Contents

1 Feb 1, 2005 NPOV Issues 2 NPOV Issues 3 timeline 4 Other Businesses 5 Revise Header 6 "associate" vs. "employee" 7 Good vs bad 8 you can't get rid of criticism by foot-noting it 8.1 Hypermart on Timeline?...Diversity Measures? 9 re: Hypermart 10 Sam Walton

Feb 1, 2005 NPOV Issues

Some NPOV issues: Category: Corporate Abuse...Really? Is walmart in the same leauge as Dow Chemical and the Bhopal incident, worldcom, Enron? "Links" Section..Why are all the articles and documentaries listed negative towards walmart? Why should articles be linked anyway? every entry in wikipedia would become huge if we linked every article and news story about every entry. Why is a blog linked, who decided that was a trustworthy source? I think some critical sites, not articles, and then WM's corporate sites should be linked. "Criticism" section..It lists criticism, but no reubuttal or counter-points. "Financial Success" , "History", and "Business" sections. Not POV issues, but couldn't these be condensed and made a little bit easier to read and fluid instead of jumping around? Please comment on these, everyone is making these edits but not actually discussing anything. joe 18:36, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

NPOV Issues

First, see the timelie discussion below. Also, I think the bit about the rating in the diversity section should be in the criticism section, and there should be the criticism there, but there should also be the other point of view to balance it out. I also think that the only links that should be at the bottom are to walmart's sites, and perhaps to the walmart watch site. sprawl busters isn't against walmart only, and the article linkings just seem to not be needed. joe 21:03, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

timeline

The entries on the timeline about the mexican pyramids and the bit about the chinese buy local program is not neutral. its obviously meant to criticize the company. joe 02:47, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The decision-making process for including a fact is pretty simple. Intent doesn't factor into it - is it accurate? Is it phrased neutrally? Is it relevant? That's about all we consider. As far as I can tell, the two facts you removed are accurate, do not express a POV, and are relevant to Wal-Mart. Therefore they should stay. If you feel their inclusion is negative, a better response would be to add other facts. How about their community grants program? Rhobite 04:01, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)

I'm wondering A) why a certain store opening is mentioned. Wal-mart will open over 300 units worldwide. Why is this one the only one mentioned? Also, anyone with any kind of common sense can see that the quip that they run a "Buy China" program is aimed at hitting the "outsourcing" nerve. joe 04:05, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I would even be in favor of removing the "Reached $100mln in charitable contributions" Fact. That's not even really relevant.

As I said, the aim is irrelevant. The pyramid thing got a lot of press, so it's notable. The China thing might not fit in a timeline but don't just delete it, please. Rhobite 05:37, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)

What? The aim is totally relevant. If the aim of posting a certain fact or figure is to make someone think walmart is a bad company then its not NPOV. Now I see that there is a second timeline entry on "walmart builds a $18 bln chinese product inventory" or something like that. I'd like to see some sources. Its obvious that those are just meant to be predjudicial against the company. They belong in the criticisms article. Why is there not a post that shows that they opened a store in a vacant building in South Central LA, and where is the information about how much US products they sell? You can't post one side and not post the other. joe 20:49, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Because the store in South Central was hotly protested by the community, and you'd think it was just put in to make Wal-Mart look bad. If you can find a product in Wal-Mart that actually is made in the US< put it in... the point is that Wal-Mart's campaigns try to give the impression that they are all-american and sell american-made products when in fact most of their inventory was NOT made in America. Not mentioning that fact would be highly POV. Pedant 19:34, 2004 Dec 6 (UTC)

No current Wal-Mart advertising or marketing campaign in the United States purports that Wal-Mart sells only US Made goods. They no longer run the "Bring it home to the USA" ads/campaign. Your post shows that its meant to be POV. I think it has a place in the criticism section, but not in the main article. Wal-Mart sells plenty of things made in America and other countries. There's no mention on the Target article how much of its inventory is made in China or any other country. joe 00:59, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Other Businesses

