Talk:Wal-Mart/Archive 3

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Dumping citations

For the 'Dumping' section, I have added all citations I could find, and marked 'citationneeded' for those I could not. I propose that any sentences lacking citations by February 14th should be deleted. This should improve this section tremendously. Happy Valentines Day!  ;-) Jvandyke 18:34, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Criticism: separate article or in a section of the main article?

There is much discussion about whether or not to the main Wal-Mart article should include criticism of Wal-Mart, how best to characterize such criticism, whether the criticism should live in a separate article or in a section of the main article, and how much detail should be included in each article. Debate is ongoing; there is not much consensus.



I for one believe that it is suspect that walmart is running roughshod over Wikipedia with its lobbying and legal teams but more importantly it is reallly depressing that Wikipedia is allowing it to happen.

Wikipedia is not your typical Enyclopedia. It is more of an organism that changes and evolves and, well, gets cancer from time to time.

The Walmart page is now in the ICU on it's hospital bed, with an IV in its arm being fed a steady stream of Walmart Multivitamins.

And while this is going on, Wikipedia at the Lawyer's office.

I don't shop at Walmart. It is a small stand that I take and I realize that it has little effect on their bottom line, but sometimes you have to make even small protests.

The thing that scares me about Walmart is the sheer sizeand it's ambitions. It's not personal and I'm not anti business. I am self employed myself.

I shop at Target because it's stores are managable size and I trust Target's ambitions. It doesn't want to sell me food, and it doesn't want me to deposit my money there. (Walmart is trying to open a bank, if it hasn't already, in case you haven't heard).

And I'm aware that it isn't a model employer, but it's size doesn't intrude to my life, doesn't offend me, and it has at least an attempt at an aesthetic that doesn't all of the bad aspects of America. And I love America, but I am not blind to her dual personality.

I am afraid of anything that just gets too goddamn big: The Federal Government and Kirstie Alley are two other examples that come to mind.

And I think that the sheer size thing is what scares most people. It's a company that has a revenues of 316 BILLION DOLLARS (!), much more than most Nation's GDP.

While I have a healthy fear of my government (and Kristie Alley) and feel that everyone should, I have a deeply paranoid and suspicious dread feeling in the pit of my stomach when it comes to Walmart. And I believe everyone should.

And I feel that Wikipedia should allow varied and even crazy opinions about Walmart on its page, because people are varied and crazy, and because that's what Wikipedia is for.

It is not the book of record. It is a forum.

And when when one of the last true vestiges of freedom ( I don't think I am being dramatic here) is stomped on by a behemoth and doesn't fight back, that is depressing.

After Walmart opens its bank, we will all be ostensibly working for them with our blue aprons, waving hello to the customers (who are also employees, who are also customers........) trying to remember the good old days when you could work at Target if you pleased, which didn't pay anymore, but at least you got to wear red for a change of pace. Alloco1 22:24, 8 January 2006 (UTC)Any article about Wal-Mart would be incomplete without critical remarks, both pro and con.

Most criticisms apply to the entire big-box retail industry

-- If that is true, then it is entirely within reason to include those criticisms in an article about Wal-Mart, because Wal-Mart is in fact a member (arguably the largest member) of said industry. --

The entire concept of Wikipedia is to communicate Facts, the criticism section should be split and renamed criticism of the Retail Industry. Walmart is simply the talking point for most of the criticism, Most if not all big box retailers engage in the same practices and worse.... Whens the last union K-Mart or Target you have heard of????? Walmart has simply become head figure of the criticism, this is not fair to them, or the readers of wikipedia, we have an obligation to the facts. Most of the criticism has little to no factual basis, and even the sources quoted in many areas are not direct sources! The Ace! 26 July 2005

Criticism is a fact of life and I highly feel should be included in any encyclopedia. If an encyclopedia was all facts I think they would be a lot thinner. Ethan

The Ace! is getting off the point. Whether or not Kmart or Target(or any other retailer) are guilty of these "practices" is not the point. That is what the Target and Kmart pages are for. And if those retailers are guilty of the same or similar practices, does not justify the deletion of a criticism article. Criticism is just that, criticism. Every person must make their own choices on what to beleive with CRITICISM here or anywhere else. Have you agreed with Roger Ebert on every film he ever reveiwed? Anything said about ANY other retail establishment is irrelevent, unless citing COMPARISONS. VARS

Ethan Criticism is NOT based on facts.... Its based on one persons point of view.... If that person CAN provide facts to back up that point then and only then is it a fact!!!! Now what we have here is a Megacorp, that has become the spearhead for critism most NOT back ed up at all. mostly he said she said.... The only Reason for the section is because it is walmart. If this page were on some mom and pop soda and malt shop, there wouldn't be a part dedicated to criticism... People would say its point of view. Now just because a Company is a MegaCorp doesn't make them bad, and just because a company is small doesnt make them good either.... LET GET BACK TO THE FACTS!!!! Lets look at Target for EX.... http://money.cnn.com/2005/04/20/news/fortune500/target_walmart/?section=money_latest%20 http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12289

-- WHAT do Target and KMart have to do with an article about Wal-Mart? Why not start including facts about other unrelated businesses, like Microsoft, Starbucks, or McDonalds? Why stop at unrelated businesses? Why not include facts about unrelated topics such as dinosaurs, alternative sweetners, and fake dog poop? --

Looks like Target does worse than Walmart... Now let talk about Kmart.... HMmm my Girlfriend worked there for a year and make $5.15.hr with NO benifits, was sexually harassed, I attempted to talk to Kmart Corp about it yet they refused to hear it... how about Sears???? Yeah I worked for them for a year as a Warehouse Manager, I recived a wage of $6.50/hr No benifits and yes I was union. My GF makes $8.03/hr to do the exact same job she did at kmart. I make $8.50/hr working Deli/Meats And we both have Health, Life, Dental, Prescription Drug Benifits, Paid Vacation, Sick Pay, Personal Pay, and much more. This Year we both will take home a MyShare Check of $2,100, After we finish Our Steak Dinner Wal-Mart Pays for each year. Hmm where would you rather work.....The Ace!

Wal-Mart's policies towards unions are much more extreme than K-Mart or Target's. Wal-Mart has severed portions of the company that unionize (meat/deli) and shows anti-union videos before hiring a person. Unionization aside, many retailers do engage in harmful practices. That does not mean that Wal-Mart does not share responsibility - a lot of it - for continuing horrible employment practices. Furthermore, Wal-Mart is one of the parties in the largest class-action lawsuit in hisotyro. user:iammaggieryan
Funny, the last time our store got bonus checks was like 1996, and at that, it was only a couple hundred dollar bonus, for busting your butt working there the whole year, Wal-Mart's requirements in order to get a bonus, the lowest possible, are almost impossible to meet, sales for the store have to be up 2% for each $200 you get, thanks to their "Open a new store every 10 miles" strategy, our store has been down at least 10% from last year, so guess what, no bonus in 2006 either, YAY!!!! Izanbardprince 17:39, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
I think that although The Ace! may have a valid point, the fact is that Wal-Mart has become the focus of criticism for a large number of people on the American left. Whether or not it is appropriate for the left to ignore Target etc. is missing the point. On Wal-Mart there are critical books, videos, countless campaigns (my union has one), even a spoof article in the Onion; it is the duty of Wikipedia to report that this criticism exists in an impartial way. Walkerma 21:51, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
"the fact is that Wal-Mart has become the focus of criticism for a large number of people on the American left."
Careful there. Exploited workers are not exclusively left-wing and right-wing commentators do not unanimously praise corporations who value profit over human life. --Dazzla 09:38, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
The criticism comes largely from the left, and the apologists are largely on the right. The political affiliations of the exploited workers are (or should be) irrelvant. -- Pellucidity 18:29, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

separate article or in a section of the main article?

You can't get rid of criticism by foot-noting it

A foot-note at the bottom of the article is not going to cut it. The temporary solution I came up with, having a section that points to the new page Criticism of Wal-Mart is a poor compromise as well. This article deserves a proper criticisms section, not some bogus blip of link at the bottom. LegCircus 03:23, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)

When 3/4ths of the page is criticism of the company then you know it's time to create another page that is critcisms of wal-mart, as the page has stopped being about wal-mart and instead started being about criticisms of wal-mart -- 203.112.19.195 01:51, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

While I have no disagreement with Criticisms of Wal-Mart being a separate article, normal Wikipedia style when splitting up topics is that the main article (i.e. Wal-Mart) should have a section with a paragraph on the topic and a link to the main article. See for example the way the sections are laid out on United States or any other article on a country. I shall rework this to fit the standard style. —Stormie 01:40, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)
Much better, IMHO. Thanks. --Calair 04:08, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Cool.. please feel free to tweak the paragraph - I'm not American and don't really know anything about the criticisms levelled at Wal-Mart, so I just did a really quick & dirty summary attempt. —Stormie 06:06, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)
Agree, need more detail in the criticism section, no reason to put it on a separate page. NihonGo 21:38, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I am reinstating some of what was just deleted from this page. I get it that this page is not the main criticism page, but the general policy when referring to daughter articles is to summarise main points of the daughter article in the main article so this should be ok.:

 :Criticisms: + "and has become a symbol to of Globalization to anti-globalists."

at the end of the paragraph, this definitely belongs. I think that my original edit was appropriate though, I'd prefer to restore the whole thing, deleted by redlinked user. Any input on this? also reinstating watered- down version of this:

milestones: + "2004 Wal-Mart opens new Superstore within one half-mile of Teotihuacan pyramids."

although I think the original version was quite appropriate as well. comments? Pedant 18:00, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

The edits right now seem fine... But not restoring the whole thing... then it just gives for everyone else restoring all thier critcisms again and we end up with no info about wal-mart and just a ton of critcism. the article simply needs to state basic problems with wal-mart overview of crticisms. Then the Criticsm of wal-mart can go into examples/explain them if people are intrested in following that link. Chuck F 18:08, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

separate article or in a section of the main article?

Detail of criticism

Currently, only 1.5% of the article (two rows) is dedicated to criticism. I don't think it's fair to have only this level of detail. Wal-Mart is one of the most controversial corporations of the US. To make a comparison, on McDonald's Corporation about 15% of the article is about criticism. Also, I don't think that "Wal-mart Benefits" section belongs in the article. bogdan ʤjuʃkə | Talk 17:09, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Do you not like the current treatment, where the main Criticism of Wal-Mart article is linked to from this article's criticism section? There's a brief, uncontroversial overview within this article, with the expectation that users will follow the link to get details. Similar treatment is used in Coca-Cola. It looks like the criticism section of McDonald's Corporation probably deserves its own article. Listing specific criticisms in Wal-Mart may cause problems if it leads to edits wars, critique/rebuttal treatment and NPOV problems. It can also lead to fact divergence, as different elements are added to the different articles. Merging Criticism of Wal-Mart into Wal-Mart will almost double the size of the article, which may not be desirable. Feco 17:23, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
There is no other corporation that has a separate article on criticism. The criticism about The Coca-Cola Company is on that article. I don't think we have a policy to put the positive information in the article "XXX" and criticism in the article "Criticism of XXX". bogdan ʤjuʃkə | Talk 17:39, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
this was addressed earlier on (see "you can't get rid of criticism by foot-noting it" on this talk page). If you really feel strongly, merge Criticism of Wal-Mart back into this article. I think it makes both articles less useful, but I won't rv. You may end up facing opposition from other editors... maybe not. Just make sure to set up the redir and provide documentation/explanation on the talk pages. Feco 17:46, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
In Wikipedia we don't split pages for different POVs. How would it be for Hitler to write:
Adolf Hitler was the fuehrer of Germany, who reformed the German economy in the 1930s. He enjoyed painting and playing with his dog. He married his lifelong sweetheart, Eva Braun, two days prior to his death.
See also: Criticism of Adolf Hitler
bogdan ʤjuʃkə | Talk 16:12, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

As a Wal-Mart associate I have to say I feel everything seems fair. I think that criticism deserves its own page simply due to the length. I don't think that referencing it in anyway takes anything away from the points, While working on the inside of Wal-mart I think that I understand its successes and short coming better than anyone here. I can tell you that if anything I feel the criticism page in itself needs to be revised, many of the areas of criticism shouldn't things like unions, as much as many people don't want to here it we the associates are the ones that don't want a union, not the company. I have even spoke to in public at our store (3233) about unions and never been pressured one way or the other. But on the same token the page does not hit one of the major problems which is how quickly management is promoted, which yes causes issues. Many times lawsuits filed against Wal-mart could have been avoided by better management in a store. So To sum up I think either one of two things needs to happen either we leave things the way they are or we can merge the pages together but in order to do this I think that We need to remove debatable criticism and stick with just the facts or we will have just a run on page that no one ones to read. FYI I am a hourly Wal-Mart Deli Associate. ase500

Whoever's behind the Wikifight side repeatedly posting about how great it is that Wal-Mart still buys some things from US manufacturers in the CRITICISM section regarding outsourcing and trade with China, please knock it off. The section is there for Criticism of Wal-Mart and it's business practices, not cheerleading. If you want balance, put the stuff about how many great jobs they're supporting elsewhere in the article. It's not like there isn't enough room elsewhere. --Unfocused 04:54, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

I can see ase500's point that merging the whole "Criticism" article into this one makes the article somewhat long. On the other hand, the basic information about the company all comes first, so a reader who doesn't want to get bogged down in the controversies can stop reading at that point or can use the ToC to find the material s/he wants. Thus, the length doesn't impede its utility to the reader. I lean toward combining it all into one article, adding one sentence to the lead section noting that Wal-Mart has been involved in many controversies, and then retitling the "Criticisms" section as "Controversies", because on each issue it should describe both the criticism and Wal-Mart's response. I don't agree with Unfocused's suggestion of strictly segregating favorable and unfavorable material. It's more useful to the reader if all the information on, for example, community impacts is in one subsection. (Of course, that ties in with renaming the overall section; as Unfocused says, it's potentially misleading to have "cheerleading" passages in a section headed "Criticisms".)
Here are some specific comments about the version I looked at (may no longer be current given the ongoing edit war). This article's space allocation is way off and heavily biased in favor of Wal-Mart. It's one of the most controversial companies in the U.S. today, and blowing off all the criticisms with such a brief mention and wikilink isn't enough. One alternative to a complete merger might be to have the "Criticisms" (or "Controversies") section begin, as now, with the wikilink, but then have a bulleted point, of a sentence or two, for each of the sections in the "Criticisms" article. The trouble is that summarizing such material is likely to provoke more edit wars than just incorporating it. Also, I think that slavishly repeating "Sam's Rules" is probably a copyvio and is certainly not encyclopedic. Instead of the full text, there should be a brief, objective description -- Are these rules printed on a little card that all new employees get? Are they the basis for management training courses? Or were they enunciated by Walton but have largely fallen by the wayside in terms of the current operation of the company? Whatever the facts are, describe the historical and current status of the rules; if someone notable asserts that they've been integral to the company's success, report that opinion with attribution but don't blindly accept it; drop the complete text and substitute a link to where the text can be found. Finally, I have grave doubts about including the list of employee benefits. We're writing for the general reader, not the prospective employee; drop the complete list and substitute a comment on anything notable. (Offering sick pay, etc. is not notable and needn't be stated in an encyclopedia article about a large U.S. corporation.) JamesMLane 09:29, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
Criticism to Controversies I agree about changing the section name, but think Controversies and Criticisms is better, since some criticisms of Wal-Mart aren't widely considered controversial. I think there should be a full description of each controversy, followed by a summary of Wal-Mart supporters' rebuttal. Further, this article has become large enough that I think we should be supporting data on both sides with numbered footnotes that link to the References and External Links at the bottom of the page.

