Talk:XPO, Inc./Archives/2018

Heavy edits

Hello! Per the conversation in tags above, I've started to edit and reorganize the article to make it read easier, use less jargon, and so on. I spent the last, like, 4 hours on this, and there's still lots to do; anyone else want to take a stab at it? God knows I'd be grateful, it feels like everyone swooped in, vomited on everything, and swooped away again. Aussietommartin (talk) 21:24, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

tags

Hello, I see Nouill has recently tagged this article with multiple tags for NPOV and COI. However, there is no discussion here of the issue, and so I am beginning one here. Regarding COI, I hope Nouill can explain the COI they observe and provide diffs per WP:AOBF's "avoid accusing other editors of bad faith without clear evidence in the form of diffs".

As for the the advert tags, I don't see the evidence of promotion directly. For the entire article, the subject is clearly notable and the article well cited, and don't see how it is promotional. For the sub-section I don't see the facts of awards being promotional, and this content was previously discussed, though perhaps Nouill believes this should be revisited (?) (pinging editors in the last year, as this isn't a super active article: Aussietommartin, Mandishaa, Dirkbb, AYDaBoss, AlanYoung, Drseussyzz, Mean as custard, Ira Leviton, DrMichaelWright, Diannaa, Shortride) Dbsseven (talk) 16:33, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

NathanBermann is a Wikipedia:Single-purpose account. Rmchater is a Wikipedia:Single-purpose account and he have already be describe to be a COI. Aussietommartin is a Wikipedia:Single-purpose account who contribute also on the CEO of the company, which it's a huge clue to detect COI, and in the both article he contribute in a promotional way... --Nouill (talk) 16:44, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Rmchater is an account that hasn't edited in 4 years. And NathanBermann hasn't edited in 2 years. Isn't tagging the article for them a bit silly? And a single-purpose account miss the is not automatically a COI under WP:SPA. Do you have diffs to support any COI? Dbsseven (talk) 17:05, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Hey everyone, I'm sorry I'm late to the party! I have some life stuff going on and didn't think to check my Wikipedia notifications.

@Nouill: You have a staggering history of French Wikipedia edits. WP is clearly your passion, and I have no doubt you've had a brilliant impact! Your overall experience makes mine looks pathetic by comparison, and under most circumstances I'd trust that experience! In this case, though, it seems like you have a strong dislike of Awards and recognition sections. I tried to address specific issues with this page, and thought I had, but here we are again. Honestly, it's frustrating; I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do to make that section better! If you have a suggestion, please share it.

As for the ad tag on the rest of the article, if there's a problem, let's fix it! Ira Leviton's post below brings up some very good points. In my edits, I've tried very hard to deliver "just the facts," but I've missed something important: articles should also be engaging. (I'll also admit that, having learned more about logistics in the last couple years than I ever thought I'd know, the jargon doesn't look as much like jargon to me anymore. I remember in my early days, I tried really hard to remove jargon! It's a clear failing.)

Does anyone (Nouill? Ira Leviton? Dbsseven?) have suggestions on where to start, or want to give it a shot? I understand that English isn't your native language, Nouill, so I understand why you would simply mark an article as needing cleanup and then move on, but I'm still not sure I agree with it. If we see problems, shouldn't we try to solve them? I'm happy to try some rewrites if nobody else wants to, but as Dbsseven said back in November, no single editor owns a page.

Re: the COI accusations, I'm not paid and have actively worked to fix advertisey content more times than I can count. But you're right: I've only really heavily edited this page and the CEO page, which makes me an SPA. Like I said before, it just kinda happened, but I get the consequences! I get it looks bad. I also think my edits speak for themselves. (That doesn't excuse the jargon or overall boring nature of the article - I'm a journalist and should know the power of storytelling.)

Aussietommartin (talk) 01:39, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Things seem quiet, so this weekend I'm going to go ahead and start editing to address Ira Leviton's and Dbsseven's recommendations. Simpler language, less jargon, engaging reading. If anyone wants to discuss before the edits start (or, hey, even help?), that would be epic! Aussietommartin (talk) 00:17, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

My two cents

I made one lone minor edit to this article ten months ago, for grammar. But since I was tagged, I looked at the article in more detail, and have an opinion, so I'll state it – just a little more briefly than that edit – and then back out.

