Talk:Walmart

Archived discussion

• Talk:Wal-Mart/Archive 1 - topics include pre-2002 NPOV issues; size comparisons; length of intro; associate vs employee; praise; criticisms in the timeline; HyperMart and other Wal-Mart businesses; diversity measures; Feb 2005 NPOV issues; environmental impact; Sam Walton; greeters; Sam's Rules; product controversy; arrow graphics; non-family-friendly viewing; health benefits; Gundham Deathscythe; negative economic impact

Criticism

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.

Most criticisms apply to the entire big-box retail 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

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 backed 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

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!

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)

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)

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)

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.

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)

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)

Content to be added when protection ends

The June 2005 issue of Gourmet (magazine) has a feature story on Wal-Mart. There are some interesting factoids that are relevant to the wiki article... I can't get access to an online version, so I'm working from memory here:

1. Kraft cites Wal-Mart as a driver for cutting product lines to a few 'bests in brand.' Since Wal-Mart will only stock two or three leaders in a product category, suppliers are reducing product diversity in an attempt to aggregate their market share and reach Wal-Mart's radar screen.
2. A sales rep states that doing business with Wal-Mart is much more straight-forward and honest than with other grocers. Apparently other major grocers play all kinds of funny business (demand World Series tix, demand big kickbacks, charge high shelving fees) to geneate profit from their product selection biz. Wal-Mart doesn't do those things... instead purchasing products with no kickback-type costs.
3. There was a stat quoted in the article... WMT lowers prices 14%. Not sure if that was exclusive to grocery items, exclusive to department store items or inclusive on both. Also not sure if that was a measured price effect in a new market or the price differential upon entering. Feco 16:55, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'll try to dig up a printed version from the local library if an online copy can't be found. There were a few other pieces that struck me as relevant to the wiki article. Feco 04:50, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

If doing business with other grocers was such a horrible unprofitable deal, then why not just sell to Walmart? - Prince

Prince - I don't see where it says doing business with other grocers is unprofitable. Any business knows that you don't want to put all of your eggs in one basket, so they likely have to put up with the games that other grocers play.

Walmart plays plenty of games in their negotiation, like coming back later and demanding a lower price than you agreed on and threatening to remove your entire product line if you don't give it to them, thats why there was a coalition of toy makers last Christmas that totally refused to do business with Wal-Mart, and while Toys R Us has all the cool new stuff, Wal-Mart has cheap plastic dinosaurs that were painted by a child working a 90 hour week in China, without being given so much as a mask to wear . -Prince

Misc criticisms from Izanbardprince

Alice Walton paid $35 million for a painting at an auction, this amount of money could have insured 8,572 Walmart employees for a year.

The average full time sales clerk at Walmart is paid $14,000 a year before taxes, the cheapest health insurance plan Walmart offers full time employees is $60 a month ($720 a year) and has a $1,000 deductible, before the plan starts paying at 80/20, this means that if said employee's appendix ruptures, and that is the only medical cost that year, assuming the operation runs $20,000 (which is ludicrously CHEAP for the medical industry), that would leave the worker responsible for $5,720 of their bill, or more than 40% of their yearly pay, Walmart likes to pat themselves on the back for "protecting employees from financial ruin" through their health care plan, but thats still exactly what will happen to them anyway even if they are among the less than half of Walmart's employees that are even offered insurance.

Walmart deliberately violates child labor laws forcing children to work past 10 PM and operate hazardous machinery, after caught doing this with over a hundred minor employees in 2004 and paying little more than $100,000 in fines (slap on the wrist) and promised by George W. Bush's cronies at the labor department that they would be informed 24 hours ahead of time about any further investigations by the federal government, Connecticut found them violating the labor laws again, this time the company will have to deal with a "whopping" $3,300 fine—the maximum fine of $300 per incident. The 11 violations took place in Hartford, Norwalk and Putnam, and included illegally assigning youngsters to work on hazardous equipment such as compacters and vehicles, and working these children past 10 p.m. Children younger than 18 who are students are not supposed to work past 10 pm. A spokesman for Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell, said it's "worth considering toughening the fines" against employers that "willfully and repeatedly" violate child labor laws.

Walmart breaks the law by firing employees that are involved in union organizing, in several cases where found guilty they were forced by the court to re-instate the employees with full back pay, in many other cases they mask their illegal firings by citing other reasons.

Walmart says that it supports over 3 million supplier jobs in the US in an effort to belittle the figure of 1 millions manufacturing jobs they are responsible for deporting to China, many of these supplier jobs are office jobs, food vendor jobs, food manufacturing jobs, etc. that would have existed even if Walmart did not exist.

Walmart fired their number 2 executive, Tom Coughlin, in early 2005 for "$500,000 in questionable transactions", Mr. Coughlin has stated that the funds were used to stage anti-union activities, including paying bribes, in addition, Walmart also fired Rob Hey and Jared Bowen, the executives who reported Coughlin, apparantly in an attempt to silence a pair of whistle blowers.

Walmart has been found GUILTY in court of law, repeatedly for working their emoployees unpaid overtime and falsifying their time sheets to record only 40 hours worked, they are estimated by some accounts to have shorted their workers over $50 million.

