Talk:Criticism of Wal-Mart

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Old Talk Archives:  Archive 1 - April 2005 - June 2006

Contents 1 Local community impacts, rewrite 2 Prosecution and predatory pricing 3 Editorial 4 Merge proposal, Wal-Mart#Economic impact studies in the United States 5 List of criticisms of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. 6 wtf? 7 merger (imports and globalization, product selection) 8 Forking, irrelevant content 9 Pulling Maurice Bessinger’s famous barbecue sauce off the sheleves 10 NPOV problems 11 Magazines 12 Something you guys might want to check out. 13 Reality check 14 Unions 15 Featured Article Nomination? 16 Shouldn't there be a crime section 17 Philanthropy section 18 Citing sources

[edit] Local community impacts, rewrite

This article is becoming very big and a lot of its content is too specific. I have attempted to summarize the first three subsections of Criticism of Wal-Mart#Local community impacts into the following: User:Tuxide/Wikiproject_Retailing/Wal-Mart/Local_community_impacts. My argument is that making a list of all controversial store openings is like making a list of all Wal-Mart stores that ever existed. If there are no objections within the next ten days, I will replace sections 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 of this article with what is on my draft page. Tuxide 20:44, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Your rewrite doesn't really address predatory pricing at all, which is one of the most commonly cited criticisms of Wal-Mart and has been the subject of much litigation against the company. Maybe that should be moved out into its own section. Kaldari 22:58, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, predatory pricing should probably be addressed in more detail elsewhere. I read the whole Criticism of Wal-Mart#Local community impacts section as if it has to do with store openings, and Criticism of Wal-Mart#Predatory Pricing reads as if it does not. Tuxide 02:40, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

---

I have replaced most of the content in Criticism of Wal-Mart#Local community impacts with my rewritten version. I have also moved out the Criticism of Wal-Mart#Predatory pricing section from here since it has nothing to do with store openings. One thing that I will point out is that I removed a lot of the individual instances from here, since this content is available in the sources that were used and since attempting to list every controversial store opening on this page would be the equivalent of attempting to list every Wal-Mart that ever existed. I chose to focus on the Aztec pyramid instance due to its news coverage. The result of what I did is a trimmer version of the original with citations, in case the user wants to read further.

I also removed the Bizarro image, since I didn't believe it added much value to the section it was used in. It probably would do better in Wal-Mart#Wal-Mart in popular culture though. Feel free to change its wording, since it's not the best in the world. Bring up whatever issue that you see with the new content here before making substantial changes to it, or reverting. Thanks. Tuxide 23:27, 9 July 2006 (UTC) [Edit: context by Tuxide]

I have also renamed the section from "Local community impacts" to "tore opening controversy" to better represent its contents. Also, I've noticed that Wal-Mart uses the word "impact" to describe itself in a positive pov [1], so I prefer to avoid using it for NPOV reasons. Tuxide 00:03, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Prosecution and predatory pricing

Cut text:

Wal-Mart has been prosecuted several times for predatory pricing behavior, which is defined as the practice of temporarily lowering prices in order to drive competitors out of business so that prices may be raised afterwards in a competition-free environment (a monopoly).

The phrase has been prosecuted several times gives the misleading impression that (1) Wal-mart has been found guilty of this, and (2) that despite being punished by the government did it again, over and over

Yet the bullet points below showed acquittal on appeal, settled, dismissed; and Mexico favored Wal-Mart.

Only 1 out of 5 "prosecutions" looks bad here.

Looks like a case of a 'contributor' trying to put his own words in Wikipedia's mouth. It would be better to say something like:

• Wal-Mart critics accuse it of using "below-cost pricing" to drive competition out of business (see predatory pricing)

Also, isn't there such a concept as "anti-competitive acts", i.e., actions which (like a foul in basketball) are considered unfair ways of crushing competition rather than actually "competing" with them? This should be discussed, but with names of advocates and with the evidence (or arguments) they present. --Uncle Ed 19:08, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Cut from article:

While the lower prices are good in the near-term, in the long term it can cause many at competing local stores to lose their job because the store cannot compete with Wal-Mart's pricing.

This, I believe, is the main criticism. I've never seen it worded better.

People oppose Wal-Mart's policies and practices because its success leads to the failures of others. Many people believe that small-business owners have a right to remain in business; that they should be immune to competition from larger businesses.

Another objection is that the wages are "too low to live on", i.e., "Living wage" advocacy. Apparently there's a certain standard of living in the West that all employers should be required to uphold or even guarantee. Inner-city teens working at their first job should be paid enough to get their own apartment, buy food and clothes, etc.

We need a fair description of living wage advocates' ideas, along with upward mobility advocates' ideas. Like, what if someone is satisfied to work for "poverty level" wages? No one's holding a gun to their head and stopping them from taking a second job or going to night school to prepare for a higher paying one.

