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Companies

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• Archive 1
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I reverted a series of edits begun July 18, back to the prior version, 01:02, July 1, 2008. I regret having to use such a blunt hammer, but the bulk of the new material (the article went from 31,053 bytes to 52,269) was either copies of press releases,[1], or other material that doesn't comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy.[2] Major changes on a mature article like this require discussion and consensus. It's good to be bold but we didn't end up with a better article. Let's discuss any specific changes we want to make here, making sure that they comply with the norms of this project. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 11:03, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Will, I propose we merge the 2 pages. Would you be able to archive all but the Merger proposal section on the Amway Talk page? Most of it is quite old and would be good to do the merger discussion with a clean slate. I'd do it myself but not too up on the archiving procedure. --Insider201283 (talk) 11:57, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done, but the discussion should take place in only one place, at Talk:Amway#Merger proposal. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 16:36, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Will, thanks for monitoring articles on wikipedia. I'm sure you get a lot of guff for this kind of work since in today's world truth is considered relative. When I saw this page, compared to what I had heard about the company and information someone had given me, there wasn't a lot on here. So I did research of my own to add to the article, hopefully giving it some balance. Apparently in doing so I violated the neutral point of view policy.[3] stance some how. I did my best to make the article informative and there was a lot of stuff that came up on Google with that old TEAM thingy. When I looked at this page the first time it just looked like it was written by an 8th grader. There was information but it wasn't readable, and when I can't read something and I have the ability to edit it... hehe I go crazy.

If the edits were just too much, as you said I had added a lot of stuff in a few days, I would propose to keep a few sections. These are the ones that I feel are really important: Charitable Organizations, Becoming an IBO, Quixtar by the Numbers, edited version of Line of Association. It would be nice to see everything organized a bit better than the version before I edit it. Reason why I feel these are important is for the sake of good name. I don't like wal-mart for many reasons but there are many organizations they donate to that are listed on their Wikipedia article. If this is an informational article about Quixtar good and bad, compared to Microsoft, there isn't anything here. If it's true they have a couple billion in sales a year, why isn't there more information?

Thanks! Have a great day! Ssyoda (talk) 19:57, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to do an overall reorganization before expanding the article why don't you post here an outline of the structure you'd like to see. As for the other stuff, the article can be as long as necessary, within reason, so long as the material is properly sourced and presented with the neutral point of view. Just take big changes more slowly, please. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 20:21, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Could you clarify which Walmart article you are talking about. This one doesn't seem to talk about charities. Or did I fail to notice something? --Knverma (talk) 08:48, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize Knverma. I wasn't referring to the actual Wikipedia Wal-Mart article. I've been told by a few Wal-Mart employees that they either support or endorse various charities. No one has told me which ones. I know the last time I was in a Target store, they had posters of donations that store made to local schools as well as a list of educational ... thingies... as a corporation they gave to. I don't remember what they were. The wiki article for Target happens to not have those listed either. Which is too bad because that's a big investment in the future of America. :) Ssyoda (talk) 19:42, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand, the Microsoft article links to a full article on Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. That's probably because it has received lot of press coverage. So there is no rule that charitable activities shouldn't be mentioned in Wikipedia articles, although I wouldn't recommend an extensive section like this one with block quotes. As you can see, I merely asked for a clarification above. --Knverma (talk) 20:12, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, yeah, I completely agree. I saw that get added and it just looked weird. Plus, the original looked like it was copied from a corporate website. Don't know which one, cause the stuff I found was given from the Google search that turned out thisbiznow.com. I could see how people would feel more free with adding more information about any given donation if it was in that format, so maybe something different. I'll eventually figure something out. When I have time. :) Ssyoda (talk) 04:12, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have noticed that there are some strong opinions of Quixtar/ Amway where fact and fiction are now being confused. This article has gotten away from the intended purpose of giving an outline to what Quixtar is to the point now it looks like it has been taken over by bloggers once again. In my effort to purely state facts the have consistently been deleted while thing that should not be on here remain. I have looked up Wal-mart which is one of the most sued companies in the world and have not seen as much Quote litigations/ controversies on there site yet it seems even the smallest legal dispute needs to have it’s own paragraph and title even after the litigation and dispute has been ruled on or thrown out of court. Then what people are truly looking for in what type of company is Quixtar and how the do business and how they have helped the community is merely second thought.

