Talk:Arch Resources

Google finance link

I don't know who removed the link to the Google finance profile, but I'm sure you had a good reason. However, I would like to readd the link to the talk page at least, because it contains an index of news articles useful to future writers. Google Finance: News for Arch Coal, Inc. --tjstrf 01:33, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

WAS 4.250 keeping it "neutral"

Great edit, there, by WAS 4.250 to keep the Controversies section "neutral". I wonder if WAS 4.250 ever heats or lights his house with electricity derived from a coal-fired powerplant? Has he written numerous letters to the power company, asking them not to buy coal from mountaintop removal companies? I'm sure he'd be perfectly delighted to pay another 35% on his bill, to know that the coal was taken from underground mines, instead. WAS 4.250 is such a noted environmentalist and would NEVER edit Wikipedia merely to make a point. --72.94.153.33 14:00, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I have commented on the neutrality of the controversy section. It smacks of kneejerk reaction, I have posted my thoughts to Wikipedia:Deletion_review#Arch_Coal in response to FloNight's comments. - Hahnchen 16:23, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

competitors section

i don't think a competitor section is really necessary here. they have their own articles, and shouldn't be mentioned just because they exist in the same market at Arch Coal. if needed, one could state they are second only to Peabody Energy in the leadin factoid. JoeSmack ^Talk(p-review!) 18:50, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

It seems to be common practice to tie together related articles. I figured putting it in a sentence is a bit more elegant then just a bulleted "see also" list. ---J.S (t|c) 19:23, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

heh, well tell me if this isn't ok; it's pretty much the same info incorporated differently. JoeSmack ^Talk(p-review!) 19:25, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

No, it doesnt. It's not listing the other two major competitors. (I'm sure there's more, but those 3 were the ones listed) Related articles get linked together so people who want to learn more will have easy clues as to where to go. Many articles use templates to do it. Look at the bottom of Pepsi. But that's not the only way to do it. ---J.S (t|c) 20:09, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm maybe a solution here would be to create a "List of coal producers in the United States"? ---J.S (t|c) 20:15, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

The competitors below Arch Coal would be appropriate for the list, but not the article. You see, if you do 3, why not 5? Why not 10 competitors? Then it might as well be the list article. So, the list seems like the best option here. JoeSmack ^Talk(p-review!) 20:36, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Like I said, it's fairly common to list the competitors of a company. Not only is it "appropriate" it's standard practice. For example: Microsoft lists more then 10 and Coke lists dozens. Our job is not to promote or hurt a company... it's to make the encyclopedia, and make it easy to navigate. ---J.S (t|c) 20:49, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

A list or category seems best to me. It keeps all the information in just one place. Ben Aveling 23:12, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I think that an article can make its point without namedropping; comparisons like that are inherently POV. Saying something like 'Arch Coal is 2nd in the U.S. for coal production, besting many competitors' is better than 'Arch Coal is 2nd in the U.S. for coal production, bested by Peabody Energy but besting company x, company y, company z etc.'. The first just sounds more encyclopedic. And Coca-Cola#Coca-Cola and Local Competitors is uuuuugly; tone is important. JoeSmack ^Talk(p-review!) 20:56, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

You weren't arguing about the tone of the inclusion up until now. I can agree that my writing style needs a lot of work. :) ---J.S (t|c) 21:05, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• Reference 3, the company's own website is a RS with respect to details about the organization and officers of the company. It is not a RS regarding market share. If correct, there should probably is a better source for this.DGG 20:04, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

How Low is low

What does low sulphur mean? Low compared to what? Regards, Ben Aveling 23:13, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I think it's a classification of coal. this website has some informal information on the difference between low-sulfur and normal coal. ---J.S (t|c) 23:41, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

"Wyoming coal is noted for its extremely low sulfur content (0.4% to 0.06 % with Eastern coal at 3.0% to 5.0 % or more)."

But is arch coal's low sulphur as low as Wyoming coal's low sulpher? Regards, Ben Aveling 12:39, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I think it's in the range of wyoming coal, but I don't have a source for that off hand. ---J.S (t|c) 19:28, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

There's lots of low sulfur coal being mined in the eastern U.S. -- as low or lower than Wyoming and with much higher BTU values. (That said, the east also has lots of higher sulfur coal).--A. B. 21:00, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Arch Coal logo.png

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BetacommandBot (talk) 05:46, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

A note on the history of this article

At one point in history, I deleted this article in a dispute with Gregory Kohs, and I termed it "corporate spam". I now think that was too harsh a judgment and I regret using those words. I apologize to Gregory for using that terminology. Additionally, when the article was later restored, but without some revisions of Gregory, I restored two of his revisions with the comment "might as well restore all of it I suppose". This vague comment has bothered him, and I regret it. What I meant was that although I did not support restoration of the article (a position which I do not hold today; I was wrong about that), if we were to restore it, it would be foolish to do so in a manner which did not acknowledge his contributions. I am proud of that restoration, it was the right thing to do, but I regret that my comment was not more clear.