Note: I am not saying we should replace anti-WM slant with pro-WM slant. Just that the article should describe anti-WM and pro-WM points of view fairly: just report that X said Y about Z, while A said B about it. --Uncle Ed 15:41, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Editorial

Modifed (as marked):

One such editorial (Nordlinger's, paraphrased below) speculates that critics are anti-capitalist and anti-success, and another (Bandow's) demonstrates ad hominem tu quoque by implying implies that critics are hypocrites if they don't object to all businesses that achieved success in the way that the author asserts Wal-Mart did.

I don't see how this is an ad hominem argument. I think it's a rebuttal of the point itself, i.e., that the ARGUMENT is inconsistent. (If they heaped some abuse on the maker of the point, like "shame on you for making such a one-sided argument", that's regrettable but that doesn't invalidate the argument; it juts means the critic has bad manners.

Contrariwise, the spurious accusation of ad hominem is itself a common debating tactic. So, let's not debate this amongst ourselves but just describe each side's POV fairly. --Uncle Ed 18:24, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge proposal, Wal-Mart#Economic impact studies in the United States

In my opinion, the section Wal-Mart#Economic impact studies in the United States should be merged into this article, because its rationale better backs up the content on this article instead. Also, I view Wal-Mart as an article about Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., as a company, and should therefore have a document structure that is recommended for company articles. The section needs to be cleaned up anyways; as the section is now, just throwing it into Wal-Mart#Criticism would mess with its flow because its content is very specific. Tuxide 23:40, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

The section also needs to be completely rewritten as it is. The way I read it, it's not really written as part of an encyclopedia article; instead, it's really just a list of a bunch of articles and papers that people wrote about the economics of wal-mart and doesn't really say much about the actual topic. It looks to me like it's more a promotion of the economics papers listed than actual discussion about the topic. But I would also seem to favor merging it into this section as well, as many of the references in the section can be used to back up various claims here also. Dr. Cash 06:45, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of criticisms of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

In order to resolve the NPOV disputes caused by having this article around, I believe this article should be turned into a list of criticisms. As it is, this article is a stand-alone article on the criticisms of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., and there are five such articles on the criticism of Wal-Mart (Criticism of Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart employee and labor relations, Imports and globalization of Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart workforce diversity, and Wal-Mart product controversy). Instead, there should be a one-level list of criticisms with detailed rationale, supporting the content in the main Wal-Mart article.

I have created a draft page on User:Tuxide/Wikiproject Retailing/List of criticisms of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. to help out on this. You can see what I have done so far, I have also suggested merging general content back into the main article after cleaning it up. If there are no disputes on this move, then I will mark the five articles in question as {{inuse}}. If you support this, then feel free to work on the draft article instead of this one, else point out your dispute here. Tuxide 17:04, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] wtf?

I removed the following paragraph from the article:

The structure housing Wlam-Mart's are often constructed by individual local developers. These developers can be persuaded to become involved in the community. For example, Atlantic Developmenet in Quincy, Massachusetts was convinced after some negotiation to support a variety of local causes. The director of the economic development agency Quincy 2000, Charles D'Aprix negotiated a significant development "linkage program," for the downtown with the developer of a Wal-Mart(Patriot Ledger 1994/1995) property. D'Aprix, now of the Downtown Entrepreneurship Project, downtownproject.com , was able to get concessions for the rehabilitation of a downtown building as well as other monies for downtown projects--including a donwtown incubator and a downtown entrepreneurhsip program. Further information can be found at economicvisions.com

I can count at least three spelling errors, and the text is written in such a way that I can't seem to make out exactly what they're talking about. It was originally added to the top section, and moved to 'economic impact', though it didn't seem to fit the flow of the text in that section. There doesn't seem to be any clear references where this came from (no links to news articles, only a vague reference to the Patriot Ledger in 1994/1995? with no page numbers). The mention of 'economicvisions.com' at the end is bordering on linkspam, too. Dr. Cash 21:23, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] merger (imports and globalization, product selection)

It seems like a lot of the info in Imports and globalization of Wal-Mart can be condensed to fit into this article, specifically under the 'supplier relations' area which currently has a 'see also' link. Wal-Mart product controversy can probably be put back into a subsection within this article as well. This would help to reduce the vast number of 'criticisms' articles pertaining to wal-mart into eventually fewer articles. Dr. Cash 00:31, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