In the history of walmart, they have operated other stores, such as Hypermart*USA, dot Discount Drugs, Sav-Co (I think that was the name) home improvement warehouses, and helen's arts and crafts (all in the US). They should be mentioned somewhere joe

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In the history timeline, are the entries on opening a store near mexican pyramids and the quip about buying $12bln in chinese goods and running a "buy chinese" campaign needed? They seem to throw the neutrality off quite a bit. Also on the external links, are so many critical links needed? I think perhaps a link to walmart.com, walmartstores.com, the yahoo profile link, and the walmart watch link are all thats needed. I think that particularly the CNN/money link and sprawl busters links should be removed. sprawlbusters isn't against only walmart

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"Each Wal-Mart store has an employee, often an older person, known as a "greeter", whose primary responsibility is to welcome people to the store. One Wal-Mart training video encourages employees to think of themselves not as employees but as "associates" and their superiors as "servant leaders.""

This is inaccurate. One training video does not encourage this. The entire wal-mart enterprise is based on it. Employees are not referred to as employees. Also, the bit about the people greeter shouldn't say "often an older person". Perhaps a better wording would be:

"Wal-Mart refers to its employees as 'associates'. It also encourages management to think of themselves as 'servant leaders'. Each Wal-Mart store has an associate that serves as a 'people greeter'. This person greets each customer as they enter the store."

I found it surprising that Wal-Mart employees "Greeters" of any kind. I have been to 3 different Wal-Mart store approximately 30 times total, and have never been greeted. Is it true that ALL stores employee such a greeter? jimaginator

Wal-Mart Supercenters have two greeters, actually 3 when the garden center is open. Probably best to say "Each Wal-Mart store has an associate at each entrance that serves..." newkai 05:33, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, now that it's been brought up... although I have frequently heard it asserted that Wal*Mart has greeters and that everyone is greeted on entering the store, I, too, have never been greeted at a Wal*Mart. I frequently shop at one in a suburb of Boston, probably twice a month averge, and occasionally shop at one in a very small town in Wisconsin (population 3,000). It would be interesting to know more about this. I sometimes do see Wal*Mart employees standing in the vicinity of the entrance, and have always interpreted them as performing a security function (i.e. watching for shoplifting). I've never noticed them greeting anybody else, either. Theory A: Perhaps they only greet people who deliberately make eye contact with them, and in parts of the country where it is not customary to make eye contact with strangers the greetings do not occur? Theory B: Perhaps not all the things that management thinks happen actually happen?

In contrast, the checkout clerks at the local K-Mart tell me "thankyouforshoppingatKmart" virtually 100% of the time. Not that it gives me much of a warm fuzzy, particularly since every cash register is conspicuously decorated with a sticker saying "TYFSAK." [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 19:59, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

this is more than likely due to just the associates or the store doing something non-standard. They are not looking for shoplifting. Company policy is for a greeter at each door when the store is open. they are there to greet customers and help with questions. this is required in all stores. any deviation from that is a deviation from company policy.

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"33% of the employees are temporary" Are 33% of the employee temporary during the Christmas Season or is this the case throughout the whole year? I know it is a standard practice to hire tempory workers such as cashier for the Christmas Season when the customer count is higher or in the lawn and garden department during the peak spring and summer months. Is the figure true for the full year at Walmart?

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WRT the last paragraph, this is good additional information, but it needs some copyediting to read more fluently and comply more fully with the NPOV. --Robert Merkel

That last paragraph need more proof than just saying that there was a TV progam that said such and such. You do not even remember what progam you saw it on. Back these statement up.

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In my opinion, the 1st view lacks NPOV, while the 2nd does have NPOV (with the exception of the aforementioned last paragraph, whose problem is not so much NPOV as citing an unknown TV show - taking out any citation might be a good idea as I've heard this from several sources.) Some of the stuff in the 1st view is informative and should be merged with the 2nd view but other (like the stuff about helpful staff) is just kind of silly. - Eean

largely done. --Robert Merkel

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The usual Wikipedia practice is not simply remove other people's writing but move the disputable topics into the talk page so the idea is not buried. I wonder why some people try to hide the topic, perhaps further discussion may open a can of worms. If you do this because you own Wal-mart's stocks, then you don't have NPOV, you have a hidden agenda! I have put the questionable paragraph back here so that someone can resurrect it with proof.

