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Where's the proof that the anti-union claims where false? 04:16, 27 January 2006 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.217.230.160 (talk • contribs)
Anyone got a source on this? --Liface 00:44, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
When I click on that 2, and I see the article, it doesn't mention Claudine Co, Jane, or masturbation. As such, it is enough that the uncited claim is discussed here on the talk page, and it need not be in the article. 66.41.66.213 06:34, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
After having done extensive research on American Apparel and through very reliable sources on the inside I know for a fact that this so called “masturbation” did not take place during the interview. The interview itself took place at a store. The way its characterized here implies that Charney acted alone or just whipped it out in a work context. Not true. The real story is that the consensual sexual exchange took place AFTER the interview in a completely social context. The reporter was not some innocent bystander, she just chose to tabloidize this personal experience for her own best interest and as a “journalist". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Polarina123 (talk • contribs) 02:51, 15 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the new image of the ad, the problem isn't the COI - leftcoastbreakdown simply replaced an external image link to a link to a newly uploaded image of the same thing. Wikignoming and clerical fixes and improvements to an article by the a conflicted editor are no problem, and probably encouraged if they make the information more accurate. The real problem is that it's a copyrighted image without proper licensing. We have no fair use justification at all to upload an image just to link to it because the ad link is replaceable by a link to the New York Times version....in fact it's technically not an image use at all so the image is really an orphan. The only way we can accept this is if Amercan Apparel (assuming it is the copyright holder - otherwise, the photographer or whoever owns it) agrees to a GDFL article by licensing it under the GDFL share-alike or unlimited license as appropriate to the Wikimedia CommonsorFlickr, from which we can import it into Wikipedia. That would be a sporting, public spirited thing to do because the world can use more free content, even ads like this. But that does give us and the rest of the world - any newspaper, any supporter or detractor, any clip art maker, the right to do anything they possibly want with the image and the text. A share-alike license would at least require attribution, which would keep it out of the clip art galleries. A number of companies, entertainment personalities, and photographers have seen the light and actually donated images to the public this way, but many others have legal departments or marketing people that would prohibit that. An ad like this could be a nice resource for the world.Wikidemo (talk) 00:34, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In 2006, Knowmore.org published a 70 page report entitled "Understanding American Apparel", written and researched by Knowmore founder B. Dolan. Now, two years later, as Dov Charney and his company prepare to stand trial in January, Knowmore's report has been entered as evidence in the trial, and B. Dolan has been deposed and called in to testify. [1]
from Knowmore.org's FAQ [edit] Is Knowmore.org's information copyrighted? The articles hosted on this site are released by their authors under the GNU Free Documentation License, so the articles are free content and may be reproduced freely under the same license. [2]
Mwelz (talk) 20:19, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Recently several anonymous IPs (70.1.133.32 (talk · contribs), 70.6.90.178 (talk · contribs), 68.164.63.53 (talk · contribs), 70.6.153.149 (talk · contribs), and two new editors who have contributed little else (Rhodiaboy (talk · contribs) and Igloo1981 (talk · contribs)), have made and may be edit warring over a series of changes to this article and that of company CEO Dov Charney to paint them in a more favorable light, including downplaying material related to the sexual nature of advertising, a unionization attempt, and reported allegations of sexual improprieties. These changes have involved removing sourced content, adding content that is argumentative ("paradoxically...", "despite..."), attacking the credibility of people who have made the statements (e.g. a writer's professionalism), and a number of other problems having to do with weight, POV, synthesis, reliable sources. These articles have in the past been the subject of attempts by the company itself to improve its image. Under the circumstances we should watch out for potential WP:POV editors and WP:SOCKs and WP:COI problems. I have allowed some of the additions and changes to remain but reversed the ones I saw as problematic. Wikidemo (talk) 00:02, 15 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
...and another, 76.168.41.13 (talk · contribs)[17]: "American Apparel is committed to leveraging art, design, technology to produce garments of the highest quality" (etc).