A good deal of the article is promotional. Many of the references are from the company's own financial filings, and it's full of – or perhaps overflowing with – jargon, so it's not written for a general audience. Maybe that means that whoever wrote those words (I haven't reviewed the edit history, maybe it's more than one person) works in the industry. A huge proportion of the article simply gives statistics to tell about the company – OK, I get it, it's a huge company in its field, the numbers sound very impressive, which I suppose is their main purpose. But there's not much useful information, there's no "story", and after reading the article, I don't have much of a sense of what the company is about – that part could have been done in two or three short paragraphs. (They deliver things, including very large items and loads, and they have a lot of equipment to do it.) The article could use a substantial rewrite so that people who read the entire page get a feeling that they've just finished a feature article about the company in a newspaper, not a glossy brochure written by the company's own marketing department, and could tell a friend something useful about the company. (I do not mean that there's a conflict of interest and have no opinion about this, although I can easily see why that suspicion was raised. Taking too much information from a company's stock filings and financial statements is not a good idea, even if it's easily accessible on the Internet - it's not independent information, and is often promotional itself.)

Ira Leviton (talk) 18:48, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

@Ira Leviton: thank you. I agree that the article could use a re-write to make it less a collection of facts and jargon. Business articles like this are often limited by what is published, and care should be taken to exclude PR and buzzwords. Though I'm less convinced that its promotional, the facts described do not appear to be "promoting" anything to me. (Stating if relevant and noteworthy award was won isn't the same as saying "buy from this company" or "this company is better than another". Though I get how irrelevant awards are puffery.) Dbsseven (talk) 22:56, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

I may be missing something (I have been editing for 5 years but abandoned old account because of vandals and displeased folks). I have seen it written before that Aussie TomMartin was accused of being an SPA, and accused of being a paid editor with no proof or evidence provided. Someone instead pointed out the contrary position that Aussie Tom was actually "pleading" for people to help clean this article up as some of the old editors had really made a mess of it.RMChater was found (in an investigation that he quickly tried to archive and hide) to be someone who had engaged in Meat Puppetry (someone who comes on at the orders or request of another to attack someone or remove information that shows they are notable and then says they are not notable). So, he has been engaged on several pages and it seems he is a "hired gun" or someone who does what he's told by others. So, there is one example of one who messed it up, as did the Nathan Bermann character, they were not very good at knowledge gathering or presentation, and if the subject of the article paid those editors then they need to get a lawyer and get their money back. They also could get in trouble with the SEC if they are promoting a public company at or around time of purchases as that is known as "pumping a stock", I assume good faith and also imagine that the company would not hire folks to do that, and especially would not hire clowns who wrote at a 2nd grade level and go elsewhere purely to defame and bully. I have no dog in those fights and so I could go on but you get the point.

It seems strange to me that if Aussie Tom had a close or paid relationship to the company, that he would be pleading with others to come on board and make edits to the article, surely he would want to go it alone, or would use different usernames? I see no reason to keep up the COI tag and would ask people to weigh in on this section and LET FOLKS KNOW if they think there is a COI and provide proof. Further edits, it would seem to me, would take care of any suggestion that this reads like an advertisement, that said, it looks like the encyclopedia entry for most other major companies on Wikipedia. ZeusBeard2018 (talk) 11:58, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Removing the tags

Hey, all! Sorry for the delay in getting this done. I'm moving to another city, which has meant job/apartment hunting on top of the day-to-day. I've also been rather... conflicted. After two years of working on this article mostly alone, having folks come in and call your work shit is tougher than I expected, and I'm used to being edited! Part of me wants to say, screw it. Part of me just dies at the sight of those tags that call me a shill. But I also want to see good work published. So, I'm taking your notes and running with them! After a ton of reorganizing and rewriting, I'm pretty proud of the results... though I'll wait and hear what you all say before I get too topped.