Walmart refuses to carry magazines and CD's which have content "not suitable for families", in some rural areas Walmart is the only place to purchase music, worse yet, Walmart is such a huge customer that some smaller artists cannot afford to release two versions of their music, and are effectively forced to release an edited version only, this effectively forces the company's arbitrary, right wing, religiously motivated agenda onto their customers.

Worst of all is that even though we have labor laws and regulations to prevent the abuse of monopolies here in the United States, as long as George Bush is in office, they may as well not even exist. Izanbardprince 08:43, 20 Jun 2005

you are welcome to post germane, factual criticisms to the article if they are not already covered. Be prepared to include references for the source of facts you use. As an example, criticism of the Bush Administration's enforcement of regulations would better fit in George W. Bush than in Wal-Mart. I assume an admin protected the article because you were deleting content without any discussion the the talk page. Wikipedia should cover all elements of a topic, so please refrain from removing opposing viewpoints. Feco 17:15, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Actually, it was protected becauee of this 3RR violation report, followed by attempts to avoid the 3RR penalty by using open proxies. Noel (talk) 20:56, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Izan- are you still around? Either way, does anyone object to unprotecting the article? Feco 19:49, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I can unprotect it tonight or tomorrow morning if there's no objections. If users are breaking the 3RR, of course report them on the appropriate subpage of WP:AN and it'll be handled appropriately. Pakaran 23:41, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Unlocked

Alright, since there's no objections, I've unlocked the article. I'll be keeping an eye on it over the weekend. If users are vandalizing or breaking 3RR, of course report them at WP:VIP or the appropriate WP:AN subpages. Pakaran 14:53, 24 Jun 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)

Employees working off the clock

I've changed this paragraph to reflect the current company policy. It's against policy to work off the clock. Its the first thing you're told when you go to Day 1 Orientation. Your first task when you show up is to fill out a time adjustment sheet, stating the time you arrived. When you are at Wal-Mart, you are paid regardless if you are training or performing work. I have known associates that were disciplined for not filling out time adjustment sheets in the quantity of FIVE MINUTES (they were leaving and a customer asked them a question, according to policy, this is working and you should be paid).--Txredcoat 6 July 2005 22:37 (UTC)

I don't think their official, stated policy was ever in question. The problem is that in many stores there have been numerous, widespread violations of this policy, resulting in a de facto policy in which there is an expectation that associates will work off-the-clock. The criticisms should be characterized as such. If anything, discplining the associates for working off-the-clock seems to reinforce the impression that the managers who sometimes pressure them into doing it are never held responsible. — mjb 7 July 2005 21:55 (UTC)

Your statement is completely rational. As far as your view that managers are not held responsible, this is quite false. The door swings both ways in this case, as Associates who work off the clock are disciplined, as well as any management that may have asked/coerced/etc. the associate to violate the policy. Believe me, management is held to a high standard when it comes to policy enforcement. Again, I do understand your statement and find it rational. The only thing I can do is to try and clarify these misconceptions. As with all jobs, there are good things and bad things. Believe me, if something comes up that is completely true, I'm not going to deny it. If anything (and if I can legally do it) I will try to bring the full situation to light. However, in this case, what had been reported was incomplete. Yes, this has happened before, but the company has taken the responsibility to correct these actions.--Txredcoat 8 July 2005 03:22 (UTC)

I'm not sure if anything has changed, but as of about 10 minutes ago, the article ran in such a way that below the external links, part of the criticism section ran again, I don't know if this part is a repeat of the criticism in the article or additional criticism, but the article seems longer due to the repeat of sections.

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

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:

• Wal-Mart acknowledges criticism (fairly recent CNN article)

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)

Etiquette

I think some people here need a refresher on Principles of Wikipedia etiquette

• Assume good faith. Wikipedia has worked remarkably well so far based on a policy of nearly complete freedom to edit. People come here to collaborate and write good articles.
• Treat others as you would have them treat you.
• Be polite please!
  • People can't see you or know for sure your mood. Irony isn't always obvious, and blunt, raw text can easily appear rude. Be careful of the words you choose — what you intended might not be what others think.
• Sign and date your posts to talk pages (not articles!).
• Work toward agreement.
• Argue facts, not personalities.
• Don't ignore questions.
  • If another disagrees with your edit, provide good reasons why you think it's appropriate.
• Concede a point, when you have no response to it; or admit when you disagree based on intuition or taste.
  • Don't make people debate positions you don't really hold.
• Be prepared to apologize.
  • In animated discussions, we often say things we later wish we hadn't. Say so.
• Forgive and forget.
• Recognize your own biases and keep them in check.
• Give praise when due. Everybody likes to feel appreciated, especially in an environment that often requires compromise. Drop a friendly note on user's talk pages, or list them at Great editing in progress.
• Remove or summarize resolved disputes that you initiated.
• Help mediate disagreements between others.
• If you're arguing, take a break; if you're mediating, recommend a break.
  • Come back after a week or two. If no one is mediating, and you think mediation is needed, enlist someone.
  • Walk away or find another Wikipedia article to distract yourself — there are 665,371 articles on Wikipedia! Take up a Wikiproject or WikiReader, or lend your much-needed services at pages needing attention and Cleanup. Or write a new article.
• Remember what Wikipedia is not.
• Review the list of faux pas.
• Be civil.
• Avoid reverts and deletions whenever possible, and stay within the three-revert rule except in cases of clear vandalism. Explain reversions in the edit summary box.
  • Amend, edit, discuss.