I myself have seen the TV show mentioned by the original author. Though I cannot remember the details of the TV show, it does not mean it did not exist. It was on a US network TV show like 20/20 quite some time ago, it could be several years back. If it was reported by a major network, I trust it had some truth to the investigation.

I bet if this paragraph is allowed to sit here for some time, sooner or later someone with a good memory would be able to quote what that TV show was. It would be nice if someone can find the transcript to the TV show that exposed the Wal-Mart's problem.

Someone attempted to hide the following:

In all competitive business, the company that can provide the best products to the consumers at the lowest price is the winner. However, a TV investigative program (such as 20/20 or Date Line or 60 Minutes) did a special report on the business practices of Wal-Mart some time ago. The investigative reporters learned that Wal-Mart's strategy is to open a store close to a town and drive the local stores out of business. Then they abandon that site and move to another town in the same region. They move through the area, eliminating the local businesses, then create one store serving multiple towns. The TV report showed the trail of the abandoned sites Wal-Mart has gone through. The locals were happy when a new store opened just a few miles away, but after the local businesses closed, the Wal-Mart moved an inconvenient distance away. The usual complaint is not about the presence of the Wal-Mart stores nor the merchandises it sells at low prices, but about the perceived "betrayal" when Wal-Mart eliminates local businesses but then moves away in betrayal. This practice does not affect major metropolitan areas that can support multiple Wal-Marts, but in less densely populated areas, local economies have suffered. If someone still remember that TV program, please give some pointer to its transcript.

1. Retail Web site: http://www.walmart.com/
2. Corporate Web site: http://www.walmartstores.com/

I'm the person who removed the last paragraph. If you notice I added a sentence which in my opinion summarises the key points of the deleted paragraph. The fact that an investigative program did a story on Wal-mart isn't particularly noteworthy, except as an aid to jog people's memory. In this case, mention of it belongs on the talk page, IMHO, rather than as part of the main article. You will also note that I removed the corporate propaganda version that was placed above the text. As far as my motives for the edit, I merely point out that I do not live in a country with Wal-mart stores. --Robert Merkel

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Staffing is low, with most purchases simply being brought to supermarket-style cashier lanes on shopping trolleys, and the expertise of the staff in the products they sell is variable at best. [Staffing low? Based or compared to what? Wal-mart staffs its stores with many employees. For example my department, lawn and garden, has at least two people in the department during the slows times and during the heavier buisness times of the year it can have up to 15 people working in the department on the weekend day. I do not consider that low staff. An average sized store has about 250 employees and a average sized supercenter has about 500 to 600 employees.] As well as this, its sheer size gives it the ability to discount, selling at a loss until competitors run out of resources, at which point its monopoly position allows it to raise prices. It is regularly accused of such tactics (which are illegal in some jurisdictions), and is disliked by others because the homogeneity in retailing it symbolises. Others refute the figures, stating that Wal-mart's prices remain low even where it has a monopoly, and view the complaints about homogeneity as impractical sentimentality. [this needs rewritten. What proof is there for some of these statements.] Other criticisms of Wal-Mart include its alleged propensity to kill off all competition from local stores, then shut down its stores in smaller towns, leaving residents of those areas no choice but to drive long distances to purchase essential items. [Where and when does this happen. Give me a list of towns that walmart has done this in.]

Having a current Wal-mart employee going through this article to remove any negative criticism against Wal-mart is surely not NPOV. You might as well copy and paste the company's website here, that would be all positive.