Lots of needless snippets that didn't really add anything meaningful are gone. Lots of extraneous references are gone, and it's just easier for your eye to scroll through content. Per Ira Leviton's and Dbsseven's suggestions, I went for a more readable style and tone, while trying hard not to sacrifice the neutral point of view we all want to see. However, I've said it before and I'll say it again: If anyone thinks that there's a better way for something to be written, whether it's a sentence, a paragraph or a whole section, by all means, make changes!

I DO think that enough changes have been made to warrant removal of the ad tag. That's not to say I thought it was appropriate in the first place, but if no one else is going to take a stab at making changes, than I'll do my damndest and go from there.

What I WON'T do is remove the COI tag. I'm the one that's been accused of having a conflict of interest, of being paid by XPO to work on this article and the Bradley S. Jacobs article. This isn't true, but I'm not about to take down an accusation against me. My hope is that my actions speak for themselves, and that someone else -- Nouill, Ira Leviton, Dbsseven, ZeusBeard2018, admin Diannaa, or whoever -- will agree that it doesn't belong and remove it in due time.

One last note: Nouill's biggest grievance seems to be the page's Awards and recognition section. I'm not a fan of deleting entire sections because one user doesn't agree they should belong, and it seems that other users feel similarly. But there's a point to be made that there's no contrasting section -- nothing that discusses controversies surrounding XPO. Such sections are common among the best Wikipedia articles (see the Cracker Barrel featured article, the BAE Systems featured article, companies from other industries (Blizzard Entertainment), and hell, even Wikipedia itself! A neutral point of view means showing balanced takes on things.

Where I stumble is on what sort of stuff to cover. Negativity for negativity's sake is absurd, something I take pretty seriously as a journalist (see False balance). And so I pose the question: Is there something about XPO that would warrant inclusion in a "controversies" (or similarly titled) section? There's been a fair amount of negative news in my Google Alerts of late, but the OSHA investigation that was just launched is still 6 months away from findings, and the sexual harassment accusations appear to be union bickering. Is that enough to warrant inclusion?

I don't know. Anyone else have thoughts?

Aussietommartin (talk) 22:20, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

I have looked at the additions to and subtractions from this article and also a related article on Bradley S. Jacobs (the CEO) and I cannot find any evidence that Aussietommartin is related to or has a close connection with the company or the CEO. It would be beyond strange, and stretch credulity to imagine that someone who is closely linked to the company would come on the talk pages (not just once, but several times, and not just ask, but plead with others to help tidy up an article and to ask questions about what is and is not appropriate to post. It makes perfect sense that, over time, technical jargon would be something an editor would become more and more familiar with; conversely someone who has a close relationship or who was employed would surely have had that "inside knowledge" from the very beginning of their editing. The fact that corrections on tech jargon developed over time showed a learning curve from reading around the topic. Some people come to articles and they become a labor of love for them - I also would go back to a central tenet of Wikipedia "Assume Good Faith" - nothing here suggests otherwise. With the size of the company and the probable net worth of someone who runs the company, I would "assume" that if they wanted they could have set an expert out to begin with and not use someone who has learned about the industry.

Absent compelling evidence to the contrary, I will be removing the tags here and on the CEO's page at NOON today US EST -- anyone who then takes issue could refer to arbitration. But the evidence shown to date comes nowhere close to showing a link between an author who has pleaded for others to join in and a huge company ZeusBeard2018 (talk) 12:18, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Tag removed per earlier notification and no evidence of any link between editors and company except conjecture. Please do not replace tag, rather refer to arbitration if you have evidence of COI or link. ZeusBeard2018 (talk) 17:35, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for taking care of that, ZeusBeard2018! I appreciate the assist, and the vote of confidence.

Having taken so much time trying to clear up boring language and make things more readable, it kinda hit me how weak some of the sections are. I'll tackle them soon, but I'm still curious about whether a "controversies" section would be appropriate, and if so, what kind of content to put in there. Feedback welcome! Aussietommartin (talk) 20:54, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

I think it would be a good idea, any major lawsuits or allegations for or against, any scandal for or against. Again, only if linked to credible and reliable citations in reputable arenas.