For the record, having reviewed the situation, I think that I acted harshly and hastily; I would not do the same today. I believe that my actions got Gregory off on the wrong foot in the community, and that tensions which he feels today have their roots in my action. I hope that in some small way my apology is helpful to him, and to the rest of the community, in looking for a resolution of longstanding conflicts.

Speaking of a general principle which I think is relevant here. For a variety of reasons, it is sometimes necessary and wise to delete content posted by a banned user. It is not always the right solution, and I think in this case it was not. But it is important that when we do so, we do so in a way which does not in any way cause the edit history to be misleading - banned users content might be deleted, but when it is kept, it should be kept in a way which appropriately gives them credit for their work. To the extent that this case, the details of which I don't fully remember or understand at the moment, was a case in which credit was denied for work done, then that was wrong. --Jimbo Wales (talk) 05:20, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, it was corporate spam, but the company was clearly notable so deletion was not the right response that's true. Content should be separated from contributor, yes, but in this case, however, the attention was salutary. Eusebeus (talk) 06:54, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Eusebeus, Please be careful about how you term things less you have proof. Are there some reliable sources to attribute corporate spam? Very respectfully, NonvocalScream (talk) 18:57, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Being that no money or favor was exchanged for the creation of the Arch Coal article, and indeed that the Arch Coal enterprise was completely unaware of its provenance, it is probably quite unfair to describe the original article as "corporate spam". You should redact, Eusebeus, even if you think archiving a position to the contrary, magically makes the matter go away. -- 68.87.42.110 (talk) 19:19, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

"...posted by a banned user." I take exception to that statement. I would like to think that I'm a well respected member of this project I know I have never been banned.

In addition, I also take exception that this was ever spam. It was not. I was very careful to check the sources, check the wording and make sure there wasn't anything glaringly missing. Check the original article as I posted it. It would fit in well with the thousands of other corporate stubs we have floating all over the project, and as far as stubs go this one was excellent. -----J.S (T/C/WRE) 06:08, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

• Without impugning the good faith of any of the above, the fact remains that Arch Coal is notorious (in the traditional sense of the word) for its mining practices which have attracted a good deal of attention and criticism. If I wrote an article on Syncrude that made no mention of the questionable environmental practices of the company, I think it would be entirely reasonable to suggest that the anodyne result could be called into question. Perhaps spam is a loaded term, but it seems to fit rather well here. Either way, encyclopedic treatment requires that the subjects include all aspects for which it is notable. An article on Arch Coal that omits in its entirety the company's mining practices, as did the original, is on its face not meeting the requirements of an encyclopedic treatment. That may not be spam, but it's not much better. Eusebeus (talk) 06:17, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
  • If you have sources for the above, please improve the article by broadening the coverage. But your characterisation, (in contravention to Jimbo apologising for using the same term) and subsequent refusal to answer what you meant when asked about it by multiple people ([1]), is not helpful at all. A casual reader would not assume that you were not "impugning the good faith of any of the above", despite disclaimers. ++Lar: t/c 13:22, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Sheesh. I already added it in Lar as indicated by 68; what's your issue here? Additional material may be here:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=%22arch+coal%22+mountain+top+removal&btnG=Search
such as:

• http://oae.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/12/2/163

Although the coal industry is regulated by the state and national governments, the regulators, it is argued, have been captured by Big Coal. The result is one of the most egregious and little-known instances of environmental degradation taking place in the United States today.

• Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future By Jeff Goodell, Mariner Books, 2007 ISBN 0618872248, 9780618872244 (e.g. p.44)

From a humanist perspective, and following a provisional distinction between pastoral and georgic, we might map the interrelation of aesthetic and economic environmental arguments. To take what is for me a local example: Many West Virginians are appalled at mountaintop removal mining, in which coal operators blast off the top of a mountain to get at the coal seam below.59 Our objections may originate in aesthetic revulsion—mountaintop removal is ugly—but given the development of sophisticated reclamation techniques, coal operators can present their course of action as beautiful in the long run. In fact, Arch Coal Inc., the leading practitioner of mountaintop removal, has been running newspaper and television advertisements depicting reclaimed surface mines as perfect, pretechnological middle landscapes and describing these landscapes as prime wildlife habitats.60 This aesthetic propaganda, while worth combating on its own grounds, distracts from human and economic issues. Mountaintop removal generates relatively few jobs, and those only for the short term. It acidifies streams, destroys well-water sources, and causes flooding. It damages homes, forces some people to move out of valleys that will be filled with rubble, and reduces property values. It diminishes a local economy increasingly devoted to tourism and therefore dependent on environmental protection. Since mountaintop mines were exempted from the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, state and federal governments will end up funding environmental repair.

