Talk:Keep America Beautiful/Archive 1

Worldwide view tag

Someone tagged this article with a template saying that the article may not describe a "world-wide view". This is an American organization who focues on the United States. Therefore, I'm not sure what changes would be relevant. It is customary to leave a note here on the Talk page explaining why such a tag is being added. Since no explanation is here, I am removing the tag. If anyone feels the need to re-add it, please explain here what you think should be done to give more of a "world-wide view". Thanks, Johntex\^talk 03:05, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

POV

I find it odd that the criticism section is larger than the accomplishment section, and is full of redlinks. This needs to be cleaned up (no pun intended) as to not give undue weight to those critical of a program that was in reality, looked upon favorably. Dennis Brown (talk) 02:26, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Agree. Completely undue weight given to the critics, often with no supporting citations. Guy Macon (talk) 04:53, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

• Two of the criticisms clearly didn't belong. Other others are weak, but reasonable and do add some balance to the article on the whole, so left in. I removed the neutrality tag as now I think it is much more balanced: explaining the program and offering some criticism in a balanced manner. Dennis Brown - 2¢ © Join WER 14:45, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Controversy not mentioned?

I remember seeing mention of some controversy about this organization, and this ad campaign, in particular. Saying that it was an astroturfing effort by beverage companies to blame litter on individuals rather than the companies that had created it. This would distract attention from them, and deflect efforts to get government regulations (like deposits on beverage containers & aluminum can recycling), which the industry opposed at that time (and still does, often).

I note that the article mentions the founders of this effort: beer companies (Anheuser-Busch & Phillip Morris (owners of Miller Brewing) and soda pop companies (Pepsi & Coke), but it gives no indication of why these companies were so interested in this effort. Seems like that is an important part of the context of this campaign, and leaving it out of the article is rather un-encyclopedic. T bonham (talk) 05:05, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

If you read the archive of this talk page, T bonham, you will see that this issue has been discussed (but not resolved) over the years. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:11, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

This article is PR bullshit, most of it copied from the organization's own sources. As such, it violates WP:NPOV, WP:WEIGHT, and WP:ADVERTISEMENT.

(The tipoff that it's copied is the use of the "®" symbol, which should not be used in Wikipedia, according to Wikipedia's style sheet. The only people who use the "®" mark are the people who own the registration, because if they didn't identify it as a registration mark as much as possible, they could lose the mark, which is what happened to Formica.)

Here's the discussion in the archives [1] and here's what the page looked like before it was deleted [2] user:Dennis_Brown, who is no longer on Wikipedia, complained that some of the sources are books with redlined links. He could have solved that problem himself with a Google search, which would have given the full bibliographic citations, and also many book reviews in major WP:RS, which establish that those books, and those criticisms have WP:WEIGHT and belong in the entry.

I came to this page because I saw a reference to Keep America Beautiful in a Deutsche Welle documentary, "Coca-Cola's plastic secrets" [3], which interviewed Bartow J. Elmore, author of the article Citizen Coke: An Environmental and Political History of the Coca-Cola Company [4], and the book, Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism, W.W. Norton (2016). On Deutsche Welle, Elmore and the producer say that Keep America Beautiful was created by Coca-Cola and the bottling industry in response to criticisms that their plastic products were wasteful and damaging the environment. KAB's purpose was to divert the blame from the industry, place the blame on individual consumers who "litter", and lobby against bottle bills.

If you do a Google search for "Keep America Beautiful," you'll see that one of their main activities is lobbying against bottle bills.[5] If you do a Google search for "Keep America Beautiful greenwashing" you'll find a lot more critics in WP:RS, [6] which establishes WP:WEIGHT for this viewpoint. You could make a case that, in the public relations industry, this campaign is notable as one of the most successful examples of "greenwashing".

I'd like to make these editing changes myself, but some of these pages have editors who for some reason are fans of the organizations, feel that they own the page, and revert any criticism with specious arguments about undue weight. I don't feel like spending 2 or 3 hours on a well-written, well-documented, fair and balanced section, only to have it blanked out by one of these fans. If somebody else wants to do it, I've given you enough material to work with. Let me know if they blank it out. --Nbauman (talk) 22:07, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

User:DoBeautifulThings should not be editing the main page

User:DoBeautifulThings should not be editing the main page, and that editor's changes should be reverted. It is not sufficient to identify conflicts of interest; according to Wikipedia:Conflict of interest, User:DoBeautifulThings should not edit the main page directly, but rather propose changes in Talk instead:

Editors with a COI, including paid editors, are expected to disclose it whenever they seek to change an affected article's content. Anyone editing for pay must disclose who is paying them, who the client is, and any other relevant affiliation; this is a requirement of the Wikimedia Foundation. COI editors should not edit affected articles directly, but should propose changes on article talk pages instead. [Emphasis added]

In addition, many of the changes by User:DoBeautifulThings and other editors violate other WP policies and guidelines, most significantly WP:NPOV, by eliminating all the criticism. They have also made changes without an edit summary, and have described significant, controversial changes as minor changes.

I think it would be appropriate to have a "Criticism" section. --Nbauman (talk) 03:48, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

• Agree. This is turning into an advertisement. Cloudjpk (talk) 19:25, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

• Having a criticism section is fine, but the usual position for criticism sections is at the end of an article, not the top. The current position seems questionable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.35.244.83 (talk) 03:06, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

I agree with the unsigned comment. Criticism sections are generally not the first section in an article. I would move the criticism section to the middle or the end. Alloy (talk) 19:46, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

The use of the phrase "heavy criticism".

Why is "heavy criticism" being highlighted at the top of this entry. The criticism seems to consist of a couple of authors and very few citations (one of which is broken). While I wholeheartedly agree that there should be a criticism and that some of the criticism may be valid, why is this emphasized and front-loaded on the entry? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nim Chimpsly (talk • contribs) 23:10, 5 May 2021 (UTC)