Note:
One of the above editors has accused me of bias and asked on my talk page why I am holding out on this article. First, I do not believe I have a bias, and I certainly have no stake in the article. My only concern is to protect the article, and Wikipedia more generally, from disruptive edits. If you look through the edit history you can see that for a period of about a year, ending in January, Leftcoastbreakdown (talk · contribs) was editing the article and that of the company's founder, Dov Charney, in a way that among other things seriously diminished the reports of sexuality in advertising,[29] the reported sexualization of the workplace, sex harassment lawsuits against the company, and so on.[30][31] [32] The user also made changes to praise the company and its founder. [33][34] [35][36] [37][38] As a PR agent for the company the editor had a clear conflict of interest and should not have been using Wikipedia in that way. The issue was raised and resolved this past November at AN/I: here. Although some others were more firm (and later urged the editor to not edit the article at all), I simply warned the user[39] that a company making POV edits to its own article could backfire on the company and assumed we could count on the company's better judgment to avoid stirring up more trouble. Th PR person soon disappeared from Wikipedia -- or did they?
Starting about March 11, after a lull of 2-3 months, a swarm of new editors have been rehashing the very same issues the PR person was undertaking, in a very similar way. These are all single-purpose accounts with few, or no, edit histories other than trying to improve the way American Apparel and Dov Charney come off on Wikipedia. Yet they seem to know an awful lot (a lot for a brand new editor but not too much - about the same as the PR person and with some of the same flaws) about wikipedia policies and the e need for citations. There are a lot of stylistic similarities and editing quirks in common between the various new editors, and they also share this with the PR agent: Editing numerous sections at once to slant the article, with no edit summaries or edit summaries that misleadingly suggest that only minor technical changes are being done,[40][41][42] [43], PR speak praising the company and its founder[44] ("is the mastermind behind", "award-winning"), Throat clearing asides that tend to slant the tone of sentences ("perhaps inevitably"[45], "Despite...", "few argue that", "Paradoxically", "As the company's creative director"), adding and tweaking section headers to be more favorable, adding citations to controversial material (sometimes good, sometimes bad, often in a characteristic citation style), updating simple factual information about the company, and a bunch of other things. The edit summaries of all of these various accounts are written nearly identically. I'll spare the full analysis of the new editors for an WP:RfC or other administrative review of this article, but there are too many coincidences for this to be normal editing process. Another thing that ties them together (mentioned above) - all but one of the IP editors are from Los Angeles, and I'll bet the signed-in editors too. After rooting a number of sockuppets in the past year, I think I'm getting a nose for these things. This one just doesn't smell right.
Regarding the most recent edits by igloo1981 (talk · contribs)[46], I reverted them in part because I think it's improper edit warring in a meatpuppet fashion, but I also think each change is a bad edit:
Igloo1981 claims to be a student doing research[49], but exhibits qthe same editing traits on the same issues, and arrived at the same time. He/she has also taken part in some of the previous edit warring, slanting, and insertion of inappropriate material in the past few days. In one series of edits[50] he/she heaped unencyclopedic praise on the founder ("At an early age Charney showed signs of an entrepreneurial and independent spirit", "breakthrough", "a hugely popular wholesale brand"), removed sourced negative material (a company bankruptcy, charney's personal interest in sexually-charged advertising, models sending photos directly to Charney, Charney walked across factory floor in briefs and masturbated, and staged a sexual encounter with an employee, in front of a reporter), and adding an un-cited attack that "Some critics questioned [the source's] professionalism". Even if we assume good faith about this particular user, the person is a new editor with negligible history here other than these articles who seems to have wandered into a meatpuppet attack and is making improper edits that end up helping the meatpuppets, in the same style and using the same tactics as the meatpuppets.
Were these changes made in isolation, I have no particular position on the article and I would let some edits slip. Again, I am not concerned with the article content in the end so much, just not letting Wikipedia be degraded by people who would use improper tactics to defend corporate images - perhaps the company itself.
-- Wikidemo (talk) 20:23, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Will be reverting the POV material that has accumulated in the last 24 hours (that puts me at 2RR in case anyone is counting). I believe this can all be simply reverted as COI, POV, meatpuppetry, and sockpuppetry. And not a single one of the contentious editors has discussed what they are doing. But to justify why this is a problem I'll go over each issue:
Note: I am retaining and re-inserting the very few constructive edits that were made here.
