Talk:Retail/Archives/2019

What happened to the retail apocalypse?
Sad Icecreammac (talk) 03:58, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Global top ten retailers
The following table, which appears in the article, needs to be removed entirely. It is constructed from different sources which report revenues in different years. Because it is a ranked list, it needs to report data from a single source in a defined period.


 * 1. In the literature, there are several different market research companies that provide estimates of retail sales, but these estimates are based on different data collection methods and different approaches to estimation. Therefore data from these sources cannot be combined.
 * 2. Over the past 2 years various editors updating the data for one or more companies with more recent estimates, but fail to supply their sources or alternatively simply replacing one of the existing companies with their preferred company. These apparent "minor" alternations have consequential changes for the rankings in the entire list. Tables that need to be updated annually are very problematic in Wikipedia, because few editors are willing to maintain the update process. In other words, the way that the table is currently reported, it provides paid editors and POV pushers with too many opportunities to list their favourite company, and delete close rivals.
 * Finally, members of the "tag team" repeatedly add "citation needed" tags to individual rows, columns or cells - something that should be entirely unnecessary if the table were constructed from a single source.

I checked the entire table about 6 months ago, and it was accurate and up-to-date, but since then there have been a number of minor changes, but I am unwilling to check its accuracy every time an editor wants to add their favourite source or company to the list. In spite of this, the table is apparently so bothersome to some editors that it is subject to constant changes, and the addition of citation needed tags. The simple solution is to delete a table that arguably adds very little to the article's overall value, contains inconsistent data and cannot be maintained on an ongoing basis. A alternative service that could be provided to readers is to link to those market research companies such as Nielsen that provide industry accepted estimates of global retail sales. (The only downside to the last suggestion is that the good folk from Wikipedia External Links would almost certainly oppose it on the basis that it consistutes an "embedded link".