I’m finding that your neutral stand point is being warped and construed towards the negative and any attempt to make the article balanced and informative is being deleted not by just others but by so called administrators. This page looks more like the graffiti walls of a hate blog then at true assessment of the Quixtar / Amway Company. Simple things of adding the word of “Industry Leader” which was quoted by (Amway/ Quixtar both on web sites print and commercials , Wall Street Journal, and the Direct Saleing Association) being labeled a not credible and market talk. Then a direct copy and past of the true definition of the IBOAI board mission statement as stated in bold print on the IBOAI web page.

Yet every half thought Idea and supposed controversy is printed to be as true.

1) The fact that the Federal Government through the FTC states that it is a legal business means “It’s Not a Controversy” and does not need to be printed as such. Needs to be deleted or moved out of Controversy.

2) The Suit against Kenny Stewart and Brig Hart was dismissed (mean no more controversy or litigation hens need to be deleted.)

If no one is going to do any real and fare investigation on Quixtar/ Amway and just allow people to put up a bunch of junk with administrator allowing such un professionalism then I think there is a vote of no confidence in anything Wikipedia does. So much for fare and open. I hope that in the future everyone will be more professional and have a more fair and balanced article. As of right now it is completely useless, and in my opinion needs to just be deleted all together. —Preceding Eric Smith comment added by 77.234.42.134 (talk) 20:50, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I can answer to a couple of your points. As far as the IBOAI information goes, pasting lengthy tracts of text from other sources can put Wikipedia onto shaky ground as far as copyright goes; it's better to summarize the information and link to the original as a reference.

The controversy section? A quick search on google for "Quixtar", "Amway" or "Multi-level marketing" in general will support that idea that there exists substantial controversy surrounding the company and its methods, FTC rulings as to its legality nonwithstanding. Abortion is legal in the United States, but I seriously doubt anyone would advocate that controversy not be mentioned in that article.

Regarding the individual court cases, you seem to have been taking the approach of simply removing the text describing the ones that have been closed; a better way of dealing with this might be to add text describing the outcome of the cases, with references; removal of established, sourced text without explanation tends to get reverted. evildeathmath 21:02, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So by what your saying by adding to the closing of the case a description would be better than just deleting it? So where does it end? By that if I wanted to I can Google every lawsuit in the U.S. to every company you have an article about and load it up with hundreds upon hundreds of court referenced documentation right? So then we make the entire thing mute. Why not go through anything that is closed delete it. The ones still on going like the BWW vs. Skaggs. Also Team although the team issue is pretty much done and the BWW vs. Skaggs has nothing to do with Quixtar but only the independent training program that is affiliated with Quixtar. Also any major ones that Quixtar was found at fault and the corrective action that came from that particular law suit. This is not about hiding legal issues like every company has. It’s about remaining consistent in neutral. To through up a law suit that is now longer an issue in the law’s eyes is not neutral at all.

To the fact that the FTC ruled on it and there is no other legal battle out there but for team which has been pretty much ramped up. When you compare it to Abortion witch is still argued by politicians, lawyers, judges, Supreme Court, past and current Presidents. Proves my point. Have not heard the FTC, BBB, Congress, Or the Supreme Court go after Quixtar in many years. On the other hand Quixtar is working with the BBB, and the FTC through the transformation to the New Amway Global name to make sure a past concerns are addressed and improved upon. I do think the FTC needs to be mentioned but not in controversies.

As for pasting lengthy tracts of text of the IBOAI board it is the official definition of the IBOAI board and is not copy written and what they are and do. You have by far worse cut and pasts you got under Promotions a book promotion for two quys that where kicked out of the Quixtar and the IBOAI board for shady business practices and you state it in that very same line. That needs to be under the Team controversy not in a Promotions index.

I do think that the Article has gotten better than when I first so it almost year and a half ago but still show to be extremely negative minded and needs to be a lot more neutral. It was only about 2 months ago I decided to try to correct many many issues with this article and to my surprise with little success.

Eric Smith —Preceding Eric Smith comment added by 77.234.42.134 (talk) 22:02, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Current structure:

History
Products
Business model 
  Definitions
  Income of Quixtar IBOs
  IBOAI
  Accreditation
Sales and Ranking 
  Promotion
Litigation
Controversies 
  FTC investigations
  Income from Tools and Business Support Materials
  Disputes with TEAM

For compariosn purposes. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 18:37, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am proposing a few structure changes to the Quixtar article. The current July 2008 article has an essay feel to it. All the information is grouped with little structure and flows very poorly. I feel this would make it very difficult to add any information what so ever. Regardless of the information that is added by anyone, this article does not read very well.

It has also been suggested to merge this with the Amway article.

