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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."
As someone who runs a City Wiki, I always felt that what makes a reference wikis work is that there are more people interested in having a NPOV article than people who have a financial interest at stake. However as companies and politicians become more familiar with the wiki movement and the whole anonyminity of it, they are more likely to see how easily you can edit articles as another PR platform and seek to control it. With the resources and ability to dedicate even a full time team to making sure the Wikipedia article keeps them in a good light, I fear we're entering the age where people who are interested in a NPOV are outmanned by those with a profit interest. After all, for years spammers have nearly outmanned those whole try to filter it.
The problem with information sources for a localized wiki like Bloomingpedia though is that since it is on a much smaller scale, its easier to obscure facts because there are not as many industry watchdogs paying attention to companies and organizations. You have to get the information by working for the company or accept the information that a company provides on its website or product brouchures.
All in all, I can't find any hard evidence to support his claims, and the remaining evidence he presents seems to be nothing more than, "I think this page should be more critical of Wal-Mart, therefore there must be lobbists at work!" While that's a nice sentiment, it doesn't make for a smoking gun.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Wal-Mart has a lot of haters and bashers out there. It seems only logical that they should fight back and try to balance out the haterade on wikipedia.
I personally think Wal-Mart is one of the best corporations out there. A company that provides value and offers cheap products to everybody? The horror!
Isn't it just possible that, on the whole, Walmart's contribution to society has been good?
I'm not saying Walmart are saints or anything, but it seems like many people are starting with the assumption that Walmart is bad and then trying to find evidence that supports their prejudice. C'mon. Have an open mind. Maybe Walmart isn't the great satan afterall.
Wikipedia is a free, online encyclopaedia. It uses a model of information where anybody can contribute. Although this leads to some vandalism and some disinformation, almost always an accurate and knowledgeable viewpoint prevails. The project has brought thousands of intelligent people devoted to its cause.
Why should Wikipedia be penalized or criticized for telling the truth about a bad company that exploits its workers and the taxpayer at the same time?
We need more truthfulness and facts in this world, not BS spin and PR from company spokesmen.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Wikipedia isn't supposed to be biased for (and here is the part many miss) or against. Hence the "NPOV stance" they try to enforce. If citing buisness stats and other corporate information is "bias" then they have a skewed definition of bias. After reading the article, it seems that any information about Wal-Mart that isn't a critism as automatically biased and suspect. That is just as bad a POV as being a "sunshine and rainbow fanboy".
In short, Wikipedia is not the place to have a diatribe on the goods or evils of any topic, even the much vaunted Wal-Mart. I simply don't see what the complaint is here. Are they disappointed they can't argue about Wal-Mart on Wikipedia? Well Wikipedia isn't the place to do that. That has nothing to do with bowing to presure from Wal-Mart. Chaning a link from "Wal-Mart Corporate Communication Page" to "Wal-Mart Propaganda Site" is not a legitamite edit nor is it NPOV.
Unless I've been living under a rock, Wal-Mart is, without a shred of bias, bad by many objective definitions of the word. No positive argument can be made in its defense without resorting to logical fallacies. Are there people out there who think that the article on slavery is biased against it, and that it needs to take a neutral view highlighting the benefits? What is the difference I am missing?
On topics that are simply "black and white", true and false, matter of fact, it's easy. Water is made up of 2 atoms of Hydrogene, one atom of Oxygene, and you'll hardly find anyone to challenge that. The Great War was 1914 to 18. Again, no dispute (except maybe with Russia that decided to end it in 1917 'cause they had a revolution to take care of, ages before Nintendo had the idea).
But as soon as you touch religion, politics, business or other areas where your opinion starts to play a role, you'll have people tugging at both sides of the page, trying to pull it towards their point of view. Wikipedia IS a big platform, after all. People turn to it for information! Imagine: A page, where you can write "what you want" (to some degree, you have to keep it within certain borders), and people will read whatever you write as facts.
Now, don't tell me it ain't tempting.
Maybe the insight we get out of this is not only that companies use pages like wikipedia as a place for their marketing department to develop on. Maybe the insight should also be that we should NEVER EVER rely on only one source for information. No matter how "unbiased" or how "neutral" this source claims to be. Even if the source is indeed genuinely neutral (unlike, say, a certain TV network in the US that claims to be broadcasting news while actually spewing propaganda), their information, or their editors, could be biased.
To be able to really create your own opinion, you need more than one source. Actually, often it's quite informative to listen to propaganda instead of a "neutral" source. As long as you listen to BOTH sides of the propaganda machine.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There is no mention of Wal-Mart being accused of sexual discrimination by primarily promoting men. That is the controversy about Wal-mart that I have heard most about. If even the 'debates' article is missing that then I think there must be something wrong...
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
So? A lot of the available evidence points to a possible conspiracy within the government. Wikipedia is supposed to have a Neutral Point of View (NPOV). That includes highlighting theories and evidence that you don't agree with. Since when did you have a right to scrub the entry "clean" for the rest of us. Where do you get off deleting opposing points of view?
