Talk:Criticism of Walmart

Biased by definition of the title

The very title of this article states it as a biased view point, containing only criticism of Walmart. In this article numerous complaints against Walmart are described but it is rarely mentioned what Walmart did to address those issues, nor are any beneficial activities of Walmart mentioned, such as:

Hurricane Katrina ravaged America’s Gulf Coast. The storm hit some of Walmart’s stores and clubs. Some of the company’s employees lost their homes and savings; a few lost their lives. Still, Walmart associates in the region rose to meet the challenges.

One store manager in Waveland, Mississippi, took a bulldozer to clear a path into and through her store, finding every dry item she could to give to neighbors who needed shoes, socks, food and water. "She didn’t call the Home Office and ask permission," Scott noted. "She just did the right thing."

In Katrina’s aftermath, government agencies, relief agencies and communities turned to Walmart (and other companies) to help. Walmart, with its sophisticated and highly efficient logistics operation, was able to get supplies to where they were needed far faster than federal and state agencies could. It was a shining moment for the company, and some much-needed positive press.

I do not work for Walmart, but upon reading this article it simply struct me as biased, one sided and unfair. There are statements such as:

While Walmart did "stabilize" the landslide, many residents said that Walmart merely stabilized the hillside so that it could continue with work to build the store.

What information did these residents have as to Walmart's motive? How was this landslide Walmart's fault? Might this not have happened to anyone attempting to construct a building on this site? Was there any reason to think that an attempt to build on the site would cause such a landslide? If that were even the case, would not the responsibility fall upon the city's build and zoning department to deny the construction request, or insist that certain precautions be taken? And after all this despite the unsubstantiated claim that "Walmart merely stabilized the hillside so that it could continue with work to build the store", the store was not constructed on this site, but was built somewhere else. Doesn't this run counter to the claim that "Walmart merely stabilized the hillside so that it could continue with work to build the store"?

This is one example, if you read through this article, you will see many other places where it is stated that so and so claims that… and opponents say…, etc. Just because they say it does not make it so. Perhaps instead of an article that is titled "Criticism of Walmart" it should be titled "The Reputation of Walmart" and should included at least some discussion of things that Walmart is trying to do right like the Katrina example I gave above. Don't get me wrong,I think Walmart has many issues, not the least of which is that many of their products are imported, taking jobs away from US workers, but I think the subject deserves a fair discussion, and this article is not it.

To quote "Criticism of Wikipedia"

The purpose of the Wikipedia project has been criticized for the uneven handling, acceptance, and retention of articles about controversial subjects.

and

Further concerns are that the organization allows the participation of anonymous editors (facilitating editorial vandalism); the existence of social stratification (allowing cliques); and over-complicated rules (allowing editorial quarrels), which conditions permit the misuse of Wikipedia.

Unreliable content; in “Wikipedia: The Dumbing Down of World Knowledge” (2010), Edwin Black characterized the editorial content of articles as a mixture of “truth, half-truth, and some falsehoods”.[1] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 23.115.249.137 (talk • contribs) 19 November 2015‎ 10:52 (UTC)

References

Walmartsucks.com page

Walmartsucks.com was a website created by a "a disgruntled customer" which created a long running dispute with Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart filed a case with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) against the walmartsucks.com website. Wal-mart accused Kenneth J. Harvey, owner of walmartsucks.com, of attempting to extort money from Wal-Mart. Harvey asked Wal-Mart for 5 million dollars for the site. Harvey said it was "as a joke", what representatives of Wal-Mart called "extortion". "The WIPO [later] changed its opinion in light of US law."

Background

"Wal-Mart's attorneys sent a letter threatening necessary action unless "[Richard L. Hatch]" (aka Kenneth J. Harvey) took [walmartsucks.com] down within 48 hours. Wal-Mart Stores then dropped efforts to close the site."

COURT IN SESSION; intellectual property rights, litigation; Statistical Data Included Risk Management February 1, 2001:

"Take Walmartsucks.com. This highly critical site includes complaints and news articles in addition to airing dirty laundry that uses the names of Wal-Mart's upper-echelon management. Everyone has the right to express their opinion, but can they get away with using your trademarked name? Right now, they can.

Harvey, states the web domain walmartsucks.com was bought in June 2006 by Wal-Mart, and asks how.[2]

'HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH' I don't know who added this information about the walmartsucks site (as they didn't sign it), but I was on that site while these things were going down. Walmart had been trying for years to get rid of it, with no success. THEN WMS suffered a cyberattack which knocked it offline, and walmart immediately swooped in and filed with WIPO (which one of my friends at the time managed to insert himself into and WIPO CCed copies of everything to him) falsely claiming that WMS was a sales referral site. The owner of WMS eventually lost it to walmart, so he changed the name to "wallyWorldSucks" - which ALSO mysteriously disappeared from the internet 97.107.37.1 (talk) 23:08, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

External links

• Walmartsucks.com on Archive.org: June 12, 2004, shut down: June 14, 2004

Separate Walmart Labor relations article?

Given that bulk of criticism of Walmart is labor related, would it make sense to trim a section of this article into Walmart labor relations? There's comparable situation at Amazon Inc., Criticism of Amazon and Amazon worker organization. In general, am otherwise interested in documenting the Organized Labor, i.e trade union activity at Walmart in a future article, but that may be a further separate article given the wealth of research/resources. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 17:43, 27 December 2021 (UTC)