The Ace!

Kettle, meet Pot. — mjb 07:55, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Mike I think you have met plenty of Pot in your time. You should share, it must be good stuff if you don't get it! The Ace!

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)

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. Unfocused 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)

Applicability of comparison to countries' GDPs

GDP and market capitalisation are not comparable. GDP is a measure of value-added. Profits are the equivalent for a firm. (unsigned comment by IP 38.118.73.78)

I understand the point you're making. I assume the stat was originally included to quantify the scale of Wal-Mart. For that purpose, it's somewhat informative to equate Wal-Mart's total sales to the annual output of a given coutntry. However, I think GNP is probably a better measure. Wal-Mart's sales figures are for the worldwide parent company... this is more appropriate to a GNP measure (nationality) as opposed to GDP (geography). Feco 29 June 2005 17:26 (UTC)

Removal of Officers/Directors from article

An anon user removed the table showing Wal-Mart's Board of Directors and CxOs. I belive the information is useful, especially since notable business/political figures often sit on boards these days (such individuals could be wikilinked as appropriate). In the spirit of 'wiki is not paper,' it doesn't seem like inclusion of this information does any harm. Since it's all raw facts that seem neutral to me (the act of stating who's on the board doesn't imply bias), I'd like to re-add the table. Comments? Feco 29 June 2005 20:29 (UTC)

I agree. Including the information seems useful, especially since some of the directors have wikipedia articles already, and completely NPOV. Gary D Robson 29 June 2005 23:42 (UTC)

I agree as well. At the very least, there should be a separate article for Wal-Mart's directors and officers linked from the Wal-Mart article. Having nothing there at all leaves a void. I suggest adding them back in here, and if there's enough opposition, breaking out to a related linked article (but still have the most prominent officers and their compensation here.) Unfocused 29 June 2005 23:53 (UTC)

I also agree. I am apalled at how this article seems to be actively manipulated to remove factual content. Wal-Mart should just change their policies and behaviors and salaries etc., rather than trying to censor facts about their store. Using anonymous editors too, to hide their obvious tampering. Pedant 2005 June 30 18:24 (UTC)

I disagree. An encyclopedia is a place you go to find good general background on a topic, not extremely detailed information of interest only to a tiny percentage of readers. It makes an article burdensome for a casual user. BTW, such information was not included on three companies I arbitrarily pulled up on wikipedia to compare.

I removed the table of directors (logged in BTW) because it was superfluous and unlikely to be up to date. Anyone who wants that information can easily obtain an up to date copy from the Walmat Web site, the NYSE or any of the stock report companies. With the exception of the CEO and CFO already mentioned at the start of the article none of the people links for the board of directors gave any further information. since people were complaining that the article was far too long for there to be any comment on the criticism of walmart it seemed to be the most appropriate thing to cut --Gorgonzilla 13:39, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

it appears you're going against a recently-established consensus. I'm going to put the content back in. Feco 21:10, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Feco, that's nonsense. There is no consensus. Aside from yourself, I noted 3 against the listing and 2 for it on the bottom half of talk page. The sample size is small, but when 50% of users think an item is inappropriate, it probably has no business being there. Isn't it obvious that anything worth including would receive a large majority of support?

My problem with the article is that there is no linked information on any of the officers listed. It appears to me to be nothing more than a way to pad out the article and provide a 'justification' for eliminating the criticism section. I can see the point in listing directors if there is an article linked to each director's name but as it stands there is no more than a stub behind any of them. --Gorgonzilla 22:51, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Renewable energy experiments

An item I inserted was removed by an anon, without discussion, as "green PR spin."

In fact, the text I inserted was careful to say nothing at all about whether the McKinney store should be regarded as a praiseworthy "green" effort, a cynical PR stunt, or simply Wal-Mart cost-cutting as usual. Whatever you think about it, It is a newsworthy fact about Wal-Mart. And it's somewhat unusual. Do you know of any Sears or Target that has wind turbine on top of it and a huge strip of photovoltaic cells plastered across its façade? If so, I will gladly stand corrected.

I personally happen to dislike Wal-Mart intensely. But my dislike doesn't go so far as to assume that they prefer to cut costs by squeezing employees, busting unions, and encouraging suppliers to move production oversees. I think they are just as happy to save a dime on heating costs as they are to squeeze it out of someone's benefits.

