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Wal-mart's Wikipedia War
An anonymous reader writes "Whitedust is running an article which claims that lobbyists for Wal-mart have successfully waged a war against a fair viewpoint on Wikipedia's Wal-mart page. From the article: "Although Wikipedia maintains a 'Neutral Point of View' (NPOV) policy, the Wal-mart page is highly biased. Additionally, all criticism has, contrary to policy, practice, and the general opinion of those concerned, been moved to a Debates Over Wal-mart section. Even that page has noticeable resistance to negative points of view about Wal-mart."
It depends on what you use Wikipedia for though.
Their Doctor Who section is absolutely awesome, with details back to the early sixties. Similarly, their music and dance genre sections are also good.
If you are looking at hot-button issues you can expect bias. The only difference here is that the corporate bias shows through compared to personal bias from external sources. If you accept that anything that you read has bias and account for that then you won't have nearly as many problems.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
"It seems only logical that they should fight back and try to balance out the haterade on wikipedia."
Except one of the Big Rules at Wikipedia is "Thou shalt not edit thy own article."
Nonsense. Presentation of only factual information is not at all an indication of lack of bias. Anybody who has taken basic courses in behavioral psychology can tell you this. The selection of facts from a nearly limitless pool of factual information can highly bias the perception of a reader of a set of facts. It is nearly trivial to choose a set of facts that lead a reader to radically different conclusions, if one chooses to do so.
The Walmart page falls victim to this, as well as presenting a set of very positive facts at the top of the "Debates" page to create an anchor point for perceptions skewed toward the positive. Setting such an anchor point goes a huge way to diminish the perceptual impact of any following negative information.
Clearly the people on Walmart's side have a solid understanding of these psychological principles, which doesn't surprise me from a company that employs "greeters" to make themselves feel more friendly. The people at Wikipedia obviously are missing the point if they think NPOV means "just presenting facts".
Avoiding bias entirely is impossible, but the best way to minimize it would be eliminate excessively positive framing on a page intended to highlight debate over negative aspects of the company, and enforcing that a roughly comparable amount of information gets to be presented by both sides.
If the sides can't get along or agree, the arguments can always be broken out into two separate pages, each of which gets to be edited by a contingent of people who clearly fall on one side or the other of the argument, and each gets to select their own set of facts that support their argument (but still attempt to maintain at least a neutral use of language). NPOV or not, I've seen this approach used on other pages, such as some Israeli-Palestinian related pages, where the participants otherwise would just get into non-productive edit-wars.
"Maybe Walmart isn't the great satan afterall"
To be sure, there are a lot of poor, arbitrary, or economically inaccurate accusations hurled at Wal-Mart, the "evil corporation that steals jobs from Americans" (for example). Some people have probably reasoned out their arguments; most haven't. I personally have no problem buying inexpensive Chinese-made goods, or shopping at a store that pays minimum wage, or shopping at a store that hires immigrants. I do have the choice to buy local goods from better-paying mom-and-pop stores, and I exercise that choice often.
One heinous crime committed by Wal-Mart that I can't excuse, though, is property theft. Going by the euphemistic "eminent domain", Wal-Mart frequently colludes with corrupt city administrations to seize land from its legitimate owners and give it to Wal-Mart for stores and parking lots. Wal-Mart slips some thick envelopes under city councillors' doors and promises to generate more property tax revenue, and Bob's-your-uncle, Wal-Mart gets permission to tear down your building and take your property. The whole damn lot of their management should be thrown in jail or worse.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
This is not Wikipedia's definition of NPOV. What you are talking about is more similar to "balance." The idea behind NPOV is to state obvious facts where the facts are known, and to present opinions as opinions. This has nothing to do with "2 sides," and trying to be definitively centrist is in fact against the NPOV policy.
There are plenty of valid criticisms of NPOV. Even many Wikipedians admit that it is an ideal to strive for, not something that can be accomplished entirely. But your strawman is entirely irrelevant to this debate.
English is easier said than done.
You somehow left out that Wal-Mart is a major portal for Chinese goods. I think that China will be a great country eventually, but most of these goods are being produced by what is essentially slave labor.
Here's one article about it..
and another..
I don't shop at Wal-mart anymore because saving a buck is not more important to me than encouraging slave labor.
Aero
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
That specific example actually is bullshit. The stats for thinking WMDs were found was 33% (Fox viewers) and 11% (NPR listeners). These stats are from October 2003 (8months after the beginning, 6 months after "mission accomplished") so surely those misguided Fox viewers have stepped back into reality by now. The one where Fox viewers really botched it was the "Evidence Hussein worked with Al Qaeda". 67% Fox and 16% NPR. The other statistic they looked at was "World Public Opinion" is it for or against our war in Iraq. 35% Fox and 5% NPR. Now... The best is the cumulative statistic. 1 or more misperception vs no misperception. Misperceptions: 80% Fox and 23% NPR. So basically if you watch Fox News (aka the White House mouthpiece) you'll have an inaccurate view of reality. Here's the study:
t 03_rpt.pdf
http://65.109.167.118/pipa/pdf/oct03/IraqMedia_Oc
So NPR ignores positive news in Iraq? Subtle and devious. Of course, I'm sure you checked your fact with a simple web search.
Oh wait...
Rate of New U.S. Deaths Declining in Iraq
Now, I don't mean to be a complete jerk by pointing this out. Just 80 percent jerk. The other 20 percent wants people to actually go and read, listen, or watch the news source before they criticize it.
Informed opinion makes the discussion more interesting, and civil.
No discussion on Wal-Mart would be complete without a link to PBS's Frontline Documentary, "Is Wal-Mart Good For America?" - it's a brilliant show that covers many of the bases and it's available free online.
If some would have their way, there wouldn't be this level of high quality documentaries on corporate America. Watch it while it's still available.