-Timothy Sweet, "Economy, Ecology, and Utopia in Early Colonial Promotional Literature," American Literature 71.3 (1999) 399-427. etc etc etc

Eusebeus (talk) 14:56, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the article wasn't complete, but it also wasn't corporate spam. My initial research into the company did not return any references to the article by Timothy Sweet. I'd also like to note, that the article was created in September 2006, so sources published in 2007 are not something I could have checked. Also, at the time, Google scholar did not contain nearly as many resources as it does today. Eusebeus, I request an apology. I acted in good faith and did my homework. Continuing to call this spam is, infact, implying that I was acting in bad faith. -----J.S (T/C/WRE) 20:51, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Agree with J.S here. You're responding to a side issue, Eusebeus. But the main point is that you need to retract/redact/refactor your words so you're not calling this "corporate spam", if you wish to retain any credibility with me on this topic. Whether that matters to you, I can't say. ++Lar: t/c 17:07, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

• Diversity of opinion: it makes the world go round. I think this was corporate spam; others don't. Great! Eusebeus (talk) 08:21, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
  • If we were at the track betting on ponies, having different opinions would be swell. But we're not. You've made a serious, and scurrilous, accusation here. I'd like to get to the bottom of why you think it's a justified characterization. Or establish that you haven't a leg to stand on. Dancing around does you no credit. ++Lar: t/c 15:55, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
    • Calling it "corporate spam" is not an opinion - it's an accusation of bad-faith editing. If your going to just sit here and call me an asshole right to my face then I guess this conversation is over. But know this... I am hurt. -----J.S (T/C/WRE) 00:40, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
      • Eusebeus, check your talk page. Please heed. NonvocalScream (talk) 01:43, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Sources that actually reference Arch Coal

These are the pages that actually mention Arch Coal on the websites cited in this article:

• http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/07/us/as-hills-fill-hollows-some-west-virginia-residents-are-fighting-king-coal.html?scp=30&sq=&pagewanted=all
• http://yosemite.epa.gov/r3/press.nsf/7f3f954af9cce39b882563fd0063a09c/9e269ff376fbe64285256a07006b733b?OpenDocument
• http://www.wvgazette.com/static/series/mining/index.html The Charleston Gazette series
• http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/a883dc3da7094f97852572a00065d7d8/ed9229750e389ab2852570d60070fbe1!OpenDocument
• http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=SL&p_theme=sl&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EB0518895FCBD12&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM
• http://wvgazette.com/News/MiningtheMountains/200806260561

Not quite sure which document is correct yet, but the link on the main space is dead:

• http://www.tlpj.org/Explore-Issues/Cases.aspx?cpid=20&nid=5252

There are a number of other articles dealing with mergers, sales, profits etc, but I just included the readily available links related to the surface mining section. I did not do a news search on Ashland, subsidiaries, PACs, associations, etc. Flowanda | Talk 05:31, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia

The paid editing fiasco (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-10-09/MyWikiBiz ) seems important to me. That is, the article lends undue weight to certain aspects of the subject but not others. I wasn't able to find news coverage using google, however. --Elvey (talk) 22:03, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

The "Environmental impact" section has three paragraphs of PR fluff in it. Is an award from a relatively obscure museum really that notable, especially to lead off the section? Especially when a search of the news finds dozens of articles criticizing their environmental record (hell, I found an article published two days ago, 18 Oct, 2013, about public opposition to their work). This article is in dire need of cleanup. --TeaDrinker (talk) 18:32, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Elvey apparently missed the part about the fact that (according to MyWikiBiz) Arch Coal never asked for, never paid for, an article about itself on Wikipedia. It was just a test-case article for MyWikiBiz. -- I'm not that crazy (talk) 16:01, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

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Company now called "Arch Resources"

Apparently the company has rebranded under a new name. Should the article be thus moved? No comment on whether the company seems to be using an Orwellian euphemism to describe "coal" as "metallurgical products". - AppleBsTime (talk) 20:46, 18 September 2020 (UTC)