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In case someone wants a citation for the legal department

http://www.fallingmerchandise.com/acrobat/trialmag4-00.asp

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Here's a web site with relevance to the article

http://www.sprawl-busters.com/

The fact that there are people who do not like Wal-Mart needs to be mentioned.

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Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is the world's largest retailer.

Wal-mart is now the #2 grocery chain in the nation, behind Kroger's?

I think this came from background information in a NTY article. I suppose sales would be the measure. Fred Bauder 16:05 Jan 14, 2003 (UTC)

Are these in terms of profit? Sales? Number of employees? Number of stores? What? Are there references for these figures?

There are other figures in the article as well. Ideally, a source would be cited for each of them.

-- Ryguasu

Atually statements like Walmart is the biggest retailer in the world and the largest company in America don't really need to be cited by specific source. They are just included for the mythical reader from Mars. Fred Bauder 16:05 Jan 14, 2003 (UTC)

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The stores sell groceries and a broad range of other products, including, but not limited to, clothes, consumer electronics, outdoor equipment, toys, hardware, and books

This implies that Wal-Mart is chiefly a grocer, and only secondarily everything else. Is this really accurate? Do all Wal-Marts even have groceries?

-- Ryguasu

That line could stand a bit of editing, although Wal-Mart may be the #2 grocer, there may be older stores remaining that carry no groceries and it is a discount department store not a grocer. Fred Bauder 16:05 Jan 14, 2003 (UTC)

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Wal-Mart is not chiefly a grocer, although it's recently started a chain of Wal-Mart Neighborhood Markets that are grocery stores. I shop at one weekly, even though they're an obvious attempt to drive established grocery stores out of business -- the prices are great. As for other Wal-Marts, I've never been in one that didn't sell some groceries, but what they sell is mostly junk food. -- Storm

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Can anyone confirm or deny the claim made here [1] (http://www.countrylife.co.uk/about/features/walmart.htm) that Walmart does "not insist upon sustainable sources for its wood products" -- Tarquin 16:54 Jan 13, 2003 (UTC)

This concern seems to be a British thing. I don't recall any American company going back up the supply chain it this manner, although perhaps some do. Americans pretty much treat wood as a commodity. Fred Bauder 16:14 Jan 14, 2003 (UTC)

In the USA, there is virtually no sustainable source of wood whatsoever, just clearcuts, bigger clearcuts, and clearcuts closer to other clearcuts. Wood is treated as a Resource extraction industry here. 'Selective cut' tends to mean: "we select all the trees and cut them" clearcuts and slash-and-burn/cut-and-run is the norm in the US, I know that's not necessarily true worldwide... does anyone know of any providers of sustainably-produced lumber or other wood products? Anywhere? I need that alternate POV for some of the articles I've worked on.Pedant 21:28, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

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I have a real problem with some of the facts and much of the tone of this paragraph. It does not seem to be NPOV even for a "criticism" section. My specific concerns are listed below. If you can satisfy those concerns, please revert my wording but, in the meantime, I'm going to soften a few things. Rossami 03:53, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

None of Wal-Mart's stores are unionized and ~33% of the employees are temporary (2002). The company is the target of persistent unionizing efforts, but has aggressively and sometimes illegally fought off all attempts. In 2000, the meat-cutting department of the Wal-Mart superstore in Jacksonville, Texas voted to unionize; two weeks later, Wal-Mart shut down all its meat-cutting operations. Wal-Mart's unionized grocery competitors such as Kroger and Safeway are at a disadvantage, as wages at Wal-Mart are about 20% less than at comparable companies. There is a high employee turnover rate; nevertheless many employees express satisfaction with the status quo. Employee Kathleen Baker submitted a petition from 80 Wal-Mart employees which requested wage increases, she was then fired for "theft" of the company typewriter. Walton once argued that his company should be exempt from the minimum wage. (Palast -- pp. 121)

1. 33% temporary workers - not at all unusual for US retailer. also obscures the stated desire of some (though obviously not all) Wal-Mart employees to remain temporary (for work-life balance, summer job, scheduling flexibility, etc.).
2. "illegally fought off" unionization - please source this specifically that they were convicted and the conviction was upheld. That is a very strong statement and, if untrue, could be libelous.
3. high employee turnover rate - again, not at all unusual for any US retailer. Also not unusual for the demographic of their target employee.