--Unfocused 15:59, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

  • A note on footnotes and citations- I wholeheartedly agree with Unfocused... sadly, wikipedia's current footnoting capability is pretty basic (see Wikipedia:Footnotes). The technical constraints make footnoting an article like Wal-Mart very difficult, b/c there's no easy way to keep a footnotes section ordered at the bottom of the article. The only easy way I see is for us to rely on external-link formatted citations of sources... this takes care of the autonumbering problem and allows people to add the citations they know about without having to shuffle and renumber a footnote index. I'll go ahead and throw in citations to things I know about. Feco 23:54, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

separate article or in a section of the main article?

Article Length

NPOV issues aside, this article is too damn long! People should be linking to outside sources if they want to list benefits, board of directors, etc. that's what the corporate site is for. Likewise, if people want to add criticism, summarize as briefly as possible and link to supporting document, don't try to explain thporoughly on the main page, e.g. critics say Wal-Mart has escaped meaningful consequences for alleged labor law violations. (unsigned comment by User:71.32.17.41)

  • Criticism makes up roughly half of the article. There used to be a separate 'Criticism of Wal-Mart' article (with a stub description and link in the main 'Wal-Mart' article), but some users felt it was POV to put criticism into its own article. Thus, the criticisms were merged back into the main 'Wal-Mart' article (they had previously been cleaved off into their own article). I was against merging the two, mainly due to length of the combined pages. I'm all for splitting the two up again. Anyone else? Feco 22:15, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I would object strongly to splitting the article in this way. Article size being too large is an indication of three things: an important topic that deserves a lot of coverage, and/or loosely written prose, and/or too much detail for a single article.

Putting criticism in a separate article is strongly POV. To have a separate, fuller article for each of the criticisms and their rebuttals, in addition to the overviews in the main article would be entirely appropriate. This would allow the main article to be "snugged up" a lot.

We don't need full details of each major lawsuit in the main, but a mention of what each major suit was about, and the resolution would belong. Each lawsuit could be covered in detail in one large article, or one article for each issue addressed, or one article for each suit.

Also, a separate "Timeline of Events in Wal-Mart's History" article would also be a good break point, leaving only the very major events in the main. A separate "Officers and Directors of Wal-Mart" (past and present) could relieve some space here. Further, a separate article detailing the changes in Wal-Mart's management policies could be developed.

There are a lot of good ways to fork this article, but splitting off the criticism is not one of them. The "Hitler article" analogy up above in this talk page is the perfect example of why not. --Unfocused 00:23, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

<jest>hmmm... Hitler has been used as an analogy. Time to review Godwin's law.</jest> Feco 19:22, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The original post on this topic did not suggest segregating criticism, but noted that external links could replace much content. The roster of WalMart executives, and board members, for example, is just not general interest material for an encyclopedia article! Such sections should be deleted entirely.

  • The criticism section needs to be shortended considerably to a few main points, the rest of needs to be moved to its own page where the criticism of the critics can be properly addressed. Naturally links between Wal Mart and its critics should be maintained. This page on Wal Mart is 1/10th WalMart and 9/10ths anger and hatred. NOT ACCEPTABLE! (Gibby 16:35, 3 January 2006 (UTC))
    • Since you've always been accusing me of vested interests, let me state that I think that you're the one with the vested interest, trying to censor views that are contrary to yours, because you don't want the world to see it. Sound ridiculous? But that's what you've been saying to me. -- Elle vécut heureusement toujours dorénavant (Be eudaimonic!) 05:17, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
      • LOL nati, give me a break. Your the one who deletes everything I post. Me censoring? My ass! I have a vested interest in making sure factual information is presented while bullies like you dont get to push around editors into quiting and giving up. I think there should be a few main criticisms on this page with a link to a bigger page as most of this article seems to be criticism. Even though I think most of the criticism is complete bull and largely fallacious and tenuous it is a fact that people criticize Wal Mart for many bogus reasons, but a page on what Wal Mart is does not need to be 90% anti-Wal Mart. HELL you wont even let the communist page ben 5% anti communist. Please look up the word hypocrite for me in your Chinese dictonary, I'm sure you have it under multiple spellings. (Gibby 07:54, 4 January 2006 (UTC))
        • So this is now about my ethnic background isn't it? 90% of this page isn't criticism. There are only at most, two sections which bring up issues with the company, and criticisms are already responded to. I don't censor anti-communism, but I don't make it a point to dedicate an entire section to one narrow focus of a dispute, either. Hypocrisy? Why don't you look up irony? I have frankly tolerated this for long enough, and now I am fed up. Why do you ask me to look up Chinese? Why not French, or Bahasha Melayu, or the other languages I know? Do you look down upon those of such ethnic background? Elle vécut heureusement toujours dorénavant (Be eudaimonic!) 08:01, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

No its about you not knowing the meaning of words, like hypocrite and ironic. Chinese happens to have many ways of spelling those words so you should be able to find it easy enough.

And as far as culture is concerned, I find culture to be highly irrelevant to almost everything. It is of little importance to me.

And finally, you have failed to make points, any points. I have proven your points to have no logical consistancy as once applied to the current article you defend they do not make senese. EIther it stays or the whole article gets reduced to communist theory as proposed by Marx and other originators. (Gibby 08:17, 4 January 2006 (UTC))

censorship and arrogance

I must admit I'm rather disgruntled by the way texts are censored here on en.wikipedia.org. Obviously some people patronizing the WalMart Article think their opinion on WalMart is the only one acceptable. Whenever you make a change that some people don't like it's reversed immediately. I don't know how much WalMart themselves are involved but I can't rule it out.

However, it is even more arrogant that some people now seem to think that if you post texts deemed wrong by the standard editors like feco or linuxbeak or shoaler or any other of the people who seem to be fond of WalMart you should be banned rightaway. Now that's how some people deem the constitional rights of normal people who don't want these constitional rights to go to shambles.

Now I'd just like to say it like Michael Moore who should be our hero: Shame on you, shame on you censors who are trying to conceal the truth from ordinary people who deserve to know all the evil of WalMart. You're trying to conceal it. Shame on you. --85.74.167.209 00:21, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You deleted 8-9 paragraphs of information, removed legitimate references, and changed the text "Wal-Mart Corporate Communications site" to say "Wal-Mart Corporate Propaganda site". This is not an acceptable edit. Do you think it's neutral to call a personality test "intelligence insulting", or accuse Wal-Mart of suppressing "freedom of speech"? And the connection between this dispute and the "constitutional rights of normal people" is beyond me. Michael Moore can ignore sources, because he doesn't have a neutrality policy. Unfortunately for you, Wikipedia won't let you come along and simply delete information which displeases you. And please stop throwing the "c" word around. This is a private site. Feel free to start a blog if you want to post your opinions to the world. Rhobite 01:14, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)
Huzzah to Rhobite. Anon- you're removing large chunks of the article with no explanation because you disagree with the content. That is much closer to the definition of censorship. This article has ample text devoted to criticism... feel free to contribute there. Your IP addresses have been blocked because you're violating wiki policies. Those are global policies that apply to the entire project. Feco 01:33, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
now taking bets on Godwin's law Feco 01:33, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Godwin's law is bollocks :) --Dave420 18:53, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Hey, I don't have any agenda here except reverting vandalism. And replacing large portions of any article with personal opinions is vandalism. Those opinions may well be valid (I happen to agree with most of what you say) but the proper place to express them is here on the Talk page, not in the article. Shoaler 11:44, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Actually, those edits were not vandalism. Please read Wikipedia:Vandalism for the official definition of vandalism as it applied to editing here. (I'm no fan of Walmart either, FWIW - I'd love to see well-sourced critical commentary.) But POV is not vandalism. Noel (talk) 20:45, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Well... anon IP 66.72.80.214 saw fit to remove a few of my comments from the talk page... I guess it's only censorship when we do it. For what it's worth, User:Izanbardprince later claimed several subsequent edits made from that IP address. Feco 16:40, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
@ Feco and Rhobite: I did not delete any parts of the article. I leave that to you. Obviously independent minds have a lot of problems being accepted on the English wikipedia, especially when American topics are involved and American editors voice their opinion. I must say that I haven't experienced any of these problems in the German wikipedia (I'm German). I don't know who deleted the text you accuse me of deleting. I would never delete valuable text. However, text I contrebuted to this article was deleted quite often. And thank you for blocking my former IP adresses. I have always known that having an independent mind might cause trouble. At least you didn't have me arrested like Goebbels would have done. Thank you for being at least this kind. --85.74.172.150 22:40, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
To 85.74.172.150: If you are the user who posted the first comment in this section, you are also the user who vandalized the article on June 13, as evidenced by this link: [1] That link shows that someone from the IP address 85.74.167.209 removed many paragraphs from the article, linked to the "Wal-Mart Corporate Propaganda site", etc. I'm not sure why you'd bother coming back here a month later and responding if you weren't the same user.. but really, this is all in the past. Please make your future edits productive, and consider signing up for a Wikipedia account (it's very easy) in order to reduce this type of confusion in the future. Rhobite 22:49, July 22, 2005 (UTC)
Well I Do bother coming back to the WalMart article because I think not my edits vandalize it but the edits of those people who are, obviously, very close to WalMart. If I indeed DID delete (or, rather, to put it more correctly, edit) anything I did not do so in order to vandalzie the article but in order to point out that it was important that an independent opinion was desperately necessary to be voiced here. As I pointed out before, it is quite difficult to display an independent opinion in the English Wikipedia. Obviously you must share the opinion of certain editors if you don't want your edits to be deleted. And I already DID sign up for a Wikipedia account months ago. However, I'm afraid that I'd be banned because of my all too blatant display of an independent mind, which is, obviously, something that is not wanted on Wikipedia. I think independent minds are not cherished here, or, to put it more directly, if you dare displaying opinions that show that your mind is independent and you don't allow anyone to make you waver, you are a pariah in the English Wikipedia. --85.74.172.150 01:03, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Splitting = censorship?

The criticism section "got so large it was moved to a separate article" then the article Criticism of Wal-Mart was merged with the Wal-Mart article, but the content was drastically excised. Or censored. Can someone tell me how to obtain the missing text? Or when this occured? This article seems to be becoming a problem again, with the obvious censorship of anything critical to Wal-Mart. Comments ? Pedant 2005 June 30 18:21 (UTC)

Click the link Criticism of Wal-Mart, then once you've been redirected back to the main Wal-Mart article, you'll see "Redirected from Criticism of Wal-Mart" at the top of the page. Click Criticism of Wal-Mart there, and you'll be on the redirect page. From there, have a look at the history tab to see the edit history of the article as a separate entity. Do be careful to resurrect only referenced, properly cited data and you'll have less trouble with people objecting to your inserts.
You can insert whatever you feel is appropriate, but for best results getting something to "stick", it has to be referenced, cited, and generally agreed to be appropriate for the article. Because this is a high profile article, I think you'll find that as time goes on, less and less data that is unreferenced will stay. (Which should be the case for all Wikipedia articles.)
I hope that once you understand where the content is, you'll stop referring to the lack of it in the main article as censorship. That's unnecessarily inflammatory. --Unfocused 30 June 2005 22:11 (UTC)

I added a bit to the local instences of community opposition (or whatever it's called) about some people in Asheville NC partially destroying a Wal-mart under construction.

It just seems to me like this: WalMart has a lot of people checking that nobody adds anything to the article that would put WalMart into a negative context. And they make it look as if they're just trying to clean up anything NOPV while they're trying to kill all criticism directed at WalMart. --85.74.172.150 22:43, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
I am certain that Wal-Mart has employees removing content from the article and I don't consider it at all inflammatory calling it censorship, when the original info gets excised carefully by redlinked users... Wal-Mart takes over when they move in, get the local city council to chnage zoning laws, they study satellite photos to determine where to best put the store to steal customers away from local businesses, they siphon money out of a community, intentionally destroy the ability of an existing business to continue to exist by lowering prices below profit margins until the competitors are wiped out, then raise their prices, harp on the concept of made in america, but sell tons of sweatshop-produced items... now watch how long this comment is allowed to stay here before it is archived under the rug... Pedant 19:38, 2005 August 10 (UTC)

To merge or not to merge (again) 29-Jul-05:

I rv'ed the proposed split of criticism into its own article. This has been proposed (and occasionally executed) in the past. In each case, there was a decent amount of discussion on the appropriate talk pages before the change was made. Since nothing was posted beforehand on talk, I moved to restore the status quo. Also, the proper title for a criticism article is Criticism of Wal-Mart (not Criticism of Walmart. Review the talk page of that article (currently a redirect) for one of the several merge/don't debates. Feco 17:32, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

FECO I SUGGEST YOU READ THE VERY TOP OF THE PAGE. NO OBJECTION WAS RASIED. THE SPLIT IT ONLY PART ONE!!!! — 209.191.206.42 12:40, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
And I suggest you read the middle of the page. Look for 'Hitler'. You can't even bother to create an account and log in, much less sign your name or type in mixed case, so it is hard to take you seriously. And you still have not made a compelling case for the split. I can apply the same argument (lack of objection) to reverting it right back.
However, I feel it is fine to have a split as long as there is a well-written summary (not just a "See also") in this article. The summary needs to be phrased such that it doesn't invite further expansion; it needs to avoid getting into too many details. Take a look at how it was done in the Internet Explorer article. Why don't you try to write something useful like that? — mjb 19:20, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

FYI- This person at 209.191.206.42 is doing the same thing in the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures article. According to their comments on that article's discussion page, he/she considers any characterization of a debate to be akin to treating Wikipedia like a message board, and considers any policies about NPOV, consensus, etc. to be subordinate to an exclusionist point of view that would omit any description of widely-held opinions, no matter how they are described. That contentious or critical points of view are widely held are noteworthy, verifiable facts. They belong here, so long as they are neutrally characterized. I plan to revert this author's wholesale deletions, and encourage others to do the same. — mjb 20:22, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Mike I suggest you READ THE POLICIES http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability

The Ace!