I've just rewritten the article to improve quality and get rid of a lot of messy stuff and the taint of conflict left over from the recent sockpuppet/POV attack by American Apparel executives. I also imported a lot of stuff from the Dov Charney article that was more about the company's history than him, and pushed some stuff about him to that article. Overall I've tried to balance it slightly in favor of talking about the company and its various decisions and achievements over all the controversies, particularly the sex harassment and unionization fight (but these are relevant and well sourced so they should not be eliminated entirely). Arguments and colorful examples both pro and con were unencyclopedic so I've removed some of that stuff. There's some more discussion on the Dov Charney talk page. I hope this is fairer to the company and also a better article. I'll leave the conflict tags up for now, but I think the article's been washed of that so if the company leaves it alone for a while I'll take them off. (all subject to reasonable consensus of legitimate editors, of course) Wikidemo (talk) 18:24, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am an employee of American Apparel. I do not know all of the rules and regulations of Wikipedia. I dont even know how to make a proper link or a citation. However, I do know a thing or two about Dov Charney and American Apparel, to the point that I could be considered an expert. Am I biased? Sure. I LOVE my job and my boss is great. Is there a conflict of interest? Maybe. But that's not the issue. The issue for me is that the full story is not being shared on these pages. You can't fairly tell somebody's life story without including the accomplishments along with the failures. Also, while the average person today might be more excited to read about blow jobs than industrial, retail and aesthetic achievements, it's not fair to sensationalize the "interesting" parts and disregard anything else (such as "Marty Bailey has developed a new concept of team manufacturing based on eliminating wasted time in motion...") as "fluff". In fact, I see some of the texts that the WikiPolice insist on leaving as negative, sensational tidbits of fluff themselves. "Charney has also emphasized sexuality in his public persona in order to raise his company's profile; in a similar synergistic manner, Hugh Hefner's profile raised that of the Playboy empire." I read through the editing history and I'm not claiming that all changes made by every editor have been totally without some agenda to shed a positive light on the company. Aside from myself and Danica O'Brien, I have no relation to, no do I know who any of them are. What I'm saying is that in order for any article to be fair and truly encyclopedic, the story must be told completely, without a heavy hand towards any one element. I don't have time or desire to "edit war" with anyone, but I would like to add some information that is completely essential to one getting a proper overview of Dov or the company, and I would appreciate the chance for it to be fairly considered before it's hastily undone. Just because a Wikidemo-type didn't write it doesn't mean that it's not part of the story. Everything I post will have a citation that is of the same or superior quality as the existing ones, and the tone will be no more biased than anything else that is published. I'm using what you have deemed "encyclopedic" as a guideline. I hope you find my edits as constructive and fair. Thank you, Iris —Preceding unsigned comment added by IrisAlonzo (talk • contribs) 03:30, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Also, regarding the Hugh Hefner references you refer to as sensationalistic fluff on the part of biased Wikipedians, you should know they were all added last October by an American Apparel employee, citing a New York Times article, starting with this one[52]. American Apparel's "retail and aesthetic achievements", as you put it, are all about sexuality - and so is the company's style, branding, image, and practices. This is not a PR outlet. You can't have it both ways, promoting it when you want, then denying it when it comes to a serious publication. Wikidemo (talk) 04:32, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
And no, Wikidemo, this is not a PR outlet. Nor is it a therapeutic negativity outlet for you or people like you. There are rules, and ALL OF US, not just guests to "your house", have to follow them. Just because you have more edits than some does not make you exempt from the rules, nor does it make you any sort of authority on, well, anything. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.94.170.79 (talk) 07:29, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I went through and removed all traces of COI and also got the article back up to Wikipedia standards. There are still some cosmetic changes I'd like to go back through and make but I'm exhausted and will probably take a break. Thanks go out to Wikidemo for getting this thing back under control. TheRegicider (talk) 07:24, 26 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Totally feel like it deserves a mention, but 4 extensive paragraphs about a single advertising venture that was eventually cancelled does not seem like it fits with the article. Perhaps it could go in the Second Life article. Otherwise, I feel like it hurts the integrity of the Wiki entry and is a bit too tangential. I could be wrong, what does everyone else think? TheRegicider (talk) 06:29, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Employees never got the 500 shares of stock. So thats wrong, but I don't want to make a log in, so just some FYI if anyone wants to correct it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.22.127.23 (talk) 16:01, 7 