I'd like to add in criticisms of the "criticisms" section that the wages quoted for the guatemelan workers is HIGHER than the minimum wage in china: 25 cents an hour, with no overtime bonus. However, there really isn't an easy solution for this - if people stop buying the products made at those labor rates, or if wal-mart stops using those factories, the factories close up and then the factory workers have no money at all instead of just poverty level wages. All of these criticisms need to be thought through - be careful what you ask for, you might get it.

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The news show carrying the story was 60 Minutes and for the most part it seemed to be true. Wal-Mart has in the past gone into smaller comunities , driven out the mom and pop stores (Somtimes larger department stores too), and then closed shop when they opened a supercenter to service multiple cities. This hapened mostly in 1990's. They even coined the term in the show "The Wal-Mart Effect", which was the title of the story. Wal-Mart probably did not do this intentionally. Moore likely what happened was in the late 70's through the 80's Wal-Mart opened small stores in small communities. Wal-mart becuase of economies of Scale and Economies of Scope was able to offer products at a lower price point than the smaller stores. As a result the smaller stores went out of bussiness. Then in the 90's Wal-Mart switched stratagies by openeing large supercenters which included grocery markets to get even larger Economies of scale at the store level. As the smaller stores did not meet the new Wal-Mart stratagy and the Executives figured that customers would travel the aditional 10-15 miles more, they closed down the smaller stores, often leaving no retail or very limited retail oportunities in these small towns.

Towns where this happend do indeed have many upset residents and they do feel highly betrayed. Several stores in the mid and late 90's had a stratagy to open stores in Wal-Mart Vacated properties. Places (Now Pamida a subsd of ShopKo) and Alco-Duckwall did this.

The funny thing about the whole thing is that even though Wal-mart has huge buying power and Large Economies of scale in its favor they do not always offer the lowest price. In their food stores, often times limited quanity/selection stores, such as Aldi's, Dollar General, and Save-A-Lot can beat the Wal-Mart price on many items leveraging increased sales through the selections that they do carry. Also many elderly people will not go into a Wal-Mart Supercenter becuase they are too big. This is why Wal-Mart stores typically do not put the limited selection stores out of bussiness. The Patrons are not Wal-Mart target demographic nor will they typically every be Wal-Marts demographic.

Stores that make use of Associated Wholsale Grocers are also able to beat Wal-Mart on Generic brands, produce, and meat. These stores tend to make very good use of local produce and meat vendors thus reducing thier costs. They make such good use of them that at least where I live Wal-Mart will not match prices on their produce and meats or really any of their advertised prices. Wal-Mart also has a distinct lack of varity of Generics example where I live Wal-Mart offers a 12 pack of Sam's cola for 2.27 however the local stores are able to offer a 12 pack of Vess cola for $1.80 and Wal-Mart could offer the Vess Cola but doesn't. Another example is the Always-Save/Best-Choice (Associated Wholsale Grocers) generic vegtables which are offered typically 2 per dollar for the Best Choice or 5 for 1 dollar for the Always-Save brand where as the Wal-Mart brand is typically $.30-$.50. Yet another example is with Ground Turkey, The local Save-A-Lot offers Jennie-O Festive ground turkey (An exclusive brand made just for them as is 7Up/Dr Pepper Deja-Tea) for the cost of $.69 per pound where as the local Wal-Mart offers Pilgram Pride ground Turkey for $1.09 per pound. The loacl Aldi store offers a generic single serving cerral mix pack where as Wal-Mart doesn't likewise the local Save-A-Lot offers a generic snack size chip package where as Wal-Mart only offers the Frito-Lay pacakage. Wal-Mart won't price match in these cases becuase they don't/can't/won't carry these brands/items. Now what Wal-Mart is good at is offering brand name products at a very low cost.