Throwing the rulebook at us will not help; we'll just throw it right back. We would have no trouble at all verifying that there are notable, widely reported, lawsuit-inspiring points of view that are critical of Wal-Mart. Even Wal-Mart itself acknowledges these facts. [2]. The main Wal-Mart article does not need to present the specific arguments and their rebuttals, but it does need to mention the existence of this criticism, as it is, by your own admission, disproportionately publicized for Wal-Mart as opposed to other big-box retailers.
  • It is a verifiable fact that voluminous criticism of Wal-Mart exists and is widely reported.
  • It is a verifiable fact that Wal-Mart makes public statements that acknowledge and attempt to dispel some of the criticism.
  • It is a verifiable fact that, fueled by these criticisms, various municipalities, neighborhoods, and public interest organizations lobby hard against Wal-Mart in particular.
  • It is a verifiable fact that the criticism is notable above and beyond that of other retailers.
  • It is a verifiable fact that the criticism focuses mainly on Wal-Mart's business and labor practices.
  • It is a verifiable fact that many lawsuits related to these criticisms have been and continue to be filed against Wal-Mart, and that some of them have been successful. It is a verifiable fact that the lawsuits document certain criticisms, and that they are used to fuel the arguments of other critics.

…All of these things can and should be mentioned in the Criticisms section of the main Wal-Mart article. — mjb 07:55, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

  • It is a verifiable fact that voluminous criticism of Wal-Mart exists and is widely reported.
Hmm Could that be unions who stand to gain Millons from unionizing Walmart????
  • It is a verifiable fact that Wal-Mart makes public statements that acknowledge and attempt to dispel some of the criticism.
Walmart has NEVER acknowledged Wrong doing from the company itself and has forced Out many High ranking VPs and COs from the company for even the most minor wrongstep... Verifible!
  • It is a verifiable fact that, fueled by these criticisms, various municipalities, neighborhoods, and public interest organizations lobby hard against Wal-Mart in particular.
Hmmm again Unions and small business owners???? Yet everywhere a Walmart goes people come to it, hmm how can that happen if walmart is hated by the people????
  • It is a verifiable fact that the criticism is notable above and beyond that of other retailers.
Really I and my GF have worked for most of the National Retailers, We find walmart the best of them all.... So have millons of crossover employees of Other Retailers. CNN also finds that Target is just as "BAD" As walmart....

http://money.cnn.com/2005/04/20/news/fortune500/target_walmart/?section=money_latest%20

  • It is a verifiable fact that the criticism focuses mainly on Wal-Mart's business and labor practices.
Hmm funny I AM one of The people Walmart "abuses" yet I make more money working in a walmart deli then the average household in the US. It is also funny that if Walmart is so bad in business that Vendors line up to get into Bentonville. And even funnier That many Vendors credit Walmart with Showing them how to produce products efficently... Verifiable
  • It is a verifiable fact that many lawsuits related to these criticisms have been and continue to be filed against Wal-Mart, and that some of them have been successful. It is a verifiable fact that the lawsuits document certain criticisms, and that they are used to fuel the arguments of other critics.
Hmm so your telling me that in a sue happy country, the richest company wouldn't be the most sued???? If I get into a car accident I can sue the other driver for my pain and suffering does that Verify my pain, maybe I just Lied... lots of people looking for money. Walmart has also been sued for a woman killing herself, does that mean that Walmart sends out death rays??? Come on Get real!

Mike provide this varifiable information FROM ONE CREDITABLE SOURCE!!! Present The Verification Also See http://money.cnn.com/2005/04/20/news/fortune500/target_walmart/?section=money_latest%20 The Ace!

Mike Sites and authors that make their living bashing a book or a company are NOT Varifiable sources of information NPOV must be kept, if you can't verify from a creditable source it has NO place here!!! FYI Walmart has NEVER admitted wrong doing, it has addmitted that Some Managers in Some stores have commited wrongs, however to put that in perspective each store has 1 Store manager 2 Co-Managers and atleast 5 Asst-Managers and at least 2 Support Managers, Thats a total of 52,460 Store Managers world wide, not to mention district managers, Regional Managers, Regional VPs you tell me can you keep track of each one of them. Walmart Does its best to keep all of them in line. In Fact My Store manager is on probation for speaking wrong to an associate, and could be terminated for any further wrongs, would you like his name so you can call him about how walmart handles things??? The Ace!

Cited above, but you apparently overlooked it:

I had several other citations ready to go, but decided they weren't necessary, as the existence of voluminous criticism and lawsuits is easily verified with the simplest of searches:

  • at least half of the Wal-Mart related articles in the news today will confirm, and that's only the very recent stuff. A full Google search will turn up tons more archived, credible sources, not just sites with an agenda. And that's just what's on the easily-searchable Web. I can also give you documents from FindLaw and Lexis-Nexis, if you like, but I don't have to, as you're not even listening, obviously.

The rest of your comments directed toward me consist of nothing more than ad hominem fallacies, accusations of my being delusional/under the influence, vandalism of my user page, and a list of rebuttals to arguments that I didn't make. I clearly made no mention of specific abuses, and I am not even advocating their inclusion in the main Wal-Mart article. I am only advocating the inclusion of the facts as I have laid them out above. You seem to keep missing this point. I am done "arguing" with you. I am also done cleaning up the formatting of your replies. Have fun having the last word. — mjb 07:09, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Mike you didnt acctully Read any of what you posted did you? Because what Lee Scott Said and I quote "Our associates were frustrated that I haven't been responding to all the criticism directed against Wal-Mart, even when a lot of it is unfair and inaccurate," Scott said. "I think we did a disservice to our associates and to our shareholders by not answering our critics." Hmm looks like he said walmart has NOT done anything wrong and its assocates, like me are frustated about it's bad image. Hmmm Try again Mike!

Again Nothing That Bad, Top Storys from Google....

http://www.forbes.com/2005/08/04/retail-sales-wmt-cx_cn_0804autofacescan05.html http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aAPwgjeOU0is&refer=us http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B7D1B37C1-E1BF-45E1-973D-6D7C76A6D0C8%7D&siteid=google http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1863&dept_id=152656&newsid=14978256&PAG=461&rfi=9 http://www.startribune.com/stories/562/5541931.html http://www.modbee.com/local/story/11029271p-11790371c.html http://www.thewesterlysun.com/articles/2005/08/04/news/news2.txt http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/12303247.htm http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/08-04-2005/0004082553&EDATE=

Actully I fould most of the news to be rather good, only one had anything to do with any unions pushing walmart. None Varified that any of the Critism is factual infact most don't even address it. I couldn't find anything futher that verifys any of the critism. The only sites I could find to verify any facts came from Unions, Law firms, and Small businesses, As they should since they are the ones that would benifit from walmart having a bad image.

But lets put this in perspective again, Unions Want Walmart because any union that gets walmart would then be the richest since even a union fee of $10/assocate/week would generate $832,000,000 for the union, hmm could it be about the money. And if you really Want to know who does not want unions at walmart it is not the company but the assocates, infact many assocates have voted unions down when a vote came up..... Infact we talk about unions all the time at our grassroots meeting, the assocates always say the same thing, we find no area the can be impoved by a union, since the real stresses come from the customers, many are rude, craby, and just down right bitchy.....Think about that next time you want to improve a walmart assocates life, just be nice to us, it helps!

Lets also look at why Law firms would like walmart's image to stay bad. Well if a company is as rich as walmart it becomes very easy to demonise it this helps in giving people a reason to sue walmart, Law firms collect millons on pay out from Lawsuits directed at walmart. Hmmm could it be the money. Is it possible and even likely that Walmart is sued so often because it has tons of money in the public's eyes???

How about small businesses hate of walmart. Well gee that is self evedent. But again thats put this in Perspective, Do you honestly belive K-Mart, Target, and sears have not stepped on a few small businesses in their time? As I am starting a Small business, I have found that no one can "Put" you out of business, if you go out of business it was your own doing by not providing your business with a strong business model. Infact if Walmart ran you out of business it is likly that any form of real competition would have done the same.... The Ace!

How many different ways can I say this? The existence of criticism is notable, verifiable, and must be documented. You keep trying to debate the validity of the criticism. These are two separate issues. Even if all arguments made by all Wal-Mart critics ever were completely false, that does not negate the fact that the criticism is out there and is as widespread as it is. The existence of criticism can be documented without enumerating the arguments or presenting any contentious points of view; that's exactly what I did with the bullet points above. That's what belongs in the main article. I am not disagreeing with the split — the criticism belongs in a separate article, for sure, but there needs to be more than just a link to that article. — mjb 20:32, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

More on splitting criticisms

I want to state again that I believe that placing criticism in its own article is an overtly POV act. If the article becomes too long with the criticism portion, then it's time to edit for brevity, and start trimming the least significant details. Also, things like Wal-Mart board members could easily be its own article, and splitting the article there doesn't remove valuable detail nor does it create Point-of-View issues. Other potential separate articles are Timeline of Wal-Mart events and Wal-Mart employee benefits. Removing the criticism from this article is very, very wrong. Unfocused 21:25, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

I see your point, but disagree moderately. It is no less POV to enumerate specific criticisms without providing rebuttals or counterarguments, and as noted in prior discussion, there is a need for neutrality as well as shorter main-article length. If we have a separate article devoted to criticism, we can go into as much detail as needed there, and can have a relatively neutral and terse main Wal-Mart article.
But if we attempt to "summarize" the criticism by listing only the critics' points of view here, then it is just as bad as not doing a split; the Criticisms section becomes flypaper for grievances against Wal-Mart, and quickly (within days!) becomes a repeat of the separate Criticisms article, now subject to synchronization issues and solving nothing as far as length and neutrality.
I've gone ahead and written a new version of the section without the "summary" of criticisms, but I expect that it won't last long; people will be too tempted to revert back to a list of grievances. However I want to point out that we've had some success with this approach in the Internet Explorer article. I think it would work well here. — mjb 05:28, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

(moved the following from the top of the page, whereas it belongs at the bottom, per Wiki guidelines):

A user keeps removing criticism of Walmart from the main article, he also attempted to remove the POV template. That creates a Walmart article that is nothing more than a PR sham for the company. Wiki guidelines clearly state that when a sub article is referenced in this way the main points of the article should be sumarized. The duplication of content is necessary to ensure that the main article is balanced. --Gorgonzilla

  1. I attempted to replace enumerated criticisms with a relatively neutral characterization of the criticisms in general.
  2. Summarizing by merely restating contentious points made by opponents of the company inherently infuses the article with bias. It does not "balance" the innocuous info comprising the rest of the article.
  3. There was no discussion here about the reasons for initial instatement of the NPOV template. I assumed it was due to the criticisms section. Once that section had been most recently split off into a sub-article and replaced with a neutral summary (not the one that I wrote, by the way), I removed the template, because there was nothing left in the article that seemed to qualify as inherently POV.
  4. A Wal-Mart article that makes no mention of the existence and volume of criticism is a PR sham. An article that neglects to put the criticism in context, as you have done, is an even bigger sham.

— mjb 14:24, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Court judgements such as the 11 million paid in settlement over knowingly hiring illegal workers are much more significant facts about the company than plans to produce one energy efficient store.
The criticism article is way over long and booorring. Despite the length there is not actually a lot that WalMart has said in its defense other than issuing straight denials. For example it denies that the meat packagers were fired because they voted to unionize, but nobody seriously beleives the denial, not least walmart employees.--Gorgonzilla 15:05, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
You're right, that article needs work. Comments about it belong on Talk:Criticism of Wal-Mart, though. And for the record, I have not touched that article; my only concern is how to best summarize and refer to it from the main article, post-split. — mjb 15:32, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
(regarding the edit that Mjb made and commented on above, at 05:28, 9 August 2005) I reverted this major NPOV violation, the main article has to be balanced, turining it into Walmart PR by censoring criticism is totally unacceptable.
I agree that the criticism section could be made more balanced but I wanted to first correct the major POV damage done by Mjb by restoring some balanace to the article. I was also reluctant to spend much time on this when it was more likely than not that Mjb would immediately revert the description of the criticsm.
A lot of people have come to suspect that the removal of the criticism from the main page is part of a Walmart PR effort. That alone is very damaging to the reputation of wikipedia. One sign of this is that there is a lot of extraneous enumerated material like the board of directors that appears to only be there to pad out the article so that the claim can be made that it is too long for criticism.--Gorgonzilla 13:54, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
Gorgonzilla, you are clueless. Nobody (well, at least not me) is "censoring criticism". There's an entire sub-article devoted to it. But that's not enough for you. You want to fill up this article with every grievance that everyone has ever had about Wal-Mart, without counterarguments, and then you want to say that's keeping it "balanced" and that anyone who disagrees with your view is "damaging the reputation of Wikipedia". Pathetic. I can't stand Wal-Mart, and don't think there needs to be a Board of Directors section in this article, but you are grossly infusing this article with one side's POV, and have apparently no interest in producing a relatively stable set of articles. Your version undermines the value of having a sub-article and will quickly turn into an out-of-sync copy of it. Also in reverting my edits, you've removed pertinent information and a far more neutral characterization of the criticism than was ever in either article. Nice going. — mjb 14:13, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
MJB, clean your mouth out and stop throwing insults around. You are indeed censoring criticism. The NPOV applies to every article on wikipedia jointly and severally. Instead of attaching balancing prose to the list of criticism you keep deleting it. Then after supressing contrary points of view by deleting them entirely you have the gall to complain that a few lines of your prose was lost.
The main reason for the instability here is your own actions. You made the split ignoring the prior discussion in talk. You admitted yourself that you didn't think that your edit would survive long. You ignored numerous complaints that the split was POV. You even removed the POV flag because you thought your supression of criticism made the article perfect!
I see very little value in the separate article. You were the person who created it. If the split leads to a POV main article then that is a reason not to split.--Gorgonzilla 14:24, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
Sigh. You know not of what you speak. I did not split the article. You are confusing me with Ase500, a Wal-Mart employee who often logs in anonymously, and against whom I was arguing above. Did you even read the discussion? He was advocating a total split and total removal of all mentions of criticism, under the guise of "sticking to the facts", "citing sources", "verifiability", and every other Wikipedia guideline that he was bending to his own pro-Wal-Mart agenda. Only after the split was made did I try to keep specific arguments out of the summary; that's the only thing I've really done here; check the logs. Furthermore, I didn't remove the neutrality template in response to my own edits. In hindsight I wasn't even all that satisfied with the summary that was in place (authored by Feco) when I removed the NPOV template, which was days ago. You'll also see that Drini did the previous removal of redundant criticism. Check the history and my comments above. Stop attributing other people's edits to me. — mjb 14:35, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