If it actually saves them money, you can bet that they'll do more of it—and their competitors will follow suit. That would be a good thing, IMHO. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:47, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm, I did read the above note before I just removed that piece (also not realizing it had been deleted and replaced). I might have hesitated to do so otherwise, but I'll let it stand for others to decide. As I said, I don't believe the qualities of one store among several thousand can be considered of general interest for an encyclopedia. Is this page going to catalog every exceptionally good or bad thing an individual store does? JR

It's not a question of good or bad. It's a question of something interesting about Wal*Mart. I repeat: what other store do you know of that has a wind turbine on top of it and a huge strip of photovoltaic cells on its facade? It's a) something notable, and b) something about Wal*Mart. If there were a Wal*Mart with a forty-foot-high talking, animated statue of Sam Walton on top of it, that would be about equally worthy of mention. Dpbsmith (talk) 22:29, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

It would be more appropriate if this was in an article on 'energy efficiency' rather than the main Walmart article. When corporate PR goons have apparently deleted every last piece of criticism from the main article this particular comment was really unacceptable. The lawsuits and union-busting allegations are far more representative of what the company is about than one token energy efficient store.

I have never suggested that the store was "representative of what the company is about," nor does the material in the article imply any such thing. In any case, others have added material pointing out that this is one store in three thousand, and quoting criticism that says that it does not offset Wal-Mart's "extremely polluting" business model. I don't think the original comment was "green PR spin" but in any case it seems to me that there is now adequate reverse English to remove any perceived spin. Which is fine. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:58, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

DPB, some people may also find it interesting if George Bush once volunteered at a soup kitchen in college; that doesn't mean it belongs in an enclopedia article. Now if he did it every week for four years, it might be newsworthy, just like it will be newsworthy if 500 U.S. Wal-marts (15% of existing stores) were "green." The more neutral wording now there is innocuous, but it's still needless. At least noone is trying to re-clutter the article with a list of corporate officers. JR

JR, I strongly believe that the only reason the corporate officers list was there in the first place was to pad the article out and push the criticism section further and further down the page. Ideally the criticism section would go at the end but then the suspiciously zealous defenders of Wal-Mart would keep padding out the article again. I think that the benefits section also needs some context, the only reason it is there is because Wal-Mart is widely criticized as being a low wage employer. --Gorgonzilla 18:40, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

the benefits section

See also the previous discussion on this topic.

The only reason that the benefits section is relevant is to rebut the frequent allegations that Wal-Mart is a poor employer. The section needs serious editing to bring it up to NPOV. And no, links to an external article are not a substitute.

This piece should probably be integrated into the general 'criticism' section because it is essentially a rebuttal of the claims of being a poor employer. Or it should be removed to the separate criticisms article. --Gorgonzilla 18:40, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

In my opinion, there should certainly be a section devoted to WMT's employee benefits. Their benefits (or lack thereof) are a major point of contention for anti-WMT activists. Wikipedia would be an excellent home on the internet for the exact details of their benefit plan, since I don't think the information is readily available (can be googled in <5 min). Corporate benefits are also objective facts: here's the benefit plan, here's who qualifies. For balance, the article should include comparable companies' benfits plans (I'm thinking Costco and Target). I don't think the benfits section should become a blanket section for pseudo-facts like "if an employee gets in a car accident, WMT only covers X" or "Wal-Mart doesn't offer elective surgery coverage". I think the strict comparison of Wal-Mart to its two closest peers will suffice. If all three are lacking a benfit item, the criticism belongs in a more general topic, not in WMT's article. If WMT lacks a benefit that the others provide, it can certainly be highlighted. The same goes if WMT has a benefit the others do not. Feco 21:08, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree that this would be the prefered way forward. I strongly suspect that the origins of the benefits section was as a rebuttal to complaints about poor treatment of workers and that the partisan pro-Wal-Mart editors then cut out the criticism. Incidentaly comparison with Costco is likely to be very unfavorable to WalMart since Costco is currently facing lawsuits from 'shareholders' complaining that they pay their employees too much and that their benefits are too generous! I would suggest comparison both to Costco and to industry averages. The real criticism of Walmart here is that their pay is so low that many of their 'benefits' which require an employee co-pay are utterly meaningless. A cashier making $14K a year does not have much money to put into a 401Km, the 50% match on 4% of income is only worth $260 a year in any case. Similarly health care benefits that cost $720 a year with a $1000 dollar deductable and only pay out 80% of costs above that fall well short of a comprehensive plan. As is the section is simply corporate PR spin with no context or balance.--Gorgonzilla 21:41, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Gorgonzilla moved the benefits overview to the criticisms section because it was a response to criticism (although this context still wasn't very clear, in the way it was presented). Today, Pedant moved it back to the employees section, in contradiction to the points made above. Discuss. — mjb 18:27, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

There seems to be much misunderstanding to why I added the Benefits section, yes it was me, it has NOTHING to do with Rebuttal, I am A walmart asociate, I work in Div 24 Deli/meats, I am an hourly assocate, in store 3233 The fifth highest selling Walmart store in the entire walmart store fleet. The reason that I added the section is to add merit to this entry, plain and simple we see to much of the he said she said going on in other parts of the entry, we need some cold hard facts, and as a walmart assocate I have access to the inside facts, not propaganda from either side of the Walmart fight, but cold hard facts used by walmarts finacal officers. So my objective here is to bring forward facts, not positive not negitive, but true, if the facts look good that fine, if they look bad that fine too, but this is suppose to be a factual entry, if walmart is good or bad will be revialed only in the true facts. Ok? The Ace!

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)

spelling of Teotihacan

Shouldn't Teotihacan be spelled Teotihuacan? Google says so. And one has a wiki article, the other doesn't.