• Merge For the time being I would support this merger until a better solution can be implemented. This is because Wal-Mart already has too many friggin' criticism articles. (One is bad enough, but seriously, five?) Tuxide 00:47, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
• Comment Another thing I should point out is that there is a proposed guideline on Wikipedia:Criticism, because the guideline would obviously be disputed here. It suggests that there shouldn't even be a single article on the criticism of Wal-Mart, or even a Criticism section in Wal-Mart. If I'm interpreting it correctly, it suggests that general criticism should be written in the other sections of the text (such as Wal-Mart#Business model, and extreme criticism would be more appropriate in articles about Wal-Mart-critical groups and concepts (like Wake Up Wal-Mart), instead of the Wal-Mart article. Anyways, if you dispute the proposal, then don't dispute it here; it would be better to bring such disputes on Wikipedia talk:Criticism instead so they can be considered. Tuxide 00:58, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Merged the Imports and globalization of Wal-Mart article with this one. If other major changes are made to this article, at least we have one less criticism article to deal with. Dr. Cash 23:03, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

• The product selection controversy article seems long enough to stand on its own (except for the caveat above about criticism articles or sections). Is there a way the product selection article could be generalized? Lots and lots of businesses can be criticized for the products or services they offer. Lisamh 21:52, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Forking, irrelevant content

First off, congratulations, we have just reached a new all-time low: There are now four articles about the criticism of Wal-Mart. Second, for a criticism article, I've noticed that a lot of this content isn't criticism, but business practices. (for example, "Wal-Mart does not carry music albums marked with RIAA's Parental Advisory Label. The store does carry edited versions of those albums..." etc. I don't see the criticism in any of that paragraph.)

Content that is obviously non-criticism like this should go in a "Business model" section on the Wal-Mart page instead. If there are no issues against me doing so by the end of June, I am going to start removing such irrelevant content from this article. Tuxide 06:04, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

---

I have removed the content on magazines and music from this article, since it details business practices and has nothing to do with the criticism of Wal-Mart. I will attempt to move its contents into the Wal-Mart article under a "Business practices" section. Tuxide 00:23, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Your move to business practices resulted in it being moved to Criticisms at which point I moved it back here.. Uh, sorry about that. I did the move (from Criticisms->here, not main page->Criticism) before I saw your note. In any case, I'm fairly certain the critique is that Wal-Mart is imposing its will on products - requiring modifications of content, etc. If you dig a bit, I'm sure you can find articles which express this critique.Jvandyke 18:29, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I made some attempts at reflecting the critique.Jvandyke 18:29, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Hrm, I still think this should be noted in the "Business model" section. Saying Wal-Mart does not sell explicit CDs is like saying Target does not sell tobacco and firearms: It is a business practice that the retailer uses to help consumers differentiate itself from its competitors. Tuxide 02:49, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pulling Maurice Bessinger’s famous barbecue sauce off the sheleves

Wal-Mart stopped selling BBQ sauce because there's a Confederate flag on it. Small details here: http://www.mises.org/story/713 207.233.120.2 01:29, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV problems

I still firmly believe that this article violates the provisions of WP:NPOV. In particular, the provisions on POV forks and undue weight apply:

The generally accepted policy is that all facts and majority Points of View on a certain subject are treated in one article.

IMHO, this and any other "Criticism of" articles are in blatent violation of this clause.

...the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each...

Per this, I think we are giving too much weight to the criticisms, given that this article is at least as large as the main article. I'm not saying that Wal-Mart doesn't engage in unethical practices, that seems to be firmly established, I'm just saying that we shouldn't have more coverage of those practices than general information about the company. Summarize the allegations and move on.

Obviously, the community consensus was that deleting the article wasn't the solution, so the question now is what else can we do? - Stephanie Daugherty (Triona) - Talk - Comment - 01:24, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Magazines

Where's the part of WalMart ceasing to sell certain magazines while moving others to a stand where they can't be seen? Why has that been deleted? In fact, many parts of the product selection area seem to have been deleted. In fact, the whole criticism of WalMart page seems to have been substantially reduced. Even much of the discussion page is missing. --Maxl 22:05, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

The magazines are still there, in Criticism of Wal-Mart#Product selection. Much of the talk page has been archived, and will be again once it gets long enough. Tuxide 22:14, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Something you guys might want to check out.

Group of Wal-Mart workers walk out: URL:http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/oct2006/db20061017_601244.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_top+story

Howard Robinson(Kg4gsn)-10/20/06 9:40pm

[edit] Reality check

Nobody is forced to work at Wal-Mart! Whatever criticisms there are of Wal-Mart they still haven't broken the law (I know that is shocking to some liberals). Their employees were never held at gunpoint, dragged inside, locked in, and then forced to work. Wal-Mart is a perfectly ethical company. Whirling Sands 22:11, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I am a conservative and my conservative principles tell me that shopping at Wal-Mart is ill advised.

Remember that article talk pages are provided to coordinate the article's improvement, not for engaging in discussion for discussion's sake. Do not use them as a discussion forum.