FYI, just skimming over the discussion above, here's a summary of the general directions in which people have argued:

Split, with just a 'see also' pointing to the criticisms article:

  • Ase500 ("The Ace!" or 209.191.206.42)

Split, but with a minimal overview, not enumerated criticisms, in main article:

  • Stormie (actually did write an overview)
  • JamesMLane (acknowledged anything more would lead to continued edit wars)
    • I just noticed this. I appreciate the work mjb did to summarize the views, but I'm not sure I belong in this section, depending on how minimal "minimal" is. The presentation in this version is too minimal. JamesMLane 22:55, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Chuck F
  • Feco (actually did write an overview)
  • Mjb (actually did write an overview)
for the record, it's a bad idea to tally others' votes. You are mistaken on my vote. I have been consistently opposing the split for quite some time (since two splits ago, if I remember right). My work to maintain usability during the latest spat falls under making the best of a bad situation. Feco 20:48, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
Sorry about that; I was originally going to make a diplomatic/'goes with the flow' category for you, but put you in this group because of your comments on May 1st (which sound pretty solidly like you do endorse leaving it split and not filling it up with details) and June 4th (where you said you're "all for splitting the two up again") and the fact that you wrote a terse summary after Ase500's split. In fact I just re-read all of your comments on this page and in the archive (though I was pretty careful not to archive anything pertaining to splitting) and saw no statements saying that you oppose the split. Re: other people's votes, I was careful to say this is just a summary of the general directions in which people have argued… — mjb 21:17, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Split in general, no comment on particulars:

  • LegCircus
  • 203.112.19.195

Don't split, or split but retain full summaries of criticisms in main article:

  • bogdan
  • Gorgonzilla

Definitely don't split:

  • Unfocused
  • Feco

There is no consensus. Everyone makes a fairly good case for their cause, IMHO. — mjb 15:20, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

My position is that the obvious Wal-Mart PR goons should not gain anything from their attempts to supress and hide criticism. For the record I accept that Mjb was not responsible for the split itself. My ideal world would be to have a reasonably short criticism section in the main article and no in depth separate article. However the extent of criticism is such that people do seem to want to enumerate every corporate evil they consider Wal-Mart guilty of. What is totaly unacceptable is to have a long main article padded out with irrelevant entries and the only criticism an inconspicuous ling to another page. --Gorgonzilla 22:36, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

um, For what it's worth, as someone who hasn't been paying attention to this article/talk at all, I think splitting criticism is a good idea—that section is long. If anything, it gives more credibility to split it, as evidence is so voluminous that it warrants its own article. Of course, a synopsis of criticisms + the company's defence should remain in the main article.  —Wiki Wikardo (holla) 21:33, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Just so the new comment doesnt go answered, I disagree. Criticism should stay. I use this wikipage as an example of the way every controversial wikipage should be.Travb 23:48, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
I hope my 2¢ wasn't seriously interpreted as support for the criticism "going." I suppose it is nice to see that "Criticism" section branch off into everything from labour practices to the environment and stretch on for miles, but... whooee. ("Hey, Wiki!") 02:23 11 November 2005 (UTC)

An 'official' consensus record

Here's the deal: This is at least the third time Wal-Mart and Criticism of have been merged, unmerged, argued, remerged. In each of the previous cases, ultimate consensus was to keep the articles as one. This latest spat began when an anon IP (presumably TheAce!) split the articles. I rv'ed the split. A random user saw the change on the Recent Changes page and rv'ed me while accusing of censorship. Since then, other users have worked to preserve the split. The change remains questionable; there has been no new consensus, which should be necessary to alter the consensus-established status quo. Here's a space for a vote tally where only users can log their votes. As usual, signs of sockpuppetry and anon IP abuse will lead to such votes being ignored: (Feco 20:48, 9 August 2005 (UTC))

NB- I messaged the users who have comments on this talk page related to splitting the halves. Since it was a manual operation, I may have missed some users. I also didn't look in the talk archives or the talk of Criticism of Wal-Mart. Feel free to look at my contribution history and compare against those users' comments above. Feco 21:11, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for doing this! — mjb 21:23, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
Support maintaining separate Wal-Mart and Criticism of articles:
  1. Mjb (but only if a sufficiently neutral characterization of the debate, not a rehash of the critics' arguments, is in the Wal-Mart article; otherwise, remerge) mjb 21:23, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
  2. I'm fairly happy with the state of the article at the moment. I was listed above as "Split, but with a minimal overview, not enumerated criticisms, in main article", which is indeed the state I edited the article into way back in last October. But looking at it now, the whole thing is much longer - my old edit was a brief one-liner summary (which I hoped would be expanded some) in a two page article, now the article is seven pages long and I think the size of the criticism section looks pretty fair. Although, I certainly would have no objections to trimming the detail on each enumerated criticism down to one sentence, I don't think there would be a problem with leaving all the precise facts and figures to the Criticism of Wal-Mart article. p.s. since this is obviously being edited quite frequently, what I'm referring to here is the version as at 08:15 August 10th, last edited by Feco. --Stormie 23:16, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
  3. I think tha a separate page would allow for better separation between the "bad" side of Wal-mart. Even though personally am anti-Walmart I think a separate article would work better. You could have a short excert of criticisms with a link to the longer article. That means all of us could edit without having this huge discussion page. Ethan 22:38, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
Oppose maintaining separate articles:
  1. Feco Feco 20:48, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
  2. Un<;/FONT>focused 02:16, 10 August 2005 (UTC) We shouldn't use the length of the article as an excuse not to be editors and edit liberally for brevity and split the article at non-controversial points.
Oppose maintaining separate articles but some specific instances may have sufficient material that a separate article on that particular controversy is warranted. E.G. the Inglewood controversy which is significant in its own right as a current news event:
  1. --Gorgonzilla 22:40, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
  2. Unfocused 02:16, 10 August 2005 (UTC) This vote should only be considered as a measure of current opinion, and not a stick to beat the opposition with. (Which is also why I feel free to vote twice.)
Oppose maintaining a separate 'criticisms' article but as Gorgonzilla says, some specific instances may warrant their own (with appropriate linkage). But I can live with anything between that and 'split, with neutral characterisation of the debate in the main article'. --Calair 23:39, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Objections to the structure of the poll

I'm afraid that, to have a useful poll, someone has to take a little more care to set out the options (which may be easier after further discussion sparked by this poll). My position is along these lines:
  1. I don't feel strongly about whether to have a separate article. If merging all the criticisms into the main article results in constant attacks on the "Criticisms" section, in the form of people trying to delete information because they think the section is too long, then that would be a good reason to have a separate article. We generally should not delete notable information just because someone argues that its inclusion makes the article look "unbalanced".
  2. If there is a daughter article for criticisms, there must still be an adequate summary in the main article. The summary in this version isn't adequate because it merely alludes to the general topic of criticism, without stating specifically what the criticisms are. On the other hand, the summary in this version could be trimmed, partly by moving some of the facts in it to appropriate places in the article. For example, whether or not a company is a particularly visible target of criticisms, its legal record is a fact worth reporting (at least in summary form, not every single proceeding). I'd pull some of that information into a separate heading, "Legal proceedings" or some such, that would not advocate any POV, but simply note significant areas of litigation or particular cases and the results. The first paragraph of the "Treatment of employees" section, minus the argumentative points about minimum wage and Walton's desire for exemption from minimum-wage laws, should be taken out of "Criticisms" and added to "Employees". (As a side note, unrelated to the issue of how to handle criticisms, I looked at that "Employees" section to see if the information was already there, and I was struck again by how ridiculous it is to have a detailed list of employee benefits in this article.) If there's a daughter article, the points about the minimum wage belong there, not in the summary.
  3. Contending opinions shouldn't be ghettoized. If there's a separate "Criticisms" article, it should also include the company's POV.
  4. A better title for a daughter article would be "Wal-Mart controversies and criticisms" (a variation on a suggestion above by Unfocused). Including "controversies" seems more appropriate, and beginning the title with "Wal-Mart" will make it easier for interested readers to find it in mirrors that provide alphabetical indices. (For example, someone who happens to come upon the "Wal-Mart" article in the "Free Dictionary" mirror will find, at the bottom, a list of articles near it in the alpha listing. Right now that hypothetical reader finds links to "Wal-Mart (stock symbol)" and "Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market" but not to the criticisms article.)
Yes, the title of any article on anything regarding Wal-Mart should start with Wal-Mart for easy access by index and alpha listings! Pedant 19:49, 2005 August 10 (UTC)
It's true that a summary of criticisms attracts people who try to elaborate on the points made by one side or the other. It just has to be patrolled to keep from turning into a full-blown presentation. JamesMLane 23:49, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
I think it should be a full blown presentation, in the Wal-Mart controversies and criticisms article, and a brief summary of overal categories of criticisms in the main article... but complete enough to entice the reader to read further, in the 'criticisms' article. I object to the wording of the pollPedant 19:49, 2005 August 10 (UTC)
The current section was written in a hurry. I think that rather than there being one place where criticism is listed in the article it should be raised in every section, the obvious case being the employee benefits section. Looking at the history it appears to me that this is what was originally done, then the pr goons removed all the criticism from the body of the text and shuffled it into the excessively long criticism section and then censored it entirely by putting it into a separate article. The current article is in no way perfect, but it was the best that could be done in a hurry given the actions of the pr goons. Hopefully their PR folk are realizing that their efforts to date have been counterproductive and have resulted in the criticism becomming more focused and prominent. --Gorgonzilla 14:48, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
I suggest as a way forward here that most of the proponents of balance acn accept editing the piece so that there is criticism in each of the areas of the main body of the text (i.e. like it should be done, point counterpoint, nor 20 pro walmart points and then 5 counterpoints and a link to the rest). After this is done the link to further criticism can be moved nearer to the end of the article but MUST repeat MUST appear before obvious filler material like the board of directors. --Gorgonzilla 14:48, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
I'm not convinced that your ideas for how to structure the criticism in the main article are qualitatively better than the other options that have been tried. These kinds of articles (Internet Explorer, Coca-Cola, McDonald's Corporation, Wal-Mart, …) generally start out the way you've suggested, with criticisms peppered throughout, which makes the entire article reek of bias because every innocuous statement (like "The company offers health plans") is followed by a "Yeah, but critics say…" rebuttal intended not so much to provide context but rather to ensure that the reader is exposed to the critical views as if those are the final words on the subject. Editors of such articles generally seem to favor putting all the contentious points of view in one place, usually in a section at first, until it gets too large and/or the subject of edit wars, at which point there's the inevitable split-and-remerge cycle that still goes on to this day.
It often goes like this: 1. make uncontentious/safe statements about the topic, without critical context; 2. sprinkle in contrary/critical points of view; 3. sprinkle in counterarguments to those points of view; 4. accuse fellow editors of bias; 5. move all arguments to their own section; 6. move the section to a separate article; 7. get into an edit war over how to summarize the separate article in the main article; 8. merge the original article back in because the summary isn't really a summary and does nothing to help the neutrality of the main article; 9. repeat steps 6–8 ad infinitum. You're advocating going back to step 3 to break the cycle, but I don't see how it's going to make the situation any better. How will it help? By what criteria do you measure the success of a particular method of presenting the contentious topics? Does that criteria reflect your own assumptions about the validity of the critical points of view? — mjb 20:11, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
Well first off the benefits section as currently written is an abomination, the only reason the material is at all relevant is as a rebuttal to a charge of poor treatment of employees. I think it is clear that there has to be a merger there. And while we are at it structure it as prose rather than a list. Some of the list items need to go as well, the ability to buy health insurance through your company is not really a benefit unless the company subsidizes it. The real issue here is the pay level relative to industry standards. Now it might well be that the whole emploment section should be under criticism. --Gorgonzilla 04:46, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

For the splitting supporters

The poll is absurd, because a POV split would contradict NPOV and Jimbo clearly said that NPOV is not-negotiable. I recommend you to read Wikipedia:POV fork. bogdan | Talk 20:56, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:POV fork started as a proposed policy guideline, but was recategorized by an administrator as an essay due to lack of interest. Therefore it is reflecting, basically, one Wikipedian's opinion, and holds only marginally more weight than the discussions being carried out here. Also, for further consideration, it links to another dead proposal, Wikipedia:Criticism, which on one hand suggests never splitting criticism, and on the other, suggests that criticism belongs in separate articles about the critics(!). The discussion page there reveals that the handful of people who stumbled across the article and cared enough to respond all fell somewhere between Confused and Ambivalent, so the proposal was dropped. There was no consensus. You might as well have just linked to the discussion sections above. (Although as stated in my response to the poll, I'm not opposed to leaving everything in the main article; I'm only taking issue with how the split is being handled, since there is currently a split). — mjb 01:30, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

The entry should not be a forum for Anti-Walmart activists

It is supposed to be a professional encyclopedic entry.

"Now I'd just like to say it like Michael Moore who should be our hero: Shame on you, shame on you censors who are trying to conceal the truth from ordinary people who deserve to know all the evil of Wal-Mart. You're trying to conceal it. Shame on you."

No one is trying to conceal anything. The Microsoft entry has a separate criticism page, there is no reason why Wal-mart should be treated differently.

The Microsoft entry uses several subpages (not just for 'criticism') because the sheer volume of Microsoft-related information is too large to fit it all in one page. There is far less material in the Wal-Mart page than there is for MS; if we're to keep a 'Wal-Mart Criticisms' page on grounds of space, by parallel to the Microsoft page, we should also be moving 'Business' and 'History' to their own subpages.
Note also that while the bulk of MS criticism is on a subpage, with a brief summary of these on the main page, one of the most significant parts - the Microsoft#Antitrust_problems antitrust suits - is right there on the main page. --Calair 03:59, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
What? If you split one section, you have to split all of them, and we can't split all of them, so we shouldn't split any of them? That's not a sound argument, and doesn't reflect how splits happen. Sub-articles are usually created for one section at a time, and the section that gets split off first is always either the longest one or the one that is infused with the most NPOV controversy. — mjb 17:11, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
I don't believe I ever said either "you have to split all of them" or "we shouldn't split any of them", in those words or any other; please don't put words into my mouth, mjb. As I indicated in previous discussion on this page, I would prefer no split but am willing to countenance some forms of split.
If people want to argue for a split on grounds of controversy, go ahead. I don't have a strong opinion either way on whether such splits are a good idea, and unless and until I hear a very persuasive argument for or against I'll be abstaining on that one. However, the MS page doesn't provide a precedent for splitting just on controversy.
I have qualms about using length arguments to justify splitting just one section, when that one section happens to be the controversial one, because I think it's likely to sour discussion and make it harder to reach an amicable compromise. Regardless of what people's intentions might be, it's very easy for that sort of thing to be taken as a pretext; from there, good faith suffers, and we end up with a climate conducive to edit wars.
Yes, the 'Criticisms' section would be the single longest of the article, if included as a single section, but that's a matter of how people have chosen to structure things; while 'Business', 'Employees', etc. each have a separate section, the critical sides of all those topics are lumped together into one big group. If people are concerned about article length, then they need to look closely at other sections - not only 'Criticisms' - to see whether they can be cut down or split. --Calair 23:06, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Why were the dubious and mergefrom tags deleted and why?