9/11 is messy business. Give us the facts, give us the evidence, give us theories (both mainstream and alternative) and let us -- the reader -- decide. That fact that your deletions/modifications were overturned indicates to me that the system was working.
Electric Monkey Pants
NPR is right leaning... Fox is a propaganda machine.
After all, it can't possibly be that the case against Wal*Mart is weak and easily debunked.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
I strongly suspect we are seeing the same thing on the political blogs.
And any other forum where readers can comment. Is there actually anybody who believes that when slashdot posts a story about Microsoft, Linux, or Firefox security, the posts trying to present Microsoft as a company dedicated to its customers aren't Microsoft employees?
What about the stories about the **AA, you think the posts saying "only pirates are against DRM" and "DRM really works" aren't employees of either the **AA or its members?
Anybody can post here, even an AC like me.
-AC (shilling for my employer, of course:)
(MRC="maladies")
I think the big key to participating in "mass minds" is to realize that the "mass mind" is not going to be your mind, writ large, neither in theory nor in practice.
Your vote matters, but it matters as much as everybody else's. It's not supremely important.
Your comment matters, but it matters as much as everybody else's. It's not supremely important.
And this is what the mass mind will look like; a whole lot of people arguing and coming to very rough consensus. It's never going to converge on a set of opinions that exactly match your own.
This may sound obvious when I say it that way, but I'm quite certain a lot of people's disenchantment with participating in these sorts of mass minds (as prototyped by the "body politic" and now popping up everywhere thanks to the Internet) is because they go into it with the idea that they only "win" if the mass mind thinks exactly like them, which rather misses the point entirely. If everybody's not losing a little bit, the system isn't working right. "A good compromise is when all parties are equally unhappy."
One of the things that made me laugh about blogging is that there were a lot of people that were firmly convinced that it was finally going to sweep the world and basically make it hold the "smart" opinions, which by an incredible coincidence just happened to be the opinions these people already held. Here's one of the most egregious examples of that. (My personal opinion is that it tends to drag the system away from the parochial opinions of the relatively few gatekeepers in the existing communications media, and drag it back towards the true ideological average of the participants. I leave as an exercise for the reader exactly what that translates to in ideological terms.)
This is exactly why citing sources is so important!
Wal-mart is bad! - Maybe.
Wal-mart treats its employees badly! - Maybe.
Wal-mart has been said to treat its employees badly because the New York Times has written an elaborate article about it with interviews of ex-employees. (link) - Yes. It may or may not be true that Wal-mart treats its employees badly, but there's no discussion about whether the New York Times has stated its opinion on the matter. That's truth, and that's how you can make articles NPOV.
Don't trust the Wikipedia.
It's not designed to find and protect the truth.
It's not a store for facts, it's a store for claims.
When was the last time you googled for something, looked at the Wikipedia link, and then...read the associated discussion link to see what facts were in dispute?
I don't even do that.
What have we learned?
8 86274-2659010?v=glance&n=283155
Walmart is nothing but a free company in a capitalist society. Those complaining about Walmart are really complaining about capitalism itself.
Yes, walmart prices some American manufacturers out of business. But that is allowing a switch from manufacturing to service based economy. And, thanks to low prices at places like Walmart, more Americans than ever are able to own a house, and stock that house with Tvs, DVDs, Mp3 players and Cell Phones - even at the salary paid by Walmart!
Yes, Walmart buys Chinese. In fact, it is China's leading trading partner and is giving China a real capitalist change from within - a growing middle class in China is coming up. Millions have benefitted there, and I fail to see how this is a bad thing for anyone.
Yes, Walmart doesn't give the very best health benefits. But it beats having unemployment and medicaid. And if Walmart wasn't providing "low paying" jobs, we'd be paying for them in taxes, instead of collecting tax revenue from them.
I checked the Walmart page and Walmart was called "The great satan" in the first line. Why? Because they decided to sell inexpensive, yet usable goods to a mass market?
I rarely shop there, don't work there, don't own stock - but I'm glad they exist. Because they show, better than anything, the hypocracy of anti-capitalist whiners. You know the type - those who complain that they are entitled to everything the world has to offer, for free from the government.
Walmart has shown that the goverment need not provide every citizen with a DVD player. Instead, Walmart has shown the real way for every American who wants a DVD player to get one - is to make it cheaply and sell it cheap enough.
And that's really why people hate Walmart - it shows that capitalism does what utopian socialism never could.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0451191145/103-4
-Ben
Walmart employees went around to the other businesses and, what? Shot the owners? Threatened their families? They walked you into the store at gunpoint?
No, I don't think so.
Your neighbors put the local businesses out of business. Even then, you aren't forced to shop at Walmart. It's just more convenient. You're still perfectly free to pretend that you live deep in the Alaska wilderness, drive hundreds of miles to the nearest farmer's market and buy your six month supply of rice and beans.
You just don't want to.
Few dispute that airplanes did not strike the World Trade Center towers, and even fewer dispute that they did collapse.
