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I think it is good to have an article on human waste but I think it needs to be refocussed. At the moment is is gliding towards being another article about sanitation and the importance of sanitation, thus doubling up on other pages isn't it? EvM-Susana ( talk) 20:59, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
It's been proposed to rename this page to human excreta (even though it is more commonly called human waste, but this might be changing slowly). See also discussion [ [1]]. Another suggestion was to create a new page on "human excreta" but personally I am not very much in favor of that. - In any case, we need a better link to here from e.g. the article on waste, and excreta. Excreta actually redirects to excretion which is not really ideal. Perhaps we should have "excreta" redirect to here? But we also have animal excreta. Therefore, should we rename this current page to "excreta" (remove the redirect to "excretion") and add a section on animal excreta? - Doesn't really make sense that "human excreta" exists (redirects to "human waste") but that excreta redirects to excretion.
I'll need to check up on the Wikipedia guidelines on this, as it's a general issue... i.e. do we have to use the more commonly used term as the page name or can we use the more correct name. E.g. when I look for medical terms in Wikipedia, it often redirects me to the more "correct" term and as a user, I don't really mind. E.g. I might search for "helminth infection" but am redirected to "helminthiasis". Here is another good example: I look for "heart disease" and I get redirected to "Cardiovascular disease". Therefore, it seems to me that at least for the medical articles, the correct medical term is being used, not the popular term. This would speak for calling it "human excreta" not "human waste", wouldn't it? Perhaps Doc_James, could you enlighten us further? EvM-Susana ( talk) 12:51, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Hmmmm, interesting. I was just looking at a Google Search how the term "human waste" is used and found that it's also used as another term for wastewater, septage, sewage sludge and biosolids by journalists, see e.g. here this newspaper article (so I guess also any type of mixture of human excreta with water, or by-products from sewage treatment plants): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/25/poop-gold-human-waste-metals_n_6936262.html It would be interesting to find out if native English speakers use the term in a different (perhaps more narrow) way than non-native English speakers. Perhaps also a question worth discussion with sanitation experts over on the SuSanA discussion forum (www.forum.susana.org). This might help in our deliberations of a) should the page be re-named or b) what content it should actually contain if it's not re-named. EvM-Susana ( talk) 16:07, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks everyone for your insights. After reading the various ideas I have to say that I am fond of the title of the article being changed to "human excreta" and then "human waste" being described therein. I also like the idea of a redirect that sends folks searching for "human waste" to the "human excreta" page. As I see it, "human excreta" is the more descriptive term while "human waste" is something that society has come up with to sanitize the object(s) of discussion. Thinking about it further, this points to how "human waste" is actually the more "political" of the two terms. So, I'm in favor of calling it what it actually is rather than what some of us choose to call it. Gruster ( talk) 23:45, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
I think it would be a good idea to add more research about human waste. As I read this article it's lacking citations, which makes it hard to navigate, and makes the references used below unreliable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Th1529 ( talk • contribs) 03:11, 9 October 2019 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Human waste article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. |
![]() | This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||
|
I think it is good to have an article on human waste but I think it needs to be refocussed. At the moment is is gliding towards being another article about sanitation and the importance of sanitation, thus doubling up on other pages isn't it? EvM-Susana ( talk) 20:59, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
It's been proposed to rename this page to human excreta (even though it is more commonly called human waste, but this might be changing slowly). See also discussion [ [1]]. Another suggestion was to create a new page on "human excreta" but personally I am not very much in favor of that. - In any case, we need a better link to here from e.g. the article on waste, and excreta. Excreta actually redirects to excretion which is not really ideal. Perhaps we should have "excreta" redirect to here? But we also have animal excreta. Therefore, should we rename this current page to "excreta" (remove the redirect to "excretion") and add a section on animal excreta? - Doesn't really make sense that "human excreta" exists (redirects to "human waste") but that excreta redirects to excretion.
I'll need to check up on the Wikipedia guidelines on this, as it's a general issue... i.e. do we have to use the more commonly used term as the page name or can we use the more correct name. E.g. when I look for medical terms in Wikipedia, it often redirects me to the more "correct" term and as a user, I don't really mind. E.g. I might search for "helminth infection" but am redirected to "helminthiasis". Here is another good example: I look for "heart disease" and I get redirected to "Cardiovascular disease". Therefore, it seems to me that at least for the medical articles, the correct medical term is being used, not the popular term. This would speak for calling it "human excreta" not "human waste", wouldn't it? Perhaps Doc_James, could you enlighten us further? EvM-Susana ( talk) 12:51, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Hmmmm, interesting. I was just looking at a Google Search how the term "human waste" is used and found that it's also used as another term for wastewater, septage, sewage sludge and biosolids by journalists, see e.g. here this newspaper article (so I guess also any type of mixture of human excreta with water, or by-products from sewage treatment plants): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/25/poop-gold-human-waste-metals_n_6936262.html It would be interesting to find out if native English speakers use the term in a different (perhaps more narrow) way than non-native English speakers. Perhaps also a question worth discussion with sanitation experts over on the SuSanA discussion forum (www.forum.susana.org). This might help in our deliberations of a) should the page be re-named or b) what content it should actually contain if it's not re-named. EvM-Susana ( talk) 16:07, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
Thanks everyone for your insights. After reading the various ideas I have to say that I am fond of the title of the article being changed to "human excreta" and then "human waste" being described therein. I also like the idea of a redirect that sends folks searching for "human waste" to the "human excreta" page. As I see it, "human excreta" is the more descriptive term while "human waste" is something that society has come up with to sanitize the object(s) of discussion. Thinking about it further, this points to how "human waste" is actually the more "political" of the two terms. So, I'm in favor of calling it what it actually is rather than what some of us choose to call it. Gruster ( talk) 23:45, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
I think it would be a good idea to add more research about human waste. As I read this article it's lacking citations, which makes it hard to navigate, and makes the references used below unreliable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Th1529 ( talk • contribs) 03:11, 9 October 2019 (UTC)