Today I added back the

[dubious – discuss]

and

It has been suggested that Criticisms of Wal-Mart be merged into this page or section. (Discuss)


...why did you erase the dubious tag User:66.75.14.189 [3] [4]?

Travb 23:56, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I see why now... Because you rationally tried to merge the criticism wal-mart page into this page[5], which was then promptly reverted back by User:Titoxd. Looks like we may need a vote. If that doesnt solve anything, we need mediation, if that doesnt solve anything, we need arbitration. This looks like it is an ongoing problem, and it is not being solved with the current way it is being handled. (i.e. people argue on this page, and nothing happens, except small revert wars) Travb 00:11, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

RFC on Criticism of Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart

There are two articles on Wal-Mart, a Criticism of Wal-Mart page and a Wal-Mart page. The argument is whether:

a) Criticism of Wal-Mart page and Wal-Mart should be merged, and the Criticism of Wal-Mart page should be disbanned.
b) All Criticism of Wal-Mart should be moved to the Criticism of Wal-Mart page.

Since there has been no agreement on whether to merge or split the article, a consensus decision on this article should resolve this debate.

If you disagree with a user, please DO NOT repond to a user underneath their own argument, simply add your own opinion in the opposing "merge" or "split" section (using "# [[User:your name|yourname]]" mentioning why you disagree with the user.

In Favor of merging the two articles

  1. Travb Four reasons to merge the articles: First , debate makes the article more encyclopedic, Second , split articles encourage the deletion of relevent information; Third , having two articles is repetitive; Fourth , by default, the Wal-Mart page will be seen much more than the Criticism of Wal-Mart page. 1) Active argument is wonderful, and makes a great article. This article has been elected to be a Featured article candidate, why? Because it is full of information, both pro and con--it is probably the best article on Wal-Mart on the entire web. Hundreds of wikipedians have built this article, both "pro" and "con" Wal-mart wikipedians. Moving the criticisms of Wal-Mart to its own page, causes BOTH pages to become slanted, less encyclopedic and lower quality: one page becomes an advertisement for Wal-Mart, one article becomes an advertisment for demonizing Wal-Mart. If you want proof of this, please see the difference between the criticism section here, and the Criticism of Wal-Mart page. The Criticism of Wal-Mart page is slanted and of obvious poorer quality, with fewer footnotes and more biased information. The Critism section on the other hand, is more encyclopedic. 2) In adition new wikipedians will attempt to add "con" articles to the main article, and other "pro" wikipedians will delete the information, rationalizing there own bias by saying that the information belongs in the criticism page, but never actually adding the information to the criticism page, and vice versa. 3) Having two articles, a "pro" and "con" page is repetitive. Much of the information on the Wal-Mart page and the Criticism of Wal-Mart page is repetitive. For example, say we split up the article, a section will mention wages on the "pro" Wal-Mart page, and a section will mention wages on the "con" Criticism of Wal-Mart page, why list a wage section twice, why not instead combine these two entries on wages and then come to a consensus about Wal-Mart wages? 4) The Wal-Mart page will be seen much more than the Criticism of Wal-Mart page, even with a link. This is hardly balanced, by default, the "pro" section will be read more than the "con" section. People come to wikipedia to read both sides of the argument, not just one. To split the articles would be only giving most readers one side of the argument: the pro side. When a person reads about the "Robber Barons" is an encyclopedia, the reader reads both the good that the Robber Barons did, and the bad that the Robber Barons did. That by its very nature is what an encyclopedia is: a neutral article telling both sides of the story. Why aren't pro-Wal-Mart people arguing to split the article into a Wal-Mart page and a Support of Wal-Mart page, because they know that the Wal-Mart page is by default more read. The ONLY fair comprimise is to have both "pro" and "con" together, on one page (or see my comprimise, below). Thank you. Travb 00:47, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

In Favor of spliting the two articles

Other Comments on dispute or an alternate version

  1. Feco If the articles are merged, the logical grouping of criticisms from Criticism of Wal-Mart should be imported to Wal-Mart. Below are the level 2 and 3 headings from Criticism... with the main criticism headings from Wal-Mart interspersed as appropriate and marked in bold. The hierarchy below can be tweaked, but it's a much more logical grouping of related complaints than the current shotgun approach. Feco 01:05, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Product controversy (appears in both)
  • Supplier relations (appears in both)
  • Competitive practices
    • Predatory pricing
  • Political/lobbying activities
  • Local community impacts (appears in both)
    • Specific instances of community protests
    • Complaints about international locations
  • Employee/labor relations
    • Opposition to unions (appears in both)
    • Treatment of employees
    • Sex discrimination (appears in both)
    • Wages
    • Health insurance (memo)
    • Labor laws and working conditions
  • Imports and globalization
    • Imports
    • Use of sweatshop labor
    • Dumping
    • Use of overseas labor
  • Taxes
  • Illegal use of undocumented workers
  • Workforce diversity

Additional comment if the two are merged: Criticism is in healthier shape stylistically and hierarchically than the criticisms in Wal-Mart. Your life will be easier if you merge the criticisms in Wal-Mart into Criticism, then move the whole thing back to Wal-Mart and restore the redirect. Feco 03:36, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

  1. Travb Compromise: How about this, if we insist on a split, we make the Wal-Mart page a bland, neutral, one paragraph blurb ONLY.

Then we have ONLY two links, and two links ONLY on the page: Criticism of Wal-Mart and Support of Wal-Mart. I am still in support of merge. Travb 01:34, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Solving the split/merge argument once and for all

User:Feco wrote:

Here's the deal: This is at least the third time Wal-Mart and Criticism of have been merged, unmerged, argued, remerged. In each of the previous cases, ultimate consensus was to keep the articles as one.

User:Feco give me cases of "ultimate consensus". How many times has this been voted on? If it has already been voted on with the "ultimate consensus was to keep the articles as one" three times, then we should delete the Criticism of Wal-Mart page. If the vote was only once, in which the result was inconclusive, then we should vote again. By saying "This is at least the third time", I hope you are no fudging the facts to fit your argument, or my trust in you will be damaged.

User:Feco if you are correct, and the "ultimate consensus was to keep the articles as one" three times, I will stop my new poll right now, and I will delete the article Criticism of Wal-Mart page. If someone does not allow me to delete the Criticism of Wal-Mart page, we should settle this is mediation. That is the next step.

Show the documentation that it has been voted on three times, then I will delete the Criticism of Wal-Mart page. Travb 01:13, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

We don't make decisions here based on votes.. we do it based on consensus. Rhobite 01:30, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
My mistake. I assume you mean "wikipedia" by "here". I will start calling "votes" "consensus" now. Thanks for pointing that out. Travb 15:10, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
That is not how it works either. We discuss issues informally, the process doesn't work if we declare authoritative polls. Rhobite 15:15, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
With all due respect Rhobite the process you describe, informal consensus has not worked. There has been an ongoing battle over the criticism section for years....Eventually someone has to get to the point where they realize that mediation and conversation will not work, and more drastic measures are needed....As the saying goes---the "definition of insanity is attempting the same thing over and over and expecting a different result". Consensus may always work in a perfect world, with rational people, but in my experience, such as my pending arbitration, I realize that some people are not rational. That is why wikipedia has steps to deal with those who do not think rationally, those who come here to disrupt and delete, not build and work together. Also those whose POV is so extreme their can never be a consensus.
Currently there is a lull in a debate where consensus was never reached. Instead there is a large criticism section on this page, and a wholly independent criticism page. Any opportunity to resolve this issue with an informal consensus repeatedly fails. more heavy handed tactics, such as deleting all the information on the criticism page and making a single link to this page, also fails. Feco colorfully and accuratly calls it "herding cats". Travb 16:38, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

My comment quoted above ("Here's the deal: This is at least the third time...") is dated 9 August 2005 [6]. Read the full quote and notice the terminology—consensus rather than vote. Please don't blur the precision of my statement while asking me to defend my integrety regarding the statement. Below is documentation of the two prior merge/unmerge instances I was referring to:

  1. 1 May 2005 - 15 May 2005 [7]. That discussion also spilled over onto Wal-Mart's talk page [8] and [9]. For full disclosure, I was opposed to merging the two at that time, primarily because I favor the status quo over contentious change.
  2. 9 October 2004 - 8 November 2004 [10]. It's been too long for me to remember the exact order of events; the result was an uneasy split with the goal of filling out criticism in the main article.
  3. Also note the discussion at Talk:Criticism_of_Walmart. Please note that the title of this article is improper. Criticism_of_Walmart should redirect to Criticism_of_Wal-Mart (notice correct company name) or just plain Wal-Mart.

Here is the story on the (third) instance that was being argued at the time of my original post. It ended up like so:

  • A user unfamiliar with the yes/no debate reverted the Criticism redirect back to archived copy.
  • I restored the redirect, since the archived copy had been fully merged into Wal-Mart. I was attempting to nip a content fork in the bud.
  • Another user unfamiliar with the yes/no debate saw my revert on WP:RC page and accused me of censorship.
  • The sequence of reverts between the two articles brought new users' attention to whether or not the articles should be merged.
  • A user attempted to convert other users' comments into unequivocable yes/no votes
  • I noticed that the tallying user misclassified my vote. I corrected the error and set up a binary yes/no poll where users could post their own votes. My hope was to remove any ambiguity regarding the latest consensus.
  • Other users posted a flurry of objections to the structure of the poll and begin proposing incremental solutions between the binary yes/no choice.
  • The result of the tally was ambiguous. A summary of the main points from Criticism was included in Wal-Mart, while the bulk of criticisms were moved back to Criticism.
  • Since then, the summary criticisms in Wal-Mart have mushroomed into a disorganized, full-blown criticism section, while Criticism has been largely ignored.

Congrats, TravB... you're now the moderator of an un-moderatable argument. Enjoy herding cats. I've given up caring whether or not the articles are merged or not. I plan to continue focusing on defending NPOV style and maintaining logical organization of content within however many Wal-Mart articles there are. Feco 03:30, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Feco Thanks for your comments, I know I jumped the gun and probably misquoted you. Lets just say I was hoping that their had been 3 votes before so we could jump right to arbitration. I have no faith in voting, but I think it is a prerequisite to mediation, and finally arbitration. Thanks for showing my mistakes.
"you're now the moderator of an un-moderatable argument. Enjoy herding cats."
We will see what happens, I am in the middle of another cat herding, pissing off both the liberals and the neo-cons alike. [11]
"Herd" is the wrong word, more like "drag by the hair". I like to cut through what I see as all the bullshit, and finalize a decision, which usually pisses all sides off. I have yet to see if this "drag the cats by the hair" approach works on wikipedia, we will find out as soon as the arbitors decide.
I know I am fresh blood to a site with a lot of bad blood. That said, I will probably make a lot of mistakes and mistatments. I am sure both sides will jump at the opportunity to prove me wrong.
I just want everyone here to know, i think the wal-mart page is excellent, whereas the Critisism of Wal-Mart page is not. I think everyone should vote for the wal-mart page to be a featured article. Three cheers for whoever suggested it. I have mentioned this page repeatedly as an example of a great article on another talk page[12] which is now in arbitration.
Feco wrote: "Also note the discussion at Talk:Criticism_of_Walmart. Please note that the title of this article is improper. Criticism_of_Walmart should redirect to Criticism_of_Wal-Mart (notice correct company name) or just plain Wal-Mart."
Okay, so how does this affect me? I am sorry I don't understand? Should I rewrite some of my links? I will... Thanks for your efforts. Travb 16:18, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Feco wrote: "Additional comment if the two are merged: Criticism is in healthier shape stylistically and hierarchically than the criticisms in Wal-Mart. Your life will be easier if you merge the criticisms in Wal-Mart into Criticism, then move the whole thing back to Wal-Mart and restore the redirect."
Excellent points! We will see what happens...Travb 15:03, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

The Criticisms section is too long in this article. It should be a short summary of the Criticisms... article - say a paragraph per issue, with Criticisms... linked as the "Main Article". Rd232 talk 13:34, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

WalMart obviously creates a great lot of criticism, so the section is not too long, or, it is not the fault of Wikipeduans that the section is so long but WalMarts. --85.74.167.155 18:39, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

political contributions of Wal-mart link deleted by Curps

Curps, you deleted the link: http://www.buyblue.org/node/2137/view/summary stating in your edit "rm, not a Wal-Mart corporate web site (a site by Wal-Mart)". I just read the website, it is indeed not a "Wal-Mart corporate web site", and is in fact quite critical of wal-mart. I will move it.

This does not mean though, that it sould be removed completly from the site simply because it does not conform to your own POV--please next time move the link to another portion of the web site, instead of heavy handidly deleting it from the current wikipage.

When I and other users see actions like this, we assume that the wikipedian who deletes this information is biased, and simply does not want the other sides views expressed on wikipedia. This is an undesirable reputation to have.Travb 16:18, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Looks like Howrealisreal already moved the link to another section. Nice job. glad others in this fine community see things the way I do (it saves me a lot of work!).Travb 16:21, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Put it in the right section next time, and save others a lot of work instead of yourself. If you didn't take the time to look and see what section that link might actually belong in, why should I? -- Curps 00:52, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

The entry says that Global Insight, the economics research firm, is funded by Wal-Mart. This is patently false. The addition of "(funded by Wal-Mart)" behind "Global Insight" is clearly meant to undermine their findings. The paper of issue was composed as part of a symposium funded by Wal-Mart, but the results of the symposium are regarded as fair and impartial, and the whole came down as slightly critical of Wal-Mart. This needs clarification. Global insight is not funded by Wal-Mart, and their analysis is fair and impartial.

Anyone else feel ill while inside Wal*Mart?