I'm not making the change myself because I know nothing about either word. I just noticed google trying to correct the spelling.

Actually, it's TeotiWalmartcan, they bought the town, remember? Izanbardprince 14:48, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Slotting fees

Someone keeps removing the paragraph about Wal-Mart's policy of not charging "slotting" fees to suppliers. As far as I can tell, this paragraph is true. It cites its source, an article in Gourmet magazine. One should not remove factual information from articles without a proper reason. If we decide it's irrelevant to the article that's fine, but since it cites a source you cannot remove it on the grounds that it's somehow POV. Let's discuss this paragraph - I'm curious to find out why people are removing it. Rhobite 15:56, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

The graf was removed by the same user who removed the info on prices & real incomes. No comments as to why he has removed it. Feco 20:19, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

User:Izanbardprince says "slotting fees was a blanket criticism of all Walmart competitors, why not list the ones that DO charge the fees?)". That is no reason to remove the whole paragraph, but here are some random Google links: [3], [4]. I haven't read these fully, they may be POV nonsense but they do verify that the practice is widespread. There is no basis for insisting that individual retailers be listed. Rhobite 14:48, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I was not so much against the inclusion of this information, as to the arrogant and inflammatory tone of the paragraph, which read out as if to suggest that all of Wal-Mart's competition are unethical bastards that play gimmicks with their customers and suppliers, I have edited the paragraph to include what I believe to be the factual information contained, and I removed the redundant line that repeats the statement of how Wal-Mart is one of the grocers that doesn't charge slotting fees to it's suppliers, I believe the paragraph you added was extremely POV, and it should be fairly NPOV in it's current state. Izanbardprince 06:44, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Your latest revision to the paragraph is pure spin, and it appears to have been made up on the spot. The words you added "some grocers", "a slotting fee might be charged" are not based in reality. According to an article in the Washington Post, "These so-called slotting fees have become standard in the industry. A two-year study by the Federal Trade Commission, concluded in November, found widespread use of slotting fees and the sense among manufacturers that such fees are 'part of the cost of doing business,' said FTC staff attorney Patricia Schultheiss, who worked on the study." (Shelf Game; When Stores Force Makers to Pay Them Fees, You Lose; Margaret Webb Pressler. The Washington Post. Washington, D.C.: Jan 18, 2004. pg. F.05) I'll e-mail you the full text of the article if you like. Please do not make things up simply because you have a hunch that slotting fees are not widespread. Rhobite 14:22, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I prefer the expanded version. Since we don't have an article on Slotting fees and it's not a practice I'm personally familiar with, the additional explanation is helpful.

I've read the expanded and weaseled versions of the paragraph several times. Since for the life of me I simply cannot tell whether the paragraph is supposed to be pro-Wal*Mart or anti-Wal*Mart, I really don't believe there's any POV issue here—only a clarity-of-communication issue.

I think people are going overboard trying to read POV into everything. Dpbsmith (talk) 16:20, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps you should create an article "Criticism of the Grocery Industry", this is the "Criticism of WAL-MART" section, do I have a point there? Why don't you go find articles littered all over the internet about how they're generous and fair to their employees, everyone loves working for them, their turnover is way low, they're sensitive to local culture and where they place their stores, and in fact, they're so nice to work for, nobody wants a union and they've never had an organizing attempt in the history of the company, and their suppliers are paid so well, they can easily afford to keep jobs in the country, then you can write an article about why Wal-Mart is great and everyone loves them.

They're not only scumbags that ship jobs out of the country by the millions, they don't even pay the foreign workers a living wage for their own countries. (20 cents an hour, in China on average, where the living wage would be 80 cents).

My edits are not anti Wal-Mart, they're simply the facts, if they were a good company, they'd have an article praising them.

Izanbardprince 12:53, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

It is a discussion of supply practices in the grocery industry, and Wal-Mart is a huge part of the industry. I think it's relevant to mention that most grocers charge these fees and Wal-Mart doesn't. It is not appropriate to add text which rationalizes the use of slotting fees, nor is it appropriate to add text which demonizes them. I don't think that anything I've written presents the fees in a negative light; all I have said is that according to the FTC they're widespread. However you are clearly adding text which attempts to rationalize the use of fees - you even went so far as to write that the FTC is justified in not banning the fees. This is a POV statement of opinion.

Also, while it's clear that you're against Wal-Mart, please stay on the topic of the article. It isn't appropriate for you to use this talk page to discuss your opinion of the company. There are other message boards for that. Let's stay on the topic of improving the article: Drop the "scumbags" talk, please. Rhobite 16:24, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

The way you presented the paragraph put it in such a way, where at least when I read it, I got the mental image of a bunch of "grocery gangsters", and "up to $150,000 per store for a single item", I'm sure that to stock a brand of bread, they're going to charge $150,000 a store, suppliers themselves have no real idea of what people want, I'll grant you that Wal-Mart does a lot of research on buying trends, then tells the supplier what they're going to send them, thats an example of "pull" marketing, and probably one reason Wal-Mart doesn't charge these fees.