When it comes to the content of the Wikipedia article, we need to keep in mind what can gather from videos, stills, eyewitness recollections, and so forth. We also need to keep in mind what we have been told by the media and government.
First of all, yes, the videos and pictures do show planes hitting the World Trade Center towers. But those pictures and videos do not show who is piloting those planes.
As for the cell phone conversations, we have not heard actual recordings of them. What we have is hearsay, at best. At worst, complete fakeries and lies.
However, we have been repeatedly told by the media and administration that it was a group of Arabic men, and so forth. You never actually see evidence of them piloting the planes, though.
I commend those who wish to hold the alternative theories about 9/11 to very high standards. That is what should be done. However, please attempt to hold the government/media story to the same stringent standards. We need to keep in mind what the actual evidence is, and what we actually know.
It would be incorrect for Wikipedia to present the alternative theories separately from the mainstream theory, mainly because they are all 'conspiracy theories'. Some involve conspiring Arabs, others may involve conspiring Americans. They're still all conspiracy theories.
Providing a particular slant along with the news, if the slant is overwhelming enough to create the vast distortions perpetrated by the likes of Fox News, then said organization isn't really informing, rather, they are misleading.
Afterall, sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken :) You can say it does, pretend it does, demand that it does, get legislation passed that says it does, but it doesn't.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
"When Wal-Mart moves in, the people in the community undercut all the local businesses by buying from Wal-Mart when they sell at a loss, driving them out of business"
I added the parts that you intentionally left out, in order to demonize Wal-Mart.
As has happened in MANY MANY other places, small businesses can and do stay viable while competing with Wal-Mart. They simply have to offer some extra value to go along with the higher prices.
If people really agreed with you, they would support the mom and pop businesses with their money. They don't, and that should tell you how they feel about what you think.
You are blaming a company for providing a product that the people in the community want. It is not the fault of the company, it is the fault of the population of that town.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
It's a fucking store. Nothing more, nothing less. Channel your passion into something more worthwhile.
That statement is flawed in that it jumps to the conclusion that correlation implies causation. (The actual study was pretty clear in stating it only found correlation, but of course all the left-wingers went nuts over it mistakenly jumping to the conclusion that it meant causation.)
If you were to ask the Fox and NPR audience if they believed it had been scientifically proven that man is causing global warming, you'd probably find that the Fox viewers are "better informed." It hasn't been scientifically proven that man is causing global warming, but a greater percentage of the NPR audience probably believes it because it's dear to them and their threshold for belief on it is lower. In other words, it's just a correlation due to the political leanings of the two audiences.
If you select a fact on a topic that's widely liked or disliked by the groups, you're going to come up with a bias independent of the quality of the news service. Therefore to test the quality of news services, you need to select facts that are neutral or equally liked to disliked by both audiences.
However even the facts you choose to present, order presented in, and context can exhibit bias.
Two facts given in the article:
These are two verifiable facts. The facts make Wal-Mart look bad. Now assume we remove the second fact, or move it into a list of stores which have been closed, so that its no longer easily connectable. All the facts are still present, but Wal-Mart in that case comes out looking neutral or good.
There is always bias. Even when sticking to the facts. I think the idea here is that one sides point of view is being systematically repressed by eliminating even the mention of facts and controversy. This is not in the interest of a healthy public debate.
Where exactly did I say that it did? Go back and reread my original post and you won't find anything like the words you have in quotes. Seems to me that you are intentionally making up bogus arguments so it will be easier for you to rebut them. That's a classic straw-man argument.
Where do you get off insisting they be included? Again NPOV DOES NOT mean equal treatment for all view points.
Your straw-men notwithstanding, if you reread my orginal post, you'll note that I pointed to the available evidence that supports alternative theories. There's evidence that pokes huge, gaping holes in the official story (why did building 7 collapse, for instance?). There is also evidence that supports the official story. My point is that there should be no litmus test (i.e. does this evidence support the official story? if not, we shouldn't include it), except that of NPOV and truth. Both are impossible to achieve, but the important thing is to aim for objectivity. This has nothing to do with "equal treatment." It has everything to do with facts and reality. It may not be a comforting thought that our government would do something like this, but your personal feelings don't amount to squat in the context of NPOV. All that matters is facts and evidence, and there are plenty of both to suggest that the official story is bunk.
Electric Monkey Pants
Oh, goodness, you have a terrible misspelling there. Let me fix that for you:
Never forget to look at where the motivation comes from. Walmart (and any other non-employee-owned large corporation) couldn't give a rodent's posterior for its employees beyond what they bring to the bottom line. For easily replaced menial labor, there's not much contribution made by any single individual, so there's no incentive for Walmart to allow any employee organizing that could even potentially lead to demands from the rank and file for higher pay, more benefits, etc., all things that would only reduce that already meager added value.
Remember, Walmart is beholden to the interests of its shareholders, not those of its employees. José, Leroy, and Nancy on the checkout line don't have any leverage over company policy, whereas JP Morgan and Prudential wield considerable influence. When it comes to business, follow the money.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."