This may just be me, and just the particular Wal*Mart I live by, but... it is hard for me to shop there, because when I enter the store, I am overcome by tiredness and irritability. I'll be fine while walking to the doors, but once I enter, my main goal becomes getting done and out of there as soon as possible. On the way home I'll start feeling fine again. I'm not yet sure what is causing it. I've tried wearing earplugs to see if it was the noise, but that didn't really seem to help. I usually end up shopping there at night. Anyhow.. just curious if anyone else has this same problem and if you found a solution or know the cause. I doubt this really has anything to do with Wal*Mart at all, but perhaps some sensitivity I have to large stores.. sounds, lighting, certain smells? I don't know, but I'd very much like to. Thanks for any suggestions. --68.105.130.108 10:01, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like you need to see a doctor! --Coolcaesar 06:42, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
You're joking, right? :) --68.105.130.108 19:11, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
You may be experiencing migraine symptoms; there are low-pain and no-pain (or rather, pain that you subconsciously tune out) migraines that can be triggered by eye strain, sounds, smells, foods… When I was a teenager I was unable to spend any time in malls because the echoey sounds would affect me, somehow making me see stars, get nauseous, and sometimes have anxiety attacks. Those symptoms eventually subsided but fluorescent lighting with high glare or the tubes being directly in my line of sight became an issue and is still a problem for me. Took me years to figure out what was going on. I doubt you'll be able to pin it down to one simple thing like the floor wax they use at Wal-Mart or anything. :) Sorry. Oh, I did notice the last time I was in a Wal-Mart that the lighting was irritating, but not nearly as irritating as the 200 cameras watching my every move. — mjb 11:16, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Deleting Information About Company Benefits

I deleted the information about Wal-Mart employee benefits because it has no place in an encyclopedia entry. Wikipedia shouldn't be treated like a company's HR intranet. There is NO reference value to stating that "some" employees may qualify for things like health care or disability benefits.

I also deleted the sentence that said 30% of Wal-Mart's employees have some benefits because its reference link did not contain any information about this. I would love it if the person came back with the correct reference and added it in somewhere, but there are concerns about verifiability when the article cited does not mention the statistic. I believe it did mention the total number of employees, but it said nothing about the number who qualify for benefits.

Another change: I changed the section sub-heading under "Criticism" from "Wages" to "Wages and benefits" because there is also controversy over the company's benefits. Perhaps the person who mentioned the 30% could add to this section.

Lastly, I took out the statement that Wal-Mart, unlike Target, allows the Salvation Army to collect in front of its stores. This sentence has no reference value. This is not a place for cheap shots about Wal-Mart competitors. I can't imagine that such a statement would appear in Encylopedia Britannica. --Chloe Wong 05:57, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Great job, Wong. You just got done removing very valuable informaton. --munboy 20:29, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
I concur with Chloe Wong's edits. The information she removed was controversial and unsourced. How do we know it's just not simply made up? When someone finds a source it can come back into the article. For an example of a properly referenced article, see Roger J. Traynor.--Coolcaesar 20:32, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
These are very controversial edits. Don't give me any "be bold" stuff, she should have discussed these on the talk page before excuting them. --munboy 20:52, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
Chloe is correct in that the reference contains no mention of "30% of Wal-Mart's employees have some benefits because its reference link did not contain any information about this". That sentence should go, or at least be properly referenced. Also, I agree that the statement about Wal-Mart and Target is not appropriate. I strongly suggest that both be removed.
It's a different question as to whether or not the section on benefits is appropriate. However, a brief check of other stores' pages (Kmart, Target, Starbucks) shows that none of them have a section on benefits. I am inclined to remove that too.--Andrew Eisenberg 01:53, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
munboy does not control this article. We all do, and Chloe Wong's edits were not as controversial as all that. Be bold. Most people don't even bother with the courtesy of explaining their edits here; the fact that munboy isn't discussing any of the points raised, and the fact that he is relying solely on dismissive statements to justify a blind reversion of all of her edits (even her removal of the cheap shot at Target!) undermines his credibility. I've, uh, restored the removal of the cheap shot at Target. I really don't want to get into the benefits and criticisms because it ties in with the split-or-not-split argument that I've already stated my position on in the last go-round. — mjb 11:32, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

munboy has left me a message charging me with vandalism for removing a section from a Wikipedia article and for deleting a "valid link". Does what I've done count as vandalism? Thanks. Chloe Wong 16:25, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

No; your edits were made in good faith. munboy was trying to intimidate you by throwing a generic vandalism warning template at you. Ignore him. That said, this article has quite a history and the Benefits section in particular is sensitive, so don't take too great of offense that your edits didn't last long. In a section that touches on a topic of controversy (like Wal-Mart's treatment of its employees), any deletions, no matter how justifiable from a keeping-Wikipedia-scholarly point of view, will inevitably provoke the ire of a well-meaning but misguided few who find it easier to defend retaining unsourced criticism via quick reversions and ad hominem attacks rather than research ing and citing sources, themselves. They apparently feel the onus is on you to prove the statements false or irrelevant before removing them —not exactly a position that would be taken by an editor of a publication that seeks any kind of credibility, but it's a battle that is fought on many articles on Wikipedia every day. It sucks to have to play by those rules, but about the only way to give your edits a degree of permanence in an article like this is to bury people like munboy in a heap of references. — mjb 23:15, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks mjb. How could you tell I am newbie, BTW? Is it just obvious?? =) Chloe Wong 04:22, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Benefits section needs better citation

The benefits section says

Wal-Mart offers benefits to approximately 620,000 of its 1.6 million employees, and there are plans to expand this to one million of its employees.

and it cites a Wal-Mart "Fact Sheet" as its source.

The statement is plausible but the cited source does not verify any aspect of the statement at all.

  1. The Wikipedia article repeatedly says there are 1.7 million employees. Where did 1.6 come from?
  2. The walmartfacts.com site that is referenced says nothing about 620,000 people or 1.6 million people. In fact, it only claims that "Wal-Mart offers affordable health care coverage to both its full and part-time associates" and "Wal-Mart provides insurance to more than 1 million people", nothing more.
  3. Those claims on walmartfacts.com could be (and probably are) very carefully worded to mislead. If an associate's spouse and children are insured, those probably count toward the 1 million. That's not the same as insuring 1 million associates. Similarly, offering affordable coverage is not the same as providing insurance, plus the definition of "affordable" is in question. AFAIK there's no way to verify any claims they make regarding benefits statistics, so regardless of what the actual figures are, in the article any statements should be qualified to only indicate that Wal-Mart claims such-and-such, in my opinion.

Whoever came up with the 620,000 and 1.6 million, please correct the numbers and cite your actual sources. — mjb 11:35, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Wal-Mart Response to Criticism

I removed the "Wal-Mart Response to Criticism" section for now. Each of these responses needs to be attributed to a Wal-Mart spokesperson or a document Wal-Mart has published. They need to be rephrased so that it's clear that Wal-Mart is the one doing the responding. We can't write things like "Critics have also mislead the public" without attribution, and we need to cite sources. Wikipedia articles should not accuse anyone of misleading, being "unfair" or "deceptive", etc. See Wikipedia:No original research, Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, and Wikipedia:Verifiability. Rhobite 22:35, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

If you have a problem with it then rewrite it, don't just delete it. Knuckle50 00:14, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I rewrote it and restored it Knuckle50 00:36, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not going to dig around for citations for each of your statements. I removed the section again; please make sure to attribute each "critics say"/"wal-mart says" statement to a specific person or publication. You'll notice that each claim in the criticism section is attributed to a group such as UFCW, and provides a link to the statement. Rhobite 00:49, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like you want citations for each sentence of each bullet point making this the most highly documented and cited section of the whole article. Are you holding this section up to higher standards for a reason? Say disagreement? (Gibby 04:39, 6 January 2006 (UTC))

No, I think he's making a reasonable demand that the Criticism section should be more heavily supported because some of the claims about Wal-Mart are frankly, so shocking as to be not believable (that is, there is a high risk that they could be a deliberate smear). If the claims are true, then documentation from reputable sources should be easy to find in databases like ProQuest and LexisNexis.
Much of the rest of the article is self-verifying (because it is reasonable and internally consistent) or can be easily verified by reference to public sources like Wal-Mart's annual reports. The point of these demands for citations is to improve Wikipedia's quality, as well as minimizing the risk that any one of us contributors (including you) could get hit with a SLAPP.--Coolcaesar 05:00, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

The citations are good, some could be better. And dont trust everything you read!  ;) Hell, I've read some amazingly deceptive stuff in graduate school, some written by Nobel prize winners, columbia professors, Berkely graduates...people you would think are honest. And trust me when I'm saying I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt...they are either dishonest or stupid. (Example, Nita Rudra's slaughtering of the stolper samuelson model so she could argue that globalization isnt working for the poor in africa because they are unable to unionize...thus misinforming readers to achieve a pro union objective by mischarachterizing stopler samuelson and the enviornment it argues would bring about higher wages for labor...but that is a whole nother story I wont bore you with) (Gibby 05:06, 6 January 2006 (UTC))

You can't just slap a NPOV tag on it just because you disagree. (Gibby 15:42, 6 January 2006 (UTC))

Actually I agree with you ideologically, but that doesn't matter. I'm trying to keep opinionated statements out of the article. Here's an example. You wrote: "The documentary "Wal-Mart the High Cost of Low prices" mislead its viewers by suggesting that "Wal-Mart factories" were in poor condition and that Wal-Mart factory workers were subject to abuse and inhumane conditions. Wal-Mart is a retail store and owns no factories and creates no products of its own." and linked to [13] as a 'source' for this statement. But that really doesn't address the POV part of your statement, which is that the documentary misled viewers. The biz.yahoo.com page does not discuss the documentary and it doesn't use the word "misled".
It's true that you have cited some of your premises, but your conclusions are all original argument. You cannot draw your own conclusions in articles, it's a violation of the Wikipedia:No original research policy. You also wrote that "If competitors upend, it is because of consumers not Wal-Mart", with no source for that opinion except our own article on Competitive market. But that article doesn't mention Wal-Mart either, and plus, other Wikipedia articles are not appropriate references.
You also wrote that "Critics of Wal-Mart wages, like those found in the documentary “Wal-Mart the High Cost of Low Prices” argued that Wal-Mart is so large that the “meager” pay it gives employees has a major impact on driving down the wages of labor worldwide. This is not possible as Wal-Mart’s global sales were less than $300 billion which represents only a fraction of the GDP (more than $10 trillion) of the United States alone." You again cited biz.yahoo.com and the CIA factbook for this statement, both of which support only your premises, not your conclusion. Please stop adding original argument to Wikipedia articles. Rhobite 15:57, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

1. The biz page lets readers be aware of Wal Marts sales...they are a result of retail not manufactoring. This is evidence of Wal Mart as a retail store not a creator of products as that documentary isninuates.

2. Wal Mart sends inspection teams abroad, if their findings are different than the real working conditions it is a result of fraud on the part of the manufactorer. Furthermore, are you arguing that Wal Mart owns factories as Wal Mart the High Cost of Low Prices insinuates?

3. On the arguement that Wal Mart drives down global wages, that would constitute original research had it not been stated in a documentary. Alls I have to do is get into a documentary and its fine? No, I'll just look for an appropriate statement because...well its correct. (Gibby 16:37, 6 January 2006 (UTC))

I already explained my complaints, I'm not going to repeat myself. You can't draw your own conclusions in articles. This means you can't use biz.yahoo.com and the CIA factbook to "prove" that Wal-Mart doesn't influence the economy. How do I know that you're qualified to draw that conclusion? Please do not remove the POV tag again - it is against the rules. Rhobite 06:48, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

THe sentence was corrected so that no conclusion, however correct it is, is drawn. (Gibby 07:30, 8 January 2006 (UTC))

That is just one example, I pointed out other POV issues above. But you haven't even fixed the U.S. economy paragraph - you cannot write "This is a questionable statement to make". That is a statement of opinion. And you are still drawing a conclusion in an article. Unless you're a published economist, you are just not qualified to speculate about Wal-Mart's impact on wages and the U.S. economy. Rhobite 03:44, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes you can, it is a questionable statement to make given 1. they have no evidence and 2. its contrary to available evidence. There is no problem. (Gibby 16:05, 10 January 2006 (UTC))

So you're an economist? What is your field of expertise? Where did you receive your degree? What qualifies you to speculate about Wal-Mart's impact on the U.S. economy? Rhobite 18:10, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I have degrees from Penn State in Political Science and History, I am completing a Masters degree in POlitical Science with a focus on political economy, rational choice, free markets. I'm not speculating at all. Its basic fact that its a poor assumption to make the claim that wal mart drives down global wages based on the information available. I stated...I'm repeating again for your thick skull, that it is "A questionable" assertion to make. I did not pov original research and say it was wrong. I said it was questionable and provided cited facts as to why.

Why don't you report yourself while your at it for repeatidly putting it back up there after your comments have been addressed. you're only really complaining because your pov is hate of wal mart (Gibby 06:12, 11 January 2006 (UTC))

Wikipedia:No personal attacks. I will not continue a discussion with someone who lowers himself to petty namecalling. Rhobite 07:11, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

The idea of the section is valid; it's currently crap. many of the sources are from Wal-Mart itself and it is super POV. BabuBhatt 09:35, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

some sources are from Wal-Mart for good reason, Wal-Mart makes the information available so independently minded people can find out if the documentaries and critics are true or not...there is even more information out there that shows how fallaciously reasoned critics are. I will go find more data on the fallacious reasoning of people who argue that Wal-Mart drives down global wages and cite it. Then i'm deleting the POV tag. (Gibby 17:12, 11 January 2006 (UTC))

i'm not convinced that most editors understand the npov rule...I am convinced that many editors are motivated along ideological lines to eliminate competition. Most reasons given for complaints of this section are petty and bogus...including the deletion of bullets. (Gibby 03:59, 16 January 2006 (UTC))

Two complaints of criticism

right now the major complaints of this section were the following two points

  • "Wal-Mart the High Cost of Low Prices" appropriatly pointed out that it is unfair to subsidize Wal-Mart through taxpayer funds and not their competitors but it is tenuous to make this an arguement against Wal-Mart (as the documentary does) rather than an arguement against government influence/prefrencing over economic outcomes. Wal-Mart does not create these subsides, governments do.
  • Critics of Wal-Mart wages, like those found in the documentary “Wal-Mart the High Cost of Low Prices” argued that Wal-Mart is so large that the “meager” pay it gives employees has a major impact on driving down the wages of labor worldwide. This is not possible as Wal-Mart’s global sales were less than $300 billion which represents only a fraction of the GDP (more than $10 trillion) of the United States alone.[14][15] Thus its impact on world labor wages is negligible when factoring in the GDP of every state in which Wal-Mart operates.

Given much of the page above it, these are factual statements, and I dont see why they cannot be included. I will look for more citation to make O.R. critics ahppy. (Gibby 19:05, 11 January 2006 (UTC))

Donation BLA BLA BLA

Im deleting the donation crap since this clearly is a good old publicity stunt by Wal-mart.