Other retailers are not as HUGE as Wal-Mart, and they don't have the resources to track buying trends, thus some chains charge these fees to manufacturors to make them do the work of deciding what to send them, thats a "push" system, and without some kind of system in place to keep bad items in check, you could end up drowning in them, a third approach to this is a Loyalty Card, which is what Kroger uses, it's a two-part tariff, where people who don't have a card or don't want "Big Brother" in their cart pay exorbitantly high fees to fund the purchase tracking system, thats also why I don't buy my groceries there, there was an incident in Ohio a while back where a man's house caught fire, it was deemed arson, and they arrested him as a suspect because his Kroger card recorded him purchasing a few fire logs for the fireplace in his living room, say you bought some fertilizer, and then a bomb goes off somewhere in town, guess who's getting their door kicked down by the ATF?

I'd say of all the systems, Wal-Mart's is probably the most efficient for the types of items they are used to carrying, but leaving it to the manufacturors, and charging stocking fees would probably encourage more innovation, the cost probably leads to more profit in the end, without being passed to the consumer. Izanbardprince 16:54, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Any reason (besides paranoia) why the original dollar figure for slotting fees should be left out? The scope of the fees makes a difference; without a figure, readers have no way to tell whether this is a major practice or not. Feco 21:00, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Why not state a typical range rather than just the most extreme figure, and if you simply quote "$150,000", why not give an example of a type of item subjected to a fee that harsh? The way the original paragraph looked, the reader is left with (1) ALL grocery stores EXCEPT Wal-Mart are guilty of extortion against their suppliers. (2) It's always an exorbitant fee charged. (3) For no reason. (4) The supermarket makes a killing while the supplier loses their butt. And (5) The customer practically gets handed the bill in the end.Izanbardprince 11:37, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

14% price decline & real income

Here is the graf in question:

Wal-Mart's entry into local grocery markets lowers prices by an average of 14%. This is equivalent to an increase in consumers' real incomes in the local economy. Local competitors are forced to lower prices, so consumers benefit from declining prices whether or not they shop at Wal-Mart. Those who do shop there experience an additional increase in real income; Wal-Mart's prices on groceries are 15-30% lower than rivals.

Parsing it by sentance:

1. Wal-Mart's entry into local grocery markets lowers prices by an average of 14%. - Statistic cited in magazine article... has also been cited as part of a UBS Warburg study. Factually true.
2. This is equivalent to an increase in consumers' real incomes in the local economy. If #1 holds, this one holds by definition. Real income is chg in nominal income over change in nominal prices. Falling nominal prices = rising real income.
3. Local competitors are forced to lower prices, so consumers benefit from declining prices whether or not they shop at Wal-Mart. This is the mechanism that explains why real income gains are spread across the entire local grocery market, rather than just for Wal-Mart shoppers.
4. Those who do shop there experience an additional increase in real income; Wal-Mart's prices on groceries are 15-30% lower than rivals. This is a clarification that those who do shop at Wal-Mart experience an additional gain. Again, their real income gain is true by definition. The statistic again comes from a reputable, citable source.

I fail to see why it is being removed. The "Wal-Mart claims" qualifier doesn't belong here... they are not the ones claiming the data. (Conde Naste publications is the one 'claiming it') Feco 20:19, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

I think it's POV to state that people see a real income benefit as if it is a fact. I agree with you that Wal-Mart saves families money and causes lower prices through competitive forces. However, progressives believe that Wal-Mart does this to drive competitors out of business and their poor selection of items is no substitute for local grocers. These are opinions we're working with, not blanket facts.

I think your changes can be worked in with some modifications - Cite the 14% with the phrase "according to". We cannot claim that it is equivalent to an increase in consumers' real income without citing an economic publication. Doesn't matter if you think the reasoning is valid, it's still original research. Again it is not a fact that local competitors are forced to lower prices - as I said many people believe that local markets are forced out of business instead. People also believe that it is morally wrong to shop at Wal-Mart, and that shopping at Wal-Mart causes negative externalities such as pollution and welfare for employees. Rhobite 20:45, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Confirm that I've summarized your points correctly:

• the use of benefit in "consumers benefit from declining prices..." reads like it's a value judgement

Consumers TEMPORARILY BENEFIT from falling prices because Wal-Mart is engaging in predatory pricing, the people who support Wal-Mart over the competition will probably pay for it later. Izanbardprince 12:01, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

• you're not comfortable with the analysis of falling nominal prices' effect on real incomes

If people flock to a store that has Coke on sale for $1 below the normal nominal price, and then buy something sitting next to it thats $1 over a nominal price charged at a competitor, did their relative income vs. just shopping the competitor really go up? There's a lot of things that can be had for less than what Wal-Mart sells them for, this also applies to their competitors, I suppose if the case of Coke was all you bought, and given that you would have bought a case of Coke anyway, your relative income did in fact increase, but to say that your relative income goes up just cause you shop at a particular store is (probably) not a factual statement. Izanbardprince 12:01, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

• you're not comfortable with the analysis of the mechanism that causes market-wide grocery prices to fall (competitors lowering prices to maintain market share vs. market share shifts to Wal-Mart and pulls down market-wide prices that way)

Competitors might not be able to get as low a price from the supplier as Wal-Mart can, the price might not go down any at the competitor store, you say that it "WILL" go down just because Wal-Mart invades the town and opens shop next door, and that the consumer "WILL" benefit from Wal-Mart being there, regardless. I suppose they'll benefit even more if the competitor goes under and Wal-Mart hikes their prices beyond what the competition was charging. Izanbardprince 12:01, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

• you want some of the economic analysis here to include commentary on externalities.