Structure Change to:

  History
     Change from Quixtar to Amway Global
  Products (bullet points no descriptions)
     Product Endorsement
  Profit and Sales Statistics
  Charitable Donations (bullet points no descriptions)
  Business Model
     Definitions (legal docs have these first, why not here?)
     Marketing Style
        Quixtar Partner Stores
     Disputes with the business model
        TEAM
  What's involved in being an IBO
     Income of an IBO (types of income)
     IBOAI
  Lines of Association
     History and why they exist
     Income from the sale of tools
     Accreditation
     Disputes with LoAs
        TEAM

Because we're talking about a company history, profit, and flagship/popular list should be first. Anytime a new company looks for investors the two biggies they first have to mention are product and profit. They then look at how they're going to make that money in the business model. Hopefully a few of us like this, but if not, let's work out an agreeable outline to present the information. Ssyoda (talk) 04:06, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• I suggest spending a little time looking at articles on similar companies. I don't think any have sections devoted to product testimonials, for example. Also, remember that we can only add what we have sources for. Further, Wikipedia is not a how-to guide, so we're not here to give advice. What sources are you planning to use? ·:· Will Beback ·:· 04:52, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• I think I may have not communicated my intent properly. This is an outline of major points to the company. It's a sales company, so what do they sell? List it. I suggest bullet points as apposed to sentences because lists are easy to read. Though, if this is the style of Wikipedia, then that's my fault for missing the point. :) I don't recall seeing a section in the outline I suggested for "Product Testimonials." The outline I provided, excluding the charitable donations and the addition to history of the LoA, is a reorganization of the current article. It would be very easy to go in and move the sections around. I would do it now, but you've asked me to open it for discussion first. How in the world you got the idea that any changes I made or am suggesting makes this a tutorial. I don't even know how all of it works, but I know this article has very little information in it about the company. Ssyoda (talk) 08:40, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Whatever we do here, it's worth remembering that the Quixtar name is being phased out. By next year we will have three choices: merging this article into Amway, changing the name of this article to something like "Amway North America", or leaving this article as a historical record of Quixtar which by then no longer exists. In any case, it may not be worth the effort to make major changes. As for this propsoal being a re-arrangement of exiting material, I don't see anything in the article on "Lines of Association" or on "Charitable donations", for example. I'm not sure what sources are available for some of these topics, which is why I sugggest finding the sources first. For instance, we don't now have any information on how much profit Quixtar makes and I'm not sure Amway even releases that info. As for lists versus prose, the founder of Wikipedia wanted us to avoid lists, but most editors seem to prefer them. Prose is still a good choice when explanatory text about the entries can be provided. The trouble with a list is that it may make all entries appear equal. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 19:05, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Could you also clarify something for me, please? You stated that "we can only add what we have sources for." I took a look at Microsoft's article and all links were Wikipedia links. I don't think I saw a single external reference on that page. Where as on the current Quixtar page there are multiple external references as well. What are you expecting for sources? If you're going to expect all Wikipedia references for everything on this page, I'm not even going to attempt to ad content. I don't even care about this company, so there's no reason to spend all that time reformat all that crap that I found, put it into it's own Wiki article and then reference it in this one. Could you also, maybe on my talk page (I don't know how to talk back to you on that), tell me specifically what you saw as copyright violation. Everything was properly cited and the one direct quote from Scott McCoy was even used to reinforce a point. Please don't use broad terms. Since that's all I hear from the MPAA I get tired of hearing it. :) Again, thanks for hashing this out to make this article a little more useful and informative.Ssyoda (talk) 08:40, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• • Clarification: the external references are listed at the bottom of the article and footnoted numerically in the body of the text; in other words, hyperlinked word you see in Wikipedia articles such as Microsoft will almost always be links to other Wikipedia articles; it's the numbers at the end of sentences that are generally references; they link to the list at the bottom of the article, where you'll find links to the appropriate external references. (The Microsoft page, for example, has links to about 100 published newspaper/magazine articles, Microsoft websites, and various other stuff.) evildeathmath 17:41, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's also worth pointing out that, like Amway, Microsoft is a large company that cannot be easily covered in a single article. The main article is just one of over a hundred about the company and its products. It's a bit tricky to count them all, but there appear to be about a dozen or so articles about Amway, its products, and its related companies. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 19:05, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Thank you both for the clarification. I haven't had the time to go through Wikipedia and find everything for a Quixtar article. I think I have the original content on my hard drive somewhere in the cache and it'd be easy to edit with the Wikipedia references. I'll also take the time to go over the standards and rules before doing so. However, does everyone agree on the proposed structure change, or are the additions or subtractions? Ssyoda (talk) 20:06, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think anyone agrees with the proposal yet. What's the purpose? What's the problem with the existing structure that this proposal would fix? ·:· Will Beback ·:· 20:15, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Regarding product endorsements, if we have articles on the products then the endorsements should be included in those articles, not here. (We wouldn't write about the benefits of Clorox in an article about a grocery store chain, for example.) As for charitable donoations, please read WP:SPS for issues about using a company as a source for self-serving information. We should have 3rd-party sources for that type of information, both to assure accuracy and to establish notability. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 20:27, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Man, this is a lot to go through since I'm not even associated with the company. You know what, I don't have the time, or the will to go through all the rules and regulations on stuff. I personally didn't find the information that was available in this article useful what so ever. My dad's old chem teacher showed me the stuff so I thought I'd check it out this was like the 3rd or 4th link on google, and I didn't see anything on here. Plus it was hard to read. So, maybe I'm just missing the point of Wikipedia. But, thank you guys for helping me understand a bit of how things work on here. Cheerio! :P Ssyoda (talk) 04:17, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Source ( Cfr in the article text, at the beginning )