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I feel that this article as it stands shows American Apparel in an overly positive light. While discussing the progressive causes it supports, it writes of the large numbers of progressive organizations which have large qualms with it. While repeatedly going into depth about the use of American labor and the fact that it pays workers $12/hour, it skims over and writes off attempts to create a union as outside interference. While discussing the praise American Apparel advertisements have gotten, its only discussion of criticism is half a sentence (http://clamormagazine.org/issues/38/aa/index.php). I certainly do nothing think this article follows wikipedia's NPOV policy, but I have neither the time nor knowledge about the company to overhaul the entire article to fix that. Crito2161 (talk) 22:00, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I had it reorganized in playground mode but wanted to post it so the new stuff is considered. However, I've done quite a bit of research on the union situation. I can understand the opinion that it paints it as an interference, but that may simply be the nature of the facts. TheRegicider (talk) 00:21, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What is this here for? Mcoogan75 (talk) 03:14, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, the article almost reads as if it were written by an American Apparel employee. There is not even a Criticism section, which should be there regardless of whether or not any of the criticisms are valid, as AA is one of the most controversial companies in the clothing industry. 74.12.221.236 (talk) 20:04, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This article is semi protected so I am unable to edit it. I would like to input information about the company's lawsuit with Woody Allen and reported attempts to trash Allen's reputation (See http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090415/ap_en_mo/woody_allen_lawsuit). How can I do this? Mrcomeara (talk) 13:05, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hey all - does anyone know what's going on? Looks like there was a flurry of edits and then they all got deleted. Mcoogan75 (talk) 06:40, 3 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This whole page seems like garbage - the intro of the production section says they don't outsource, but later in the article it is said that they have workers in 18 countries and workers outside the US make lower wages. 69.105.172.180 (talk) 00:54, 28 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I believe the workers in other countries are retail employees. All the manufacturing is done in Los Angeles. Mcoogan75 (talk) 04:58, 18 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
What about the date it was founded? It really was 1998, I believe, not 1989. The top chart says 1998 then the section below it reads 1989. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.6.49.143 (talk) 20:17, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It seems that a company called "American Apparel" is one of the three major contractors that produce combat clothing for the marines. Are we talking about the same company here? If yes, don't you think this is an important thing to add to the page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.254.85.140 (talk) 19:36, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, I'm not big into editing, but I was wondering whether any of the "information" from Gawker's recent articles on AA apparently only hiring good looking people, and the confidentiality clause employees must sign will appear here soon? http://gawker.com/5560215/american-apparels-new-standard-no-uglies-allowed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.118.238.242 (talk) 02:45, 23 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The Yonge Street A.A. store was heavily damaged by rioters on June 26 during the G-20 summit, and was widely featured on national and international news, with outlets such as CTV and CBC reporting looting, the use of store mannequins to damage other stores, and also that feces had been thrown into the store. This was a prominent enough incident that it should be mentioned in the article. 68.146.81.123 (talk) 19:23, 27 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
These might be very good additions to the article: Yahoo Shine, The Daily Beast, and a notable Tumblr blog (comment added , February 23, 2012 by Jack Sebastian)
This page could use good photos. I eliminated the really dated, awkward sized thumbnails. If anyone can volunteer for the task, they'd be doing this page a big service. 99.147.42.156 (talk) 22:36, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, a whole lot of stuff about the self-destructing founder, but nothing about the clothes, which are liable to fall apart the first time they are washed. I've owned several AA shirts, and have bought others for family members, and they don't stand up to washing - The seams unravel spectacularly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.1.207.4 (talk) 16:01, 17 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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The lead talks about the company in the past tense based on reliable sources. However, a more recent one, from 5 May 2017, suggests that the brand will exist under a new owner. In either case the remainder of the article needs quite a lot of updating. Much of it is in the present tense, e.g. "American Apparel bases its manufacturing," "Employees also receive benefits," "American Apparel designs, creates and prints its own advertisements." BlackcurrantTea (talk) 10:21, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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