That would do, why don't you go to every store that every chain has and figure the national average price on everything, then ignore the wages that their employees make (to be spent at the other business in town, maybe even funding your job), and draw up an addition to the article determining who benefits from shopping where. Let's say Company X has a store, with 500 jobs, paying $10 an hour, then Company W comes in, adds 500 jobs, paying $6 an hour, drives Company X under, now the wages that Company W pays are the ones being spent in the area, guess everyone benefits from a 40% drop in the spending from 500 people's incomes. Izanbardprince 12:01, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Feco 21:20, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Yeah I think consumer benefit needs to be cited. You indicated that there was a cite for this in the Gourmet article, so this should be easy. Analysis of whether consumers see an increase of real income (and the mechanisms of competition) is best left to economic researchers who can be cited, or at least Wal-Mart supporters or the store itself. I was kind of rambling about the externalities but it might be good to keep in mind how activists object to the "free market" argument for Wal-Mart. Basically I like your paragraph but it just needs some NPOV modifications. Rhobite 22:16, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

regarding rising real income, it's definitional. Falling nominal prices are equivalent to rising incomes, because the consumer can suddenly buy more stuff. If you're looking for a research paper that says "Wal-Mart causes prices to fall, therefore Wal-Mart causes real incomes to rise", you're out of luck. That statement is true by definition, so I can't see anyone spending the time to do research on a self-evident fact. The definition of real income here [5] even includes an example that's almost exactly what we're talking about. "If it costs you $2000 more to purchase the same stuff this year, then your real income has fallen by $2000" (my paraphrase). All of the academic studies I've seen haven't dealt with such a basic issue... they're more into the income effect and substition effect (see Consumer theory) of Wal-Mart. Feco 22:33, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

• Is it factually true that prices stay lowered permanently, or only until local competition has been eliminated? This paragraph takes one fact—when Wal*Mart enters a market its grocery prices are 14% lower than the competition. That fact is a reasonable thing to have in the article if accompanied by a verifiable source citation. The paragraph then spins this out into a long thread of dubious consequences which are matters of opinion. When Wal*Mart enters a market, I believe it to be factual that local businesses suffer and frequently close. This certainly happened in Lancaster, Wisconsin. What happens to the "real income" of the employees of these businesses? Do they all find new jobs that are equally as good as the jobs that were eliminated? Dpbsmith (talk) 23:26, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

*Wal-Mart has a national "reference" price that they charge for everything, when there is no competitor selling that item. Prices can be adjusted at the store level to be less than a competitor's if necessary, when that competitor closes, the price goes back to the "reference" price, and that is usually either the same as the competitor was charging, or more often, more.

If a competitor returns, the prices go down again.

Wal-Mart offers a temporary price savings WHEN IT ENTERS THE MARKET, but over time, the prices go up. Izanbardprince 12:59, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

If you can cite a (non-activist) source that accuses Wal-Mart of that practice, you get to put it in the article. Rhobite 22:55, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

The practice described above (enter a market, lower prices to drive competition out of business, raise prices once you have a local monopoly) is the textbook definition of predatory pricing. In fact, here's what The Economist says:

Charging low PRICES now so you can charge much higher prices later. The predator charges so little that it may sustain losses over a period of time, in the hope that its rivals will be driven out of business. Clearly, this strategy makes sense only if the predatory firm is able eventually to establish a MONOPOLY.

That practice is a federal crime, and I'm 99% certain that it's also a state crime in all 50 states. In a world of aggresive prosecutors trying to make a name by 'bringing down Wal-Mart', I'm surprised that the company gets away with the practice. On the other hand, maybe it's the case that the company has not been found guilty (verdict withstood appeals process) of ever practicing predatory pricing.

NBs:

1. The store has been found guilty of predatory pricing in initial trials. All such verdicts I could find were overturned on appeal
2. Courts have emphatically held that selling products as loss leaders is not predatory pricing
3. Wal-Mart has been found guilty of violating some states' "mandatory markup" laws, where a retailer must charge X% above cost.