• And Cfr: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quixtar

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Companies_established_in_1999
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Companies_established_in_1999&from=Oneworld

--PLA y Grande Covián (talk) 12:18, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

-IBS (company owned by Henry & Sue Skaggs) ask the Columbus, GA judge to bring the case out of default so the case could be heard with ALL evidence being made public. The Judge the Honorable Maureen Gottfried, accepted the request. The plantiff (IBS) turned over 14 cases of evidence and over 100 hours of recorded phone calls and voice mails to the legal team. The plantiff's also gave over 2000 emails of evidence. Along with this evidence, they turned over a disc with nearly 1 GB of information.

Early in July the defendants offered a settlement in the millions, but the Skaggs' would not give more information. They did share a letter that Bill Blue (Defendants attorney)sent to the attorneys of IBS to ask for a settlement. The Skaggs' have refused ANY settlement of ANY amount. They told us that NO amount will be settled on. The Skaggs' want ALL evidence to be made public.

The Skaggs' also shared an illegal overseas bank account that Bill Britt pays NO taxes on.

The Skaggs' just spent 35 days in the states (they live overseas right now, after death threats from one of the defendants). During that time they have signed agreements in writing with the Department of Justice to cooperate with criminal RICO charges AFTER the Skaggs' are finished with the Civil RICO case.

For any questions, please feel free to ask on this Wiki, or Amway Wiki, or Wikipedia under the discussion tab. I DO NOT make any money in posting this, but am a concerned friend of the Skaggs' and believe in the Quixtar/Amway business. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Quickstar7 (talk • contribs) 23:45, 26 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Any objections to moving the article to the new name?   Will Beback  talk  23:08, 15 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. Better to just merge into Amway. Quixtar was the failed attempt to change the name in North America when ordering via website became available, in order to get away from the stigma of the Amway name. Some time around then they also changed their business model from only allowing "Direct" distributors being able to order directly, to no longer making all the smaller distributors pick up and order through one of the directs. When that change was made there was a massive loss of business, with a huge downshift in individual business sizes due to the lack of social interaction required by going through the directs. However, over the years it was recognized that all publicity, good and bad, is good publicity, and so the parent company, also renamed, decided to give up on the Quixtar name and go back to the name that everyone knew, Amway. It would be massively confusing to move this article to Amway Global and keep the main Amway article at Amway. Better to keep this article as a historical note on the brief split, or just merge as a one paragraph inclusion in Amway. Full disclosure - I is one. 199.125.109.88 (talk) 12:23, 16 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Amway Global still appears to be an entity. If the businesses haven't been merged then I don't see why we'd merge the articles just because they have similar names. I don't think the confusion would be "massive" - Amway remains the parent company.   Will Beback  talk  17:45, 16 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The current status is a bit hard to establish. The company itself is even referring to Fulton Innovation as a subsidiary of Amway in press releases, when I believe it's technically still a subsidiary of Alticor and sister to the Amway companies. One exec in a press interview indicated Amway Global will become "Amway" sometime in the not to distant future and it was just a transitional name. It will still likely be a separate "entity", but then so are all the other Amway affliates, some of which, such as Amway Greater China and Amway South Korea are larger than Amway Global (Amway North America) and get as much or more press coverage. A decision to keep the Amway North America affiliate article separate, despite the business models and branding effectively having been merged, implies that other incorporated affiliates should have their own articles too. That's not out of the question, especially given their independent notability, but it doesn't seem the right way to go to me. --Insider201283 (talk) 20:29, 16 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Pending a consensus on merge, a move reflecting the current name of the company is the logical thing to do. --Knverma (talk) 22:42, 16 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]