You can't just remove things because they reflect positively on Wal-Mart. The donation section is sourced and written in a neutral tone. It should stay. Rhobite 23:29, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Bullpaddies Rhobite, no other article about a major corporation includes a fluff section about its donations to "worthy causes", with special emphisis on how it pays money into local causes. The whole section is nothing but propaganda, the fact that it is true does not make it less propaganda. If every other Wikipedia entry, or even most Wikipedia entries, for companies included a section on donations then the Wal-Mart donations section wouldn't be propaganda, since a donations section is not common to other articles its existence in the Wal-Mart article demonstrates that it is propaganda. --soto 18:13, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Racism charges

that has to be the dumbest complaint against wal-mart i've read to date. That even beats hate Wal-Mart made a big deal about nothing. (Gibby 17:52, 8 January 2006 (UTC))

Protected

I have protected the article from edit warring. I will try to unprotect soon but please use talk page to solve disputes. --a.n.o.n.y.m t 17:34, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

You should have blocked Gibby for repeatedly removing a POV tag from the article. Rhobite 03:36, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
I can't block someone for doing that, but I would like more discussion by him. If he has violated 3rr then report it. --a.n.o.n.y.m t 03:47, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
He's disrupting this article by refusing to discuss his opinionated section, and refusing to let other users tag it as POV. Rhobite 03:49, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
I have unprotected the article to be fair. If the removal of the tag continues without discussion then tell me. A good idea is to make an area to discuss the tag. --a.n.o.n.y.m t 04:03, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Why is the POV tag there? Please discuss this. --a.n.o.n.y.m t 04:05, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I explained above. Gibby is forming conclusions based on data - this is original research. He writes that Wal-Mart critics make "questionable statements". He doesn't attribute the use of the word "questionable", it is his own opinion. Rhobite 04:27, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
Gibby I think you should make a statement here too to explain why you removed the tag. --a.n.o.n.y.m t 18:50, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I edited this part of the article to get rid of all of the conclusions and such, fix spelling and grammar, and put it in the NPOV. Did Gibby remove all of these corrections? Knuckle50 00:42, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Edit War on this page

  • DO NOT EDIT WAR!
  • CITE YOUR SOURCES!
  • YOU ARE NOT A SOURCE!
  • DO NOT USE PERSONAL ATTACKS!

That is all. Further personal commentary will be removed on sight. Personal attacks will be dealt with. This is a blanket warning, and this page is on its way to protection if somebody doesn't figure it out. --Tznkai 07:16, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

opposition to unions

I've removed Gibby's boilerplate tag because he hasn't actually brought out specific grievances for that section. If he's really determined, he may reinsert it back in and I won't proceed further; but it's his loss that he aggravates the community. Note, if he actually cites something like "undue weight", then it would make him more reasonable. Elle vécu heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 00:27, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

It has pov and original research.

You can't say "Aggressivly" resisted unionization that is a pov. Not to mention Wal-Mart shows no "anti-union" video. Wal-Mart shows a video to new employees that discusses what unions do and what they do not do. It is a pro union pov to describe Wal-Mart as anti pov. ANd some of the links lead down to the bottom of the wiki page providing no clear evidence of citation. Let me add one more thing for the guy below...having a pro-union pov tone and mistating Wal-Marts policy is a violation of the NPOV wiki policy...

(Gibby 05:30, 12 January 2006 (UTC))

For one quick note, POV means point of view, not non-neutral point of view, which is what WP:NPOV requires for the article as a whole. Secondly, you need to provide specifics.--Tznkai 05:36, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

I just gave three chief. (Gibby 05:40, 12 January 2006 (UTC))

Fix it, Prove it. (actually, that goes for both sides, kill it), and prove it.--Tznkai 05:43, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

I removed the word "aggressively" - I agree that the word is unnecessary and opinionated. I also removed the sentence about anti-union videos, but if someone can provide a cite for this statement it should be reinserted. I couldn't find a reference that said videos were shown to all new employees, although Mother Jones reported that anti-union videos were shown to employees who wanted to unionize the Paris, TX store. It would be good to have a less biased source than Mother Jones. Rhobite 05:58, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

I reworded the section, removed parts with citations of bogus claims or misleading information, eliminated pro union anti wal mart pov to make it more neutral and eliminated original research. (Gibby 06:08, 12 January 2006 (UTC))

one point you should be made aware of mattley is that the NLRB is not a legal entitity as that segment makes it out to be. The citation links only to a NLRB opinion not actual jurisprudence. As such it is not a very good citation for what the body says. If you wish to include the link, by all means rework the proceeding words to reflect what the citation claims rather than misleading readers. (Gibby 19:27, 13 January 2006 (UTC))

According to this the NLRB is "an independent agency of the United States Government charged with conducting elections for union representation and with investigating and remedying unfair labor practices. It is governed by a five-person board, whose members are appointed by the President and a presidentiallly-appointed General Counsel. The General Counsel acts as a prosecutor and the Board acts as an appellate judicial body from decisions of administrative law judges." That sounds to me like a reputable organisation whose opinion should carry some weight. What is it about the section that you find misleading? Why don't you rework it, since you are the one who thinks it needs reworking? You are now removing whole sections of cited information with no explanation other than the assertion that they are bogus or misleading. You must see how innappropriate that is, surely? Mattley (Chattley) 19:36, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

they are not a dejure legal body. period, the body prior to the citation makes it appear as if Wal-Mart is in fact violating the law as determined by a court of law. Treating the NLRB as a legal body against Wal-Mart is like taking a communist to a court of Bank Managers...its silly. The body of that paragraph needs to reflect that it was the opinion of the NLRB that wal-mart violated the law (even though preventing handbill solicitation is not in violation of the law), the NLRB was exibiting bias in this instance as the solicitors were union workers. BY law, Wal-Mart has the right to refuse to allow anyone to solicite material on their property regardless of their status. The NLRB treats unions as exceptions which is in fact not legal, yet this article treated it as such. THis is incorrect and misleading. (Gibby 19:44, 13 January 2006 (UTC))

and why dont i re-write it? because i think complaints of wal-mart not letting union people pass out material at wal-mart stores (As they have a rigth to do) is hardly a complaint and possibly weakens any "anti" union arguement you might have (assuming we have informed readers) as it would look tenuous and well just plain whiney. (Gibby 19:45, 13 January 2006 (UTC))

WTF Mattley, no discussion, WTF? I pointed you out to the discussion, you responded, then reverted. THAT IS INSUFFECIENT!!!!! WTF. You are demonstrating no willingness to compromise or work with anyone...nor even address the complaints in here. Stop reverting without discussion. You are a vandall and a bully, quit it! (Gibby 19:51, 13 January 2006 (UTC))

The edit that I reverted removed substantial sections [16]. It is very hard to tell exactly what was changed, as virtually the entire thing shows up red because of the amount of difference between the two. Therefore I can't be categorical about this, but it seems that you took out this:
Martin Levitt, a consultant who worked on the program, claims that Wal-Mart does "whatever it takes to wear people down and destroy their spirit." Each manager, he claims, is taught to take union organizing personally: "Anyone supporting a union is slapping [their] supervisor in the face." Wal-Mart has maintained books to be passed out to its management, describing how to bust a union organizing attempt; one that leaked is titled "Labor Relations and You, at the Wal-Mart distribution center", and was prepared by a professional union buster named Orson Mason. Managers have a policy of calling the police and having union organizers arrested for trespassing in order to have them removed from the premises. [17]
and this:
[Of the few stores that have successfully organized, at least one (Jonquière in the province of Québec) was closed down within that year, before management had negotiated with the union regarding a contract.] Although Wal-Mart denies that the vote in favor of unionization was the motive for this closure, the Quebec Labor Board has ruled that this action was taken to punish workers for excercising their right to organize, and has ordered that Wal-Mart pay the workers appropriate damages. The board will determine the appropriate remedies for the former employees at a later point in time. In a separate ruling, the labor board rejected Wal-Mart's request to turn over the names of all employees who signed up to unionize in some of their other stores.[18]
Where was the discussion on those major changes? And while you are at it, hadn't you better inform the NLRB that they are 'not a de jure legal body' and are on the same level as a bunch of bank managers? They seem to be under the impression that they are 'a federal body that administers the National Labor Relations Act'. [19]

Mattley (Chattley) 20:30, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

To the first point, the citation does not cover the amount of data the paragraph portrays...not even close. The complaints are re-addressed in my rework as far as the solicitation goes.

ANd for the Quebec part the citation was again inadequate for the preceeding paragraph. It was thus cut down in size to reflect cited and available data rather than original research and speculation (Gibby 20:37, 13 January 2006 (UTC))

And try taking a course on constitutional law sometime. THe NLRB is not a legal body that determines or interprets law...they are administrative only!!!!!!!!!!! And as such cannot truely declare anyone in violation of anything. Such decisions are reserved for the courts (Real courts). (Gibby 20:39, 13 January 2006 (UTC))

Inadequate? How so? You took out the stuff about findings of the Quebec Labour Board that are in the source here [20]. Are you saying that that didn't happen? As for the NLRB and US constitional law, my knowledge on these subjects is indeed limited, partly because I do not live in the USA. But are you really suggesting that the opinion of the NLRB on is not qualified to issue opinions on matters of labour law and that its findings carry no weight? Where it says that the General Counsel [of the NLRB] acts as a prosecutor and the Board acts as an appellate judicial body from decisions of administrative law judges. - is that not the case? Mattley (Chattley) 21:05, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

For the quebec one it only links to the NLRB webpage thus citing nothing of what was previously said. The other link has nothing in regards to union busters among other material that needed citation. Just citing the NLRB does not provide suffecient weight to say much of what was said. THus it was pov and original research, my edit reflects the best edit to date on removing this pov and original research with the cited material given.

The NLRB is not qualified to issue legally binding statutes or interpretations. THat is reserved for congress, district courts, and the U.S Court of Appeals (Which hears all decesions in "cases" of the NLRB before they are finalized)Thus to say they are simply illegal is not true one must say "in the opinion of the nrlb" etc.(Gibby 21:15, 13 January 2006 (UTC))

you've changed the quebec link post hoc, i'll review it now (Gibby 21:16, 13 January 2006 (UTC))

It is the same link that was there before, but I think something has gone seriously wrong with the numbering of footnotes, leaving them out of sync and making it difficult to match them with specific points. I don't know how to sort that out - but it may be that points that appear inadequately cited in fact are fine if the numbering was right. Mattley (Chattley) 21:32, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

i had originally deleted most of that paragraph because the link provided went to the NLRB website and had nothing to do with Canada. I had seen the documentary High Cost of Low Prices and was aware of the incident and left a refrence. I now included the original complaint with the proper link. (Gibby 03:34, 14 January 2006 (UTC))

Gibby, why did you restore the points I removed? [21]

[22][23] None of them were supported by their purported sources. If you follow those links you see that they do not touch on the points they precede, or at best, only touch on one aspect of the point being made. Mattley (Chattley) 19:31, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Gibby is clearly schizophrenic or psychotic, if he (or she) can't even understand the concept of ensuring that one's assertions are adequately supported by the evidence cited. I believe continuing the discussion further would be about as pointless as arguing with a psychotic homeless person on a street corner. If I were you, I'd get an admin to block Gibby. --Coolcaesar 20:09, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, but I think those comments are bad form and I want to distance myself from them. I too am very frustrated by Gibby's editing, but I'm going to stay away from making any personal comments or inflammatory remarks. I do think you are right that the chances of getting productive editing from Gibby are low, but not the rest of what you said. He has been blocked now, by the way. Mattley (Chattley) 20:22, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

point form versus prose

I don't want to get into a revert war over this either. Encyclopedias should always write in smooth flowing prose format, not point format. If it is disjunct enough to warrant a point format it usually means the entire section in itself needs rewording. We should avoid using point formats like the plague, and only very sparingly. I don't think it makes it look cleaner at all. But I won't press the issue. Elle vécu heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 06:21, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

this is a guide not a rule. The bullet form allows for easy reading, and keeps the section small rather than having to make subsections for each individual counterpoint criticism. Not to mention proper prose form requires paragraphs flow together with connecting sentence. Since this is a point by point counter criticism this is impossible. Bullets are the only proper way to approach this. And yes, the section below this one does...(Gibby 06:28, 12 January 2006 (UTC))

There is no reason to put bullets in front of full paragraphs - it looks silly, serves no purpose, and goes against the manual of style. No other section in this article uses bullets in front of each paragraph. Gibby, please look at any featured article and notice that paragraphs do not have bullets in front of them. Bullets are used for lists, not paragraphs. Rhobite 06:30, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Wal-Mart in popular culture

  • Billie Letts's 1995 novel Where the Heart Is depicts 17-year-old Novalee Nation moving in to, and give birth in, an Oklahoma Wal-Mart.
  • Letts' book was adapted in 2000's Natalie Portman-Ashley Judd film Where the Heart Is. The film, costarring Joan Cusack and Stockard Channing, changes the setting to a Lubbock, Texas Wal-Mart.
  • Tibby, a character in Ann Brashares 2001 novel, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, spends her summer working at 'Wallmans'. The character is also included in the 2005 film adaptation, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
  • A ultra-slick, out-of-control sled ridden by Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) into the toy donation bin outside of a Wal-Mart in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. The scene was filmed outside a Frisco, Colorado Wal-Mart.
  • A Wal-Mart in the middle of the New Mexico desert serves as a product placement parody in the 2003 animated comedy Looney Tunes: Back in Action.
  • Sy Parrish, the main character in [[2002 in film|2002's One Hour Photo, works at a large discounter called "Sav-Mart"
  • "Sprawl-Mart" is a big-box retailer in Springfield on Fox's The Simpsons. In thea 2005 episode "On A Clear Day I Can't See My Sister", the Sprawl-Mart carries the sign "Not a parody of Wal-Mart".
  • "Mega-Lo Mart" (with a pronunciation similar to "megalomania") is a large discount retailer on Fox's King of the Hill. When Mega-Lo Mart begins selling propane, Strickland Propane can't compete with their prices, and protagonist Hank Hill loses his job selling propane and propane accessories. Ironically, he is hired to sell propane at Mega Lo Mart until the store is burned down when an inept supervisor causes a gas leak.[50]
  • A "Wall-Mart" built in Comedy Central's South Park episode "Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes" runs all local stores out of business. The retailer is depicted as a self-aware and independent entity, building itself across the nation to take over everything, and forcing employees and managers to work there against their will. The episode also pokes fun at consumers: South Parkers are forced to shop at Wall-Mart because they are unable to resist its everyday low prices. The town, unable to resist shopping there, tries to burn Wall-Mart, but a crew rebuilds it the following day. Stan and Kyle eventually destroy the Wall-Mart by destroying its heart, a mirror in the electronics department that reflects the image of Stan and Kyle and they realize that the heart of Wall-Mart is the consumers. South Park residents return to a mom and pop store until it too becomes a big box retailer, which residents promptly burns to the ground.
  • A JibJab comic called "Big Box Mart" premiered on the October 13, 2005 Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Another cartoon, "This Land", also parodies Wal-Mart.
  • 'Wall 2 Wall Mart' is seen in The Fairly OddParents.
  • 'Stuff-Mart is a location in the Veggie Tales video "Madame Blueberry," which addresses consumerism.
  • Former Miami Herald humor columnist Dave Barry penned a column detailing the early millennium fascination with spending the night in an RV parked outside Wal-Mart.
  • In Fox's The Simple Life, socialite Paris Hilton appears to be unaware of the existence of Wal-Mart and asks "Do they sell things for walls?" Cohort Nicole Richie comparatively appears more knowledgable, announcing "people hang out at Wal-Mart." In a later episode, the pair visit a Wal-Mart and are shown frolicking, reading magazines on the floor, and "hanging out".