Feco 20:52, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Wal-Mart sends it's Department Supervisors out to competing stores to do "Comp Shopping", they take a small hand-held scanning device, and scan in barcodes, they then enter the price that the competitor is charging for that item, the weekly quota for competitor scanning is typically 200 items a week, per department supervisor, when they return to the Wal-Mart store, they interface the device with the store's main computer and it automatically lowers Wal-Mart's price on each item to be 10% lower than the competition, they then take a handheld scanning device called a "Telxon", and link it to a laser printer, there is a program on the Telxon called "Be A Merchant", where it lists all your price changes, and lets you print out new shelf strips with the new pricing information, all they have to do at that point is go down the list printing out new price strips, this is not just a few "loss leaders", it's an all out price war. There are a few stores, such as the one in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where the corporate headquarters for Meijer is located, as well as the first Meijer store, where Wal-Mart runs pretty much the entire store at a loss, just to spite the competition.Izanbardprince 12:49, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what Feco are saying. If he's suggesting it's unlikely that Wal*Mart is engaged in predatory pricing because that would be against the law and "I'm surprised that the company gets away with the practice," I'm not impressed with the strength of that argument. The Federal government hasn't been zealous in enforcement of antitrust laws since... I'm not sure I can remember when. Wal*Mart has for years been blatantly violating Massachusetts state law which requires item prices to be affixed to individual items, not just to a shelf label. As far as I know, nobody even questions that fact that a) they do it, and b) it is a violation of the law. To say "it's impossible they could be doing this, because if they were someone would have stopped them" is pretty feeble. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:35, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I want and history section !

Not much to add. This needs more people less figures... Ericd 16:21, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Opinionated statements

I've been at work removing opinionated statements and correcting grammar. Here are some recent additions I'd like to discuss:

• "wall mart could contribute more but they put profits before helping people. It can be said that the fact that it donates is only due to the fact that it creates attention and attention is profit." - speculation, POV. Most corporate social responsibility movements are a drop in the bucket - not just Wal-Mart's. All companies "put profits before helping people".
• "If the average American citizen were to gauge their donation by the benchmark set by Wal-Mart they would donate only $1.65 to the relief effort." - POV in the same vein. The article is suggesting that it is morally correct for Wal-Mart to donate their profits to charity. Moral judgments are POV.
• "Although some hourly employees are paid well..." - what is "paid well"? That is a value judgment.
• "This would appear to confirm that Wal-Mart is not a good place to work for gay, lesbian, and transgendered employees." - this would appear to be a POV sentence. We do not draw conclusions based on data - see WP:NOR.
• RU-486 (mifepristone) is an abortion pill, not a contraception pill. It is only available from doctors, never in pharmacies. Please do not accuse Wal-Mart of not carrying the pill due to moral reasons.
• "however the fact that there is much support for the efficiency rationales suggests that the FTC is correct in it's decision to not ban slotting allowances." - this is a statement of opinion
• "Wal-Mart differs from their competitors by charging no fees to suppliers, possibly due to the fact that it's history of playing competing suppliers against one another makes a supplier think twice before pushing a product to them that might be a dud." - as soon as you use words like "possibly", you're engaging in speculation and original research.

Please discuss my changes instead of reverting - I'm willing to discuss this. Izanbardprince, I do like the expanded stuff you added to the union relations section. Thank you for citing sources in that case. Rhobite 16:15, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Just to let you know, the first statement isn't even from me, it's from someone posting from an IP address, they also added something to the effect of "Fruitopia has a lot of sugar and parents should watch out cause it'll rot your kids teeth out like soda pop", I removed that from the Fruitopia article. The second statement, is not mine either. Abortion is a form of birth control, and I don't even want to get into this crap about "When does life begin?", but at the stage that RU-486 is used, all it kills is a fertilized embryo, with no developed brain, heart, lungs, hands, feet, etc.Izanbardprince 12:41, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Izanbardprince, your contributions are detrimental to this article. As long as you continue to write stuff like "critics charge that Wal-Mart could easily provide a $1 an hour wage increase per employee" without citing any source I'm going to remove it. If you keep hiding that the report on how much Wal-Mart allegedly costs taxpayers was written by the staff of liberal congressman George Miller, I'll revert you. And yes, I'll revert you until you figure out the difference between "its" and "it's". Rhobite 20:37, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, I assumed that people would catch on to the fact that it was from the Democrats, since it's the Reichpublicans that want to repeal the minimum wage laws,shut down OSHA and the EPA, and have gay people and minorities sent to concentration camps to get gassed with Zyklon B. :P

Wal-Mart's average starting wages are usually way below the ceiling to qualify for food stamps, energy assistance, and taxpayer funded healthcare, one weeks pay barely covers the heating bill during a harsh winter. I've seen lots of single moms working there, getting harassed by debt collectors, having utilities turned off, having to drive some old hunk of junk thats half rust that they had to finance from one of those predatory car lots at 25% interest.

Why would you argue IN FAVOR of such a company? Izanbardprince 12:18, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm not going to debate you. I believe in free markets, let's leave it at that. If you have something to add to the article please cite facts instead of appealing to people's emotions. Rhobite 12:37, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Izan- please don't delete another user's comments from the talk page. Likewise, please don't vandalize the article by changing executives' titles from "CxO" to "Chief Union Buster." Feco 16:34, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Clean up Oppositions to Unions section

The Wal-Mart#Opposition_to_unions section reads horribly. You don't need to start of every single sentence with "Wal-Mart". It sounds very uneducated.

There is no reason to include the actual union hotline phone number, but Izanbardprince keeps adding it - probably in an attempt to get people to harass Wal-Mart. This isn't the purpose of encyclopedia articles. The scare quotes around "labor relations hotline" are also useless and POV. Rhobite 15:31, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the reasoning above that the phone number shouldn't be included. If it keeps re-appearing, the issue can go to WP:RFC. Feco 14:07, 22 October 2005 (UTC)