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Revise Header

The header is way too long. It should only be 2-3 paragraphs. I'll reformat it if I have the time.

"associate" vs. "employee"

The Milestones section refers a few times to the number of "associates" they have. Wouldn't "employees" be a bit better there? I realize that Wal-Mart calls its workers "associates," but strictly speaking, it's a bit of a misnomer. Dictionary.com (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=associate) gives the definition "A person united with another or others in an act, enterprise, or business; a partner or colleague." Since Wal-Mart's figures undoubtably include all employees, regardless whether they are in fact "partners or colleagues," it would seem better to me to say employees....

what do you think? I'll go ahead and change it in a couple days if noone objects.

• I agree. I would go further. The use of the term "associate" to mean employee is Wal*Mart POV and needs to be corrected. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 00:03, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

"Associate" is a term meant to imply ownership. Back when all employees of Wal-Mart automatically received stock options, "Associate" was a factual and appropriate term. However, entry-level employees have not had this perk for about 10 years now. To keep the new employees from feeling like second-class, they continue to call them "associates" whether they own stock or not. I offer this just as information - draw your own opinions.

• Ok, I'm-a-changin' it.--Yourcelf 18:35, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

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Good vs bad

Can Someone please include good things that wal-mart has done for the community? This is a problem i've noticed with most big corporation pages on wikipedia, they are all full of critcisms and fail to neglect any of the charitable work and what the company has done for the community. Or even why they are now popular.

We have tons and tons of critcisms in this article, but not any good points of them... until good points are added and the article becomes more neutral, I belive criticms must belong in another section.

It's really interesting that all the refrences given are all books anti-walmart, that obviously shows a bias inherent in the article.

The article already notes that Wal-Mart employs more than a million people, they have an efficient stock control system that keeps operating costs low, and notes that in 1998 its charitable contributions exceeded $100 million. Those look very much like 'good points' to me.

If you're aware of specific good things WM does - like, say, a breakdown of those contributions - by all means list them. The whole point of Wikipedia is that anybody's free to add their knowledge, and that includes you. --Calair 13:30, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I don't think listing charitable contributions is relevant, but if you wanted to open that can of worms, much criticsm will undoubtably follow. Wal-Mart gives less to charity than almost any other publicly-traded corporation as of about two years ago and spends enormous sums publicizing the little it gives.

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

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)

Hypermart on Timeline?...Diversity Measures?

Several years ago the company opened a few (I think no more than four) HyperMart USA stores,their largest ever.Results were disappointing and these were closed.Should they be on the timeline for inclusivity of failure alongside success,or not on it because of lack of historic significance? Also,the "Diversity" section refers only to the "Corporate Equality Index" of the Human Rights Campaign without any explanation of what this index measures.The HRC article doesn't explain this index either,but the organization,despite its broad name,is primarily concerned with promoting public acceptance of homosexuality,so I have to wonder if it measures ethnic/racial/disability/linguistic etc. matters of "diversity" as well as whether homosexual relationships are treated as "equal" to heterosexual ones in the ways the company deals with its employees.Why not explain it?--Louis E./le@put.com/ 12.144.5.2 21:16, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree. Also see the NPOV/Timeline issues above. I have listed the Hypermart USA stores as "former operations" on the "List of Assets owned by Wal-Mart" article, which is linked to from the main article. The list there comes from Annual Reports of Wal-Mart when they had opened and closed the storesjoe 17:36, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

re: Hypermart

The Hypermarts were not closed, they were converted to supercenters. The former Hypermart in Arlington, TX is now a Supercenter.

--Txredcoat 13:42, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

But the point is that no stores are operated as Hypermart*USA anymore, and wal-mart has bought out the joint partner's stakes in those stores. I will get the info on those former operations and make up a section to include, because the hypermarts are not the only former formats operated by walmart joe 06:30, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sam Walton

Had to put in some references to the founder, whose legacy right or wrong still defines the company Libertas