 13). Savidan 05:21, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Users' commissions are presented as an alternative to PSP. However, they can be set up for both public and private management models and therefore are not an alternative, but often a complement to PSP that can significantly improve how PSP is done.
    • You are right, and I thought a bit about the best way to present this information. They are not an alternative to PSP but they are an alternative to privatization. Savidan 05:15, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
      • I disagree with you. Users' commissions are, for example, part and parcel of the water and sanitation sector in England and Wales, which is fully privatized. Users' commission are not a management model (such as a public company, a cooperative, a public-private partnership), but a mechanism for consultation and participation in decision-making. In the particular cases that you cite users' commission deal with watershed management, not with service provision. They are thus not an alternative model for service provision.--Mschiffler (talk) 01:51, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

There are a few more issues with the article that can be discussed at a later time during the good article review process after these preliminary comments have been addressed. Once that's done, the article will hopefully be an even more valuable contribution to the growing number of articles on the institutional, legal, social, economic and political aspects of water supply and sanitation posted on Wikipedia.--Mschiffler (talk) 03:55, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your thorough comments. I will try to justice to the effort you have put into reviewing this article. It may take me a day or so to address all of them. Savidan 04:01, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Take your time to get it done right. Thank you for your constructive attitude to incorporate the comments and thank you for writing this important article in the first place.--Mschiffler (talk) 04:06, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I went over the article once again, this time drilling down to the sources and reading it more carefully. I found many more weaknesses in the article that are too numerous to list. Partially they seem to come from a certain lack of understanding of the water sector. And partially they are the result of sloppiness. For example, the article refers to the second half of the 19th century as "colonial period" while Brazil became independent in 1822. The article needs much more work.--Mschiffler (talk) 03:14, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Survey

WP:Good article usage is a survey of the language and style of Wikipedia editors in articles being reviewed for Good article nomination. It will help make the experience of writing Good Articles as non-threatening and satisfying as possible if all the participating editors would take a moment to answer a few questions for us, in this section please. The survey will end on April 30.

  • Would you like any additional feedback on the writing style in this article?


  • If you write a lot outside of Wikipedia, what kind of writing do you do?


  • Is your writing style influenced by any particular WikiProject or other group on Wikipedia?


At any point during this review, let us know if we recommend any edits, including markup, punctuation and language, that you feel don't fit with your writing style. Thanks for your time. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:37, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] My Preliminary GA Review of this article

While this article does not meet quick-fail criteria, it does require changes that I believe "are not likely to be met within seven days," so I am failing it for now. There may be some English-language translation issues because there are a lot of grammatical errors. As such, I have requested that this article be critiqued by the League of Copyeditors. Also, there are some serious notability issues here. I'm not sure why this information merits its own page—yes, there's a lot of information here, but I feel it could be more interestingly (and more notably) incorporated into Water privatization or Water supply and sanitation in Brazil. The following are some issues I found in the first two sections:

  • Introduction fails to explain why the subject is interesting or notable (see WP:LEAD).
  • The first sentence does not make sense grammatically. The structure of the comparison is off, and the first definition does not describe water privatization in Brazil but merely water privatization.
  • The last sentence of the first paragraph "A lack of legal clarity..." also does not make sense. "...to award also concession..." ?
  • "Privatization in Brazil has taken place without having previously developed a sound regulatory regime, as it was the case, for example, in Chile" does not make sense. "...sound regulatory regime"? "as it was the case"?
  • "Colonization can be seen as laying the ground for privatization in these locales" -- seems out of place
  • "essentially an attempt to balance between competing water interests" does not make sense grammatically

If you disagree with me regarding the notability part, you may want to request a second opinion later, but the article must at least first undergo a serious copyedit, which likely will require some time. Thank you for considering GAN, and I hope to see your other work there soon. Best regards --Eustress (talk) 14:57, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

It should also be noted that the article needs to be thoroughly cited. Currently, there are many unreferenced claims. The internet references also need more information (at least a title, publisher, url, and accessdate). See Wikipedia:Citing sources for the {{cite web}} template. GaryColemanFan (talk) 22:04, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Thank you to both of you for taking the time to review the article. Your comments all make sense. In reviewing the initial version of the article posted by User:Savidan I focused on NPOV and other issues of substance, leaving the editorial cleaning-up for later. Anyone who wants to help in doing this is very welcome! Just a few more quick responses:
  • Concerning the lead section, I can rewrite it so that it makes more sense and hopefully better explains the notability of the topic.
  • Please note also that there is a category "Water privatization by country" which may help to explain the notability, putting the article in a larger context of global water privatization. Including all the country articles on water privatization in a single article would make that article very long.
  • Finally, the first sub-sections of the history section are out of place in this article, in my view, except for the sentences mentioning private concessions in the 19th century. I would suggest to be bold and take "origins" out, except for that two sentences, to move "Water Code" to the article "Water resources management in Brazil" and to move the two sub-sections on PLANASA to the article "Water supply and sanitation in Brazil".--Mschiffler (talk) 14:06, 7 June 2008 (UTC)