Talk:Water supply and sanitation in Latin America
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[edit] Definition of "improved", etc.
Wikipedia:Lead section says "Avoid links in the bold title words," so I moved the wikilinks that were in the first sentence; I moved each of them to the first other occurrence of that phrase. I think the bold words look better if they're all black.
When I see the phrase "improved drinking water," I wonder what exactly is meant. A footnote is given, and if you search to the end of the footnoted WHO document, it gives a pretty precise definition in the form of a table: facilities such as pipes into the home count as "improved," etc. I wonder if this definition could somehow be made more accessible to the reader. Would it make sense to have a Wikipedia article called "improved drinking water"? I don't know enough about the subject to know whether that could be considered a notable topic (i.e. with enough reliable sources talking about it to be able to write a good article). However, if it is, then that would solve the problem: just wikilink the first occurrence of "improved drinking water" to that page, and the reader who is curious could find out exactly what it means by clicking the link. Another way that might be possible would be to take the table from the WHO document and display it as a table near the first occurrence of "improved drinking water". I don't know whether there would be any copyright restrictions against doing that; I suspect that the amount of information is probably small enough that it wouldn't be a problem anyway, and I'm not sure whether WHO documents are copyrighted or not. Another method would be to make a section in another article, possibly in drinking water, with section heading "improved drinking water", and then wikilink it with a section wikilink that could look something like this: [[Drinking water#Access to drinking water|access to drinking water]] which displays as access to drinking water There may also be other ways to supply that information quickly and easily to the reader. I wonder whether a link could be made that jumps the reader straight to the relevant page of the WHO document, for example. Anyway, I think the reader will want to know the definition of "improved" in this context, one way or another (preferably without having to search through the whole WHO document).
Hmm. Somebody should write an article Water supply and sanitation. There are articles about water supply and sanitation in various countries; a summary article could summarize them.
I hope these comments are helpful. --Coppertwig (talk) 20:41, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
I don't understand this sentence: "The average urban water use net of distribution losses was estimated at about 240 liter/capita/day." Is 240 liter/capita/day the amount of water used, or is it the amount of water lost during distribution? If it's the amount of water used, I suggest changing the wording to "The average net urban water use (i.e. excluding distribution losses) was estimated at about 240 liter/capita/day." There are other ways to word it, too. --Coppertwig (talk) 20:50, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
I don't understand what "non-revenue water" is. Maybe that could be explained a bit in the article. Probably just a few words are needed for that. --Coppertwig (talk) 21:08, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
Re this sentence: "According to the World Bank[21] even those countries on track to achieve the MDG targets face tremendous challenges in improving service quality, in particular to attain continuity of supply and to increase wastewater treatment." It has a footnote after "World Bank". I think usually footnotes go at the ends of sentences. Footnotes don't always go at the ends of sentences, because there's an example in Wikipedia:Citing sources, about the sun and the moon, where it doesn't. Still, I think the footnote usually goes at the end of the material that the footnote is supporting, so I don't think it makes sense to put it after "according to the World Bank"; instead, it should go after what the World Bank said. But what did the World Bank say? I looked at the document, and I didn't read it all but I also didn't find anything about challenges or any conclusions that sound much like this sentence. If it's somewhere it there, it may be helpful to include a quote as part of the footnote. If not, either the article perhaps needs to be changed or another source found. I was looking at the wrong footnote by mistake. It does say it. 21:24, 16 February 2008 (UTC) --Coppertwig (talk) 21:21, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks again for your comments. We made some changes according to them. Concerning the definition of "improved drinking water", I think that the footnote explains what is meant. However, we could maybe give a definition on a more general page, such as Water supply.--Kerres (Talk) 09:32, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
- Re improved water supply: You're right. Sorry about that. I just didn't notice the words in the footnote -- I just clicked on the link. So it's fine like that. A definition on the water supply page sounds to me like it's probably a good idea anyway. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:02, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Re this bit at the end of the article: "... as well as the limited inability of many service providers to fulfill norms set by regulators" I think it would make more sense if the word were "ability" rather than "inability". --Coppertwig (talk) 02:21, 29 February 2008 (UTC)