Tuxide 22:45, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unions

I don't know if this belongs, and I don't really think I could find an online source to refer to, but I used to work at a Sam's Club, and during training, new hires actually watch a video on how bad it is to unionize and why Wal-Mart employees don't need to belong to a union or even talk to a union rep of any kind. For example, the video would mention that a union rep could come up to you and talk about unionization and ask you to sign a petition or give your name or address for more info, etc, and then you'd find out later that you were supporting the plumber's union or some other totally unrelated union. They'd also talk about how unions only think about the higher-ups in their organizations and don't actually have the worker's needs in mind. And of course, Wal-Mart already offers a great health insurance plan, as well as annual raises and bonus performance-based raises. (their views; not necessarily mine) I was amazed at what lengths they went through to convince employees that unionizing was bad. Keep in mind, though, that this was all on a corporate video. I never heard anything about unions, good or bad, from any of my supervisors. Even the video was just refered to as "Another video for you to watch, this one's about unions." Just yet another in a series of several training videos, thrown in there between the We Card video and Saftey First video.

Just something I'm throwing out as another possible section or brief mention. Like I said, I doubt I could find any "official" documentation on the video. It's just what I remember seeing during my training. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.212.121.189 (talk • contribs).

Wal-Mart's anti-union stance is already covered in reasonably good detail, both in this article, as well as in Wal-Mart & Wal-Mart employee and labor relations. As far as employee training videos are concerned, they are corporate materials produced for internal corporate reasons. Wikipedia is not the place for providing information on internal corporate materials. Dr. Cash 19:06, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Featured Article Nomination?

After reading through the article from start to finish, it appears to be a very well written, balanced oppinion, NPOV article. Whoever is the article's principle author might be interested in nominating it for featured article status. IT appears to fulfill the qualifications. Justinmeister 01:29, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Noticed that you nominated this for Featured Article status. The quality has greatly improved recently, and I guess we'll let the community decide how well it is. IMHO, two key things that still remain here are: (a) reducing the number of external links (mainly the ones listed under 'news articles' -- these should ideally be matched up with text in the article and moved over to the references section. (b) The sub-article on Wal-Mart employee and labor relations really needs to be cleaned up, though this is really a separate article. It might even be worth merging that article with this one ultimately. Either way, I think we're really close to Featured status here. Dr. Cash 18:30, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Shouldn't there be a crime section

Why is there no section about Wal-Mart's unique ability to attract and encourage crime? As well as Wal-Mart's accessment that they could significantly decrease crime in their parking lots, but that it would not contribute to their bottom line, and was not worth the cost. These are well documented and established facts, is there a reason for their omission? Jerimee 23:02, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, if you can find verifiable sources that support that statement, it would be great if you could contribute that. But don't just add it without verification. Justinmeister 00:24, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Philanthropy section

This section reads poorly, has no real meaning (it shows an increase in philanthropy over recent years) and is a very poor representation of a criticism. Indeed it is questionable whether this section even deserves to exist at all. I have removed it until such a time that somebody can re-organise the donation details into a readable format. I also think that if it is re-added later it should be done so with more focus on what the point of this criticism is.

It is entirely POV to have criticism about donating (or increasing its donations) to political groups since there is no reason to believe this is a negative action. One can only assume this is a criticism in the sense that it wants to make out that the groups are being 'bought' or 'cosied up to' but without any evidence we cannot make such claims. ny156uk 16:40, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Citing sources

When citing a source, please use the cite web, cite news, etc. templates. Doing this improves consistency across Wikipedia. Thanks! ---Remember the dot 06:34, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

While I agree with providing full source information for all citations, I personally do not like the cite web, cite news templates, etc. I feel that they are cumbersome to use and sort of a pain in the a** to remember all of the variable names. The date formats for the 'retrieved on' dates are also not in a very useful or user friendly format, and should be changed (the format they use is too "techie.") Furthermore, it should be pointed out that using such templates is only a suggestion, and it is not a requirement for the formatting of reference citations. Dr. Cash 08:44, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

There is no official/required citation style for the English Wikipedia. The cite templates are a pain in the ass because they take up too much text when used in conjunction with <ref> cite extension. If <ref> alone had the same parameters, then I would use them. Tuxide 15:55, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I have reverted Remember the dot's reference cleanup changes. While using the cite web template is ok, there are issues. This template does not conform to standard APA (or any other print publication) reference guidelines. The date fields, specifically, are in a weird format and not the standard 'December 7, 2006' format (07-12-2006 format does not look right, and is NOT how print publications format references). Furthermore, the main reason for my reversion is that most of these are news articles on actual news websites (newspapers). But Remember the dot failed to incorporate the full citation information here; only an access date for the URL is there, which is not nearly as important as the actual date the article was published. If you put reformat this back in, please put the FULL CITATION INFORMATION into the template field (or use 'cite news' instead of 'cite web'). Dr. Cash 04:51, 8 December 2006 (UTC)