I will add that, again, you are seeking assistance and suggestions - hardly a sign of someone who is "closely" linked to the subject of the article. I am always very careful (under past account and will be with this one) to allege that people are paid editors or related in some way to subjects. Some people get into a project and then when they start their brains literally will not let them stop until they have completed the task. In behavioral psychology this is called the Zeigarnik Effect and is the way to overcome procrastination (start a job and your brain will force you to want to complete it. I believe that there are paid editors out there (or employees of corporate rivals) who set out to do harm to articles on competitors or individuals. As with many things, Wiki has a lot of upsides and a lot of downsides. Asking for assistance on multiple occasions just does not strike me as the M.O. of someone with an agenda or marching orders.

Again, I would repeat my request that, rather than put tags on this article (as has happened a couple of times, it appears) people should submit issues and EVIDENCE to arbitration or else we will just have back and forth ongoing. I would also add that we do have folks who are from different nations on here; with a "controversies" section if something comes up (greenmailing etc) in one venue and someone from that venue is tagging or removing positives and adding negatives then, in arbitration, they would have to show that they have not been enlisted to try to negatively impact a company by helping to manipulate a stock or influence a lawsuit. Hopefully, none of that is going on though as folks would know how much jeopardy they would be in. ZeusBeard2018 (talk) 21:20, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

This article, and the article about XPO's CEO Bradley Jacobs, is obviously being manipulated by a user affiliated with the company

Every single one of the contributions made by user:Aussietommartin over the last three years has been some defense or promotion of XPO Logistics or its CEO Bradley S. Jacobs. Today he tried to essentially delete (or at least render essentially meaningless) a section about XPO workplace abuses reported by the New York Tines. 73.126.80.83 (talk) 00:24, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

(Tagging Dbsseven (talk · contribs) and ZeusBeard2018 (talk · contribs), because I'd love your takes on this!)

Okay.

First, a quick aside: You claimed in your edit comments that you have another account that you always use, but didn't want to use it here for fear of being accused of sockpuppetry; for whatever it's worth, I promise not to accuse you of that if you're willing to come forward as your own account! (And I don't think anyone would anyway, so long as you literally said, "Hey, this is me, i wasn't logged in for my last edit, sorry about that.")

But, more importantly: I owe you an apology. One of Wikipedia's core tenets is to assume good faith of other editors, and I didn't do that on Monday. I was in a stream of consciousness zone, and (as I'm sure you can probably relate) I don't have the highest regard for IP editors. I jumped to conclusions, which was unfair, and I'm sorry for that. For real.

When someone comes in, as an IP address with no other edits in their contributions, and adds a bunch of negative content to two interrelated pages -- and one of them is a biography -- it raises the eyebrows. You copy/pasted your edits here over there, which seemed additionally odd, because most of the additions you made have nothing to do with the person; they pertain to the company. Now, if the allegations the NY Times wrote about were specifically against the person, that would be one thing, but they're not. And because of the restrictions of WP:BLP, we have to be careful.

So all of that added together in my mind, and I saw someone with an agenda. The irony, of course, is here I am an admitted single-purpose account (see the extensive conversations above), and SPAs classically have agendas or close ties to their subjects! I've been attacked a lot for that, and honestly I'm pretty damned tired of it. It doesn't seem to matter how much I deny that I'm a paid editor or that I have some sort of conflict of interest (though yes, I deny it), so instead I just point to the body of my efforts: hundreds upon hundreds of edits over years, and I stand by them 100%. I've tried HARD to remove and rewrite content that is advertising and schlock for XPO. I think if you actually looked at my edits (and not just the fact that they're tied to two pages -- the same two you edited, you'll note), you'll see their value.

So let's get to your edits, and I'll explain my thinking and why I STILL think they need to be chopped back. NOT removed -- these are SERIOUS allegations that SHOULD be placed here! But we also need to temper outrage with wisdom.

