Talk:Tempur-Pedic/Archives/2013

Spammed the Bedroom Article

Looks like this company has spammed the bedroom article too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.148.124.182 (talk) 09:27, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

I see the text about these mattresses was removed from the Bedroom article in May 2012. Good call. Bishonen | talk 18:23, 10 June 2013 (UTC).

Article stubbed

Wikipedia articles are supposed to be written in a neutral, balanced, encyclopedic way and based on reliable third-party sources. I've removed the unsourced hype about breakthroughs and the like, and the promotional claims sourced to the company's own self-praise on their website, indeed most of the time lifted word for word from that source. (It's hard imagine a worse source for NASA's research and development than "Shareholder information" .pdf from the company.)

Also I've removed outdated information ("In 2010, an additional 30 to 40 Houses will receive Tempur-Pedic beds" and "Tempur-Pedic is still a strong selling mattress brand, even with recession spending declines", with a source also from 2010) and company-generated predictions ("Once the deal is completed in 2013, the $2.7 billion company expects to sell mattresses in over 80 countries"), as well as statements sourced to dead links.

"Temper foam" is the wording used by the offered NASA reference. A search for "Tempur" in the source text doesn't return any hits. Further, I'm afraid I had to "comment out" all the text about the 1998 NASA press conference, the Good Housekeeping Seal and the Arthritis foundation (that means the text is still there in edit mode, but is not visible on the page). I'm sorry about that — I rather liked the millionth pillow — but the source to "Tempur-Pedic History" just doesn't work right. The link merely redirects to the front page of the company website. Presumably either the history page is gone or there's something the matter with the link. Well, perhaps it doesn't matter; it doesn't exactly sound like a reliable third-party source in any case. And all the other references in the section are either 404 Not Found or have no mention of T-P. One dead link had been sitting there tagged as such for almost a year. (It's altogether clear that the previous mild measures of tagging for problems aren't helping, which is why I'm having to take more radical action.) Feel free to supply better, or at least live, sources, tone down the admiration some, and reinsert the facts.

The teddy bear link was dead.

Who is the "Morris" who is such a fan of T-P's marketing?

Don't use Answers.com as a source, it copies wikipedia. Scroll to the bottom of the linked page to see.

The worst example of slanted editing may be the unbalanced use of one of the few neutral sources, Sleeplikethedead.com, an actual third-party consumer guide. (It's ironic, not to say weird, that that source alone had a "reliability questioned" tag.) "Overall, Tempur-Pedic mattresses are three times less likely than a traditional spring mattress to suffer from sagging or other durability issues" (my italics) was cherrypicked while the rather embarrassing comparison with other foam memory mattresses was ignored: "Tempur-Pedic beds overall as a group have 81% owner satisfaction" while "By comparison, all memory foam mattresses overall as a group have 81% owner satisfaction". Owner satisfaction is the same! And what about the "off gassing" problem, which is not the same, but is worse with T-P? "About 19% of Tempur-Pedic bed owners report significant off gassing which is higher than the rate for both mattresses in general and most other memory foam mattress brands" (my italics). This problem is also ignored in the article, in fact the section "Potential health hazards" (which I have removed, as it seems to be purely about health hazards of other, unnamed, mattresses) strongly implied that other memory foam mattresses give off more bad stuff — without saying so outright, but tone and selection and overall effect are supposed to be encyclopedic, too. See Wikipedia:Tendentious editing.

"Popular culture" sections are deprecated, especially if they're promotional. I've removed it.

Wikipedia is not for advertising.I know my removals have left the article a stub, but the {{advert}} tag has been at the top of the page since I added it in December 2011 (see this diff for edit summary), and nothing has been done about it. Feel free to add neutral, well-sourced facts to the article. Please don't reinsert any of the adspeak, the cherrypicked facts, or the wonky sources. Bishonen | talk 18:15, 10 June 2013 (UTC).

Well explained reasoning for stubbing. I agree with your edit.--MONGO 13:57, 11 June 2013 (UTC)