FYI RHOBI!!!! FYI. Those are bullets, FYI! (Gibby 06:33, 12 January 2006 (UTC))

That is obviously written as a list of short unrelated items, not in paragraph form. Stop yelling at me. Rhobite 06:37, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not yelling, I'm making a point. A point you missed. The two sections are identical, each paragraph is unrelated to the next except that it is related by the heading...criticism of critics or wal-mart in popular culture. (Gibby 17:15, 12 January 2006 (UTC))

comments refactored/removedunder WP:RPA because of WP:NOT and WP:NPA violations. See history if you're really intrested.--Tznkai

I am not a computer specialist so someone please add the current Maryland info to this article. Thanks ultimate guardian Rhobite!!!!

Try discussing this Rhobite, you have no good point. You say its for lists but this is a list. You said nothing else had bullets but 3 other sections have bullets. This is an entire section with no connecting points. Prose form requires paragraphs to flow from one to the next with connecting sentences. These sentences, having no connection with one another, require bullets to demonstrate their seperate and independent points. The only other option is to subsection each critisism of criticism just as the criticsm section is done, but this will make the page longer (Gibby 16:19, 16 January 2006 (UTC))

Lack of security

Don't you kno guys that I feel insecure at WAl-mart can you pleade add that?

misaddressment of criticism

Gibby, the idea of "forcing competitors" out of business is related to price-fixing, not that Wal-Mart is invoking government restrictions that they cannot shop at anywhere other than Wal-Mart. You might want to choose a more appropriate rebuttal. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 03:26, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

no you are just realizing the utter stupidity of critics of wal-marts complaints. They believe that Wal-Mart drives local buisnesses out...But fail to take into account that it is them the consumer, not shopping at these competitors that drives them out. This criticism of wall-mart is so absurdly fallacious...I'm glad you just might see the light here.
THe point stays! (Gibby 03:43, 17 January 2006 (UTC))
Well actually no, the rebuttal just misses the point. I'm sure in fact you could find another rebuttal, that it is an issue of consumer choice, or whether the consumer choice had no decision at all. It does boil down to who has better policies of course, but then there are issues at hand that make this far less simple. I was expecting a much more sophisticated rebuttal. Really, it just looks like a one liner which misses the point. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 03:46, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
This criticism, along with its response, needs to be framed in terms of who is making the criticisms. It's true that liberals believe that Wal-Mart forces competitors out of business. This belief may be fallacious; that's not up to Wikipedia to decide. Libertarians believe that market forces (and therefore consumers) favor Wal-Mart due to its efficiency and cost-cutting, and that there's nothing morally wrong with beating competitors. The libertarian belief may also be fallacious. Again, not Wikipedia's call. These are two opinions, they should both be presented neutrally in this article. I think the current "response" to this criticism is biased because it does not explain the reasons behind the anti-Wal-Mart argument but it explains the free market argument. Rhobite 04:57, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

This is why I have not made the statement, "this is a fallacious statement to make" even though it is...the libertarian view is not fallacious...the facts are as such. The United States has a competitive capitalist market economy. Transactions in the market are free and thus voluntary. Wal-Mart has competition. Consumers are free to choose where they shop. Thus Wal-Mart cannot destroy buisnesses if free, indpendent consumers have voluntarily chosen Wal-Mart for their shopping needs.

You would of course argue that this is a POV way of putting which is fine, the way it is already written in the article is already perfect.

This response section does not give a free market arguement it gives a market based arguement in opposition to a fallaciously reasoned (in my opinion) anti market, anti buisness opinion. Most economists, even the highly deceptive keynesian economists won't make half the arguements that the populist critics of wal-mart make because they know they simply arent true.

They'll rail about "unfair" practices like "squeezing" distributors by demanding lower prices from them by using their purchasing clout as strong motivation for reduced prices which can be passed on to consumers (which in my opinion is not bad) but they'll never say that Wal-Mart's presence destroys small town economies because that shifts the blame from the consumer to the store...CONSUMERS SHOP AND SPEND MONEY IN STORES, WAL MART DOESNT!

(Gibby 07:18, 17 January 2006 (UTC))

You are still missing the point. Let's make this hypothetical: if a very large retail corporation has enough resources that it can absorb temporary (or permanent) losses in particular areas, it would be possible for it to sell some of its goods at below the market rate in order to attract more customers. It could, for example, open a store in town A, undercut existing local businesses that could not absorb losses to the same degree, and gain a large share of the market. If other businesses went bust because they lost this custon, it would indeed be a result of the choices consumers made, but it would also be a result of aggressive pricing policies on the part of the big store. If the big store had an effective monopoly because of the closure of its competitors - say because there are no equivalent stores close by - then it would be difficult to argue that consumers in fact had a choice. Perhaps in theory they might, but the consumer isn't the abstract entity of libertarian theory but a real person who has to find the time and the bus fare or gas money to go shopping. Mattley (Chattley) 15:48, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

It has not been proven that wal-mart does this, nor is it profitable do to so. Once Wal-Mart raises prices (higher than normally) to recoupe lost profits competition will quickly return. Wal-Mart would be forced by competition to lower prices, and if they were predatory as you suggest they would have to lower prices further and take a loss. It would be a never ending cycle of taking losses where the period of earning profits never matched up to the lost profit. Predatory pricing is also illegal in America; though difficult to prove. Economically speaking, its generally a stupid plan because most of the time, like described above, you will not come out on top.

Some Critics are assuming wal-mart is predatory pricing, which it is not, and they cannot prove wal-mart is doing this, but assume it because wal-mart has low prices. But I hate to break it to you but Target, K-Mart and many other stores have prices very close to that of wal-mart, I'm talking within pennies. And some products like video games, and cd's wal-mart is beat entirly by other stores including online retailers. (Gibby 17:21, 17 January 2006 (UTC))

I'm not saying it has been proven that Wal-Mart necessarily does that or has been proven to do that. Remember, I don't live in the US, so US retailers are not my special subject. Okay, we have ASDA which is now owned by Wal-Mart, but they'd have to pay me to shop there, frankly, as it's shit. Anyway, back to the point. I do not think you can simply assert that competition would return following the return of normal pricing. Remember that it wouldn't be necessary to charge prices above market level to recoup losses - in our hypothetical example, the losses would have been offset against the substantial profits generated by existing business in the first place. There wouldn't be any overall losses, just a reduction in overall profits. Any competitor business would need to be able to compete with the ordinary prices of the big store, not unusually expensive prices charged in order to recoup losses. Now on top of that - the competitor has to find the very substantial capital needed to acquire premises and infrastructure. A very large competitor might be able to do this - but equally they might decide that the price-war that would likely result would be too potentially damaging. It is very possible that no competitor would show up. The result might be cheaper prices - but this is not the only measure of social good and can be set against, for example, diversity of goods available, space for entrepreneurship by individuals, or other possible factors. I'm not, as it happens, arguing for government intervention. I don't really have a position on this (I don't think cuddly capitalism is possible, so why keep poking at it). But I think your faith in the free market is a little unconditional and your rejection of arguments that do not coincide with it a wee bit glib. Mattley (Chattley) 18:12, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
Mattley- Wal-Mart could set prices below cost in a given area and use other stores to subsidize the losses. Wal-Mart could wait until local competition is elimininated then raise prices to monopoly levels. Wal-Mart could drop prices any time a local competitive threat emerged. This is textbook predatory pricing. Wal-Mart has not been found guilty (after final appeal) of any of these practices in the US (as far as I can locate on FindLaw). Given the number of politicians and prosecutors who would love to catch Wal-Mart breaking anti-trust laws, I doubt Wal-Mart has ever engaged in this practice. Wal-Mart has been convicted of violating states' "mandatory markup" laws. Wal-Mart has been accused of abusing loss leaders, but this is not predatory pricing. Wal-Mart's consistent gross margin over the last ten years shows that the company has not been able to extract monopoloy rents on any significant scale. Feco 00:53, 18 January 2006 (UTC)


Mattley, my "faith" in free markets is not faith, its scientific fact, it is rigorous examination of historical facts, its the logical conclusion from correct assumptions, it is the understanding of rational behavior.

Profits are the incentive to do something. If you can enter a market and make a profit someone will do so. The higher profits that are to be made the more competition enters that market. The more competition enters that market the further prices will drop. The more prices drop the more effecient and innovative companies have to be to maintain profits. Profits will drop as prices continue down, and some companies will go out of buisness. What remains is the creame of the crop. Prices rise again as much of the competition is gone, profits increase, these new higher profits attract new competition. They cycle continues.

This is scientific and historically proven fact.

Its not faith, its science.

Anyone who believes in socialism, communism, gift economies hold onto mystical beliefs akin to religious mythology...that means they require faith of some form. But not free market economies. They are only unbelievable because it stands in stark contrast to the propogandic populist bull you've been fed your whole life. Its also shocking to discover how greed and profits can be made to do wonderfully positive things for society...basically free market capitalism turns your whole comfortable world upside down. You and many others will continue to reject it, despite the overwhelming evidence, because you do have a strong true believer faith in something that can never and will never work. (Gibby 01:21, 18 January 2006 (UTC))

ps..basically, coming to the conclusion that free market capitalism works means that other solutions do not...it also may implicate these other solutions, including your own prefrences as the faults which cause or sustain much of the worlds problems like racism, poverty, unemployment, international conflict, elitism, special interests, totalitarian governments, human rights abuse... (Gibby 01:24, 18 January 2006 (UTC))


I just did a huge politics study unit on the criticism of Wal-Mart and it is, for the majority, the summary of ignorant business owners who think they were 'had' by the corporation. It is common sense people - not force, that makes the company do so well. Think about this - a butcher in your local town sells indepedantly branded meat for $15/lb. Wal-Mart sells brand-name products for a fraction of the cost. Who do you think the people who want to save money will go to?

Don't be ignorant and lash out at the company just because you think its evil. I added the disputed objectivity warning because the Criticsm of Wal-Mart is now a giant portion of the article. A lot of these comments also need some citations, so I will be tweaking around likewise. ^_^ Lots of love. Frozencat 05:20, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Comparing Walmart's Revenue to Greece's GDP

It is nonsensical to compare Walmart's Annual Revenue to Greece's GDP. Greece's GDP is the sum total of all goods and services produced in that economy during the past year. Walmart's Annual Revenue is merely the total of all goods and services sold in that "economy" during that past year. The difference is this: Greece's GDP includes only goods and services created from scratch in Greece; the GDP measure is designed to exclude products and services imported from other countries. Walmart's Revenue includes all of the goods and services bought from other retailers. Walmart does not "create" its goods and services, but merely buys them from other companies, and sells them to consumers. While the people/industries of Greece create ~$230Bil worth of goods and services in a year, Walmart does not create nearly that much.

I agree with above. Following are the options I see:

Options:

1) Remove the GDP comparison text. *best option IMHO*

2) NPOV the GDP comparison text by incorporating something like the following:

"..comparing corporate annual revenues to GDP of countries worldwide is not a perfect comparison methodology, as GDP is a value-added measure and sales are not. To make this comparison truly comparable, sales should be re-calculated as value-added. This can be calculated as the sum of salaries and benefits, depreciation and amortization and pre-tax income.

However, whilst acknowledging this, the comparison of gross annual revenues of corporations to countries' GDP is designed as conceptual to illustrate the growing economic dominance of global corporate giants in the global economy, says ResearchWorldwide.com The Worldwide Commercial Real Estate Information Portal."[24]


3) Improve #2, by actually doing the calulation described on Wal-Mart (I'm assuming that "doing math" doesn't count as original research), then a glance at the Walmarts 2004 Annual Report [25] results in the calculation:

Calculation:

+ Salary (proxy via Operating, selling, general and administrative expenses (OSG&M)): $51.1b

+ Depreciation and Amortization: $4.4b

+ pre-tax income: 10.3B

= $65.8B *MAXIMUM* (b/c OGS&M is more than salaries) FOR WAL-MART GDP (23% of the cited $285B)


Maybe text such as: "In Wal-mart's case, this calculation using the 2004 Annual Report [26] would reveal a maximum GDP of $63.8 via the calculation of OSG&M $51.1B + Depreciation and Amortization of $4.4B and Pre-Tax income of $10.3B"


NET: #1 is best. Both #2 and #3 are really ugly. But if you want to keep the GDP comparison in place, then I think you'd need #2 - and probably #3 - to keep the entry [NPOV]. It is going to make the entry ugly.


Jvandyke 23:37, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree that this comparison should be removed. Comparing a company's revenue to a country's GDP is meaningless, except as a vague "look how much money this is" measuring stick. I don't think we should calculate our own "GDP" for Wal-Mart, as that does fall under original research. Rhobite 00:10, 20 January 2006 (UTC)


unbalanced word view

I noticed that all the Wal-Mart criticisms in the article are from people in the U.S. I went to a Wal-Mart in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil about a year ago and everbody seemed happy with it. Any word on protests in other countries against having access to jobs and low-cost goods? RJII 02:54, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Thats because the United States, like many wealthy countries, has alot of morons incapable of understanding how market economies benefit the poor the most.

Plagrism

While trying to find a source for:

"In 1970, Sam Walton resisted a unionization push by the Retail Clerks Union in two small Missouri towns by hiring a professional John Tate, to lecture workers on the negative aspects of unions. On Tate's advice, he also took steps to instruct his workers on how the company had their best interests in mind, encouraging them to air concerns with managers and implementing a profit-sharing program. Shortly after this, Wal-Mart hired a consulting firm, Alpha Associates, to develop a union avoidance program. [citation needed]"

I noticed the verbage was strikingly similar to an article from Mother Jones: http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/03/ma_276_01.html.

Digging a little deeper, I found the culprit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wal-Mart&diff=24313028&oldid=24305542

Doing a bit of searching, and I found the culprit: a copy-and-paste job by [User:Izanbardprince|Izanbardprince] on Sept 29, 2005 (and a few edits slightly rewording things). For some reason, not only did no one catch the plagrism (it was in the article for several months, word-for-word!) but the original source was removed.

I would guess our current wording is still too close to the original source? I would work out a rewording, but I'm getting too tired to do it right now.. Ash Lux 04:17, 21 January 2006 (UTC)