First and foremost, I was trying to remove any sense of sensationalism from the section. A great example of corporate critique on Wikipedia is, I believe, the Criticism of Apple Inc. article. It has a few rough spots, but for the most part the article hits a very neutral, straightforward and encyclopedic tone. What's worth noting is the lack of sensationalist detail. Take, for example, the Criticism of Apple Inc.#Foxconn employee suicides subsection, which details what are undoubtably the most horrific examples of valid criticism against Apple. But note that the details of the suicides aren't made all descriptive -- nobody wrote "and then an employee flung himself off the roof." That would be crass, sensationalistic, and against WP's policy of neutral point of view.

What do we do instead? We state the hard facts. You did that! But some of the added elements don't serve to further the basics of the allegations. When you describe the allegation that one supervisor told a woman to "get an abortion," that isn't merely sensationalist; it's literally hearsay! There's a big difference between something written as part of a feature article and what is appropriate for Wikipedia.

Now, in retrospect I probably shouldn't have removed the piece about the death last year of an employee, or the 100 degree heat. My reasoning at the time was that a link to one Facebook post (it was in fact two Facebook posts) was pretty flimsy, and the 100 degree heat thing was commonplace. But commonplace does not equal right, and in the case of the Facebook post thing, the correct action I SHOULD have taken was to try and track down a different source, one from a year ago when this first happened.

The final thing I deleted was the last graf. This, I still think should go, and here's why:

• Saying that there have been "multiple run-ins with regulators" is by itself not worthy of a Wikipedia article; if you want to list those run-ins, there's an argument to be made for that! But depending on the run-ins, they may belong in a different section. (You also want to be really careful of stuff that can be seen as trying to affect stocks and such; check out earlier discussions on this page, but the short of it is, be careful because you don't want the SEC on your back.) By putting this statement here, the implication is that the "run-ins with regulators" all have to do with workplace abuse, which neither you nor the NYT cited. If you have the specifics, let's point to them! Sources are king on Wikipedia, and multiple sources are often better than single sources.
• As for the misclassifying of labor contractors, check out the #Appropriateness of new legal content discussion above. If you don't want to read it, the core takeaways are that (1) lawsuits and legal matters rarely make sense on Wikipedia because there are so damned many of them, and cherry picking the ones that corporations win and lose gets really testy, and (2) the stock/SEC thing I mentioned before. Now, I hear you -- the NY Times quotes this stuff! It's relevant! Well, no. They were painting a picture of the company designed to shift public perception a certain way. It was a feature article, NOT a news article, and those are two VERY different things.
• That's also, incidentally, why the last sentence about Bradley Jacobs' goal to "slash expenses and deliver quick profits" is grossly inappropriate within the context of Wikipedia. You're drawing conclusions for the reader by implying that the goal to slash expenses and deliver quick profits = not caring about workers' rights. That may be true! And the NY Times can even try to draw that comparison. But we here on Wikipedia can't. We're not trying to paint a picture. We're trying to deliver facts. if you want to talk about Jacobs' tendency to "slash expenses and deliver quick profits," it would belong up in the section about acquisitions. Check the NY Times article -- they were talking about it in the context of acquisitions.

Phew. That was a lot of writing. Okay, sir IP Address, here are my next steps:

• I'm going to go back and trim the section again. I'm not going to be as hack-and-slash as before, because as i noted, i think I was too hasty in a couple places. But I'm still going to cut a lot, for the reasons I outline above.
• I'm also going to remove the section from the Bradley S. Jacobs article again. Here's why:
  • Three of the four paragraphs of that section deal explicitly with XPO, NOT with Bradley Jacobs. They are, again, irrelevant to that discussion.
  • The one paragraph remaining (you made it the first graf on that page, the last one on this page) is actually about Bradley Jacobs, at least in part, so it would be arguable to keep, but it belongs in a different section. I'll move the "slash expenses for profits" line up to the acquisitions section, because that's where it belongs -- that's what it's talking about.

I know this was a long read, and I appreciate you taking the time to go through it. If you want to respond, please do so! If you want to log in as your actual account and repsond, that would be even better! Heck, we could have a grand old debate. If you like, we could even call in an admin; there are plenty of Wikipedians that have a lot more experience with this stuff than I do, so I say bring them on!

Aussietommartin (talk) 23:22, 25 October 2018 (UTC)