Talk:Falun Gong/Archive 43

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I recently got myself into hot water on this topic after clicking through my watchlist and seeing the current second paragraph being warred about. I fell down a rabbit hole, because it all seemed so strange (not merely the content itself, but the behavior around it). There is simply no doubt that this group's multiple media properties and performing arts companies as well as its views on sexuality and sexual identity are content suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia. What I found so strange was the way it was insisted this content be included. The second paragraph is a case in point: at least two parts of it are not even accurate 1. (that FLG "administers" the media properties - that's not what the source says; my current read is that the relationship between FLG [and even what organizational form FLG takes] and these media seems rather more complex), and that 2. Shen Yun contains anti-LBGTQ messages. This is not in the New Yorker article. It says in passing that "apart from the... homophobia," but doesn't actually say where or whether there was homophobia in Shen Yun. This is presumably an error of the source. But even so. Why do not we also include what else she noted in passing, such as Shen Yun's extraordinary use of a gigantic face of Karl Marx in front of a red tide (presumably of blood!) Falun Gong's anti-communist rhetoric appears far more prominent than its opinions about homosexuality, which when I read their press office now they seem not particularly strident about: https://faluninfo.net/misconceptions-intolerant/ (do they lie because they know that discrimination against homosexuality is not tolerated in the West? I am curious to look at some ethnographies). In any case, I found the Karl Marx face just as, if not more striking. So why don't we put that in the second paragraph as well?

Or alternatively, why doesn't the page have a proper discussion of FLG-associated media entities, which includes an accurate representation of the precise nature of the relationship between FLG and the entities, and the other commercial and cultural initiatives?

I would suggest the discussion of these matters largely mirror how other religions are discussed on Wikipedia. I presume that the page on Catholicism notes that Catholics run newspapers and media companies (I can think of some, including some which have garnered controversy), the page on Islam notes that Muslims run newspapers (many I could also think of, several quite controversial) and so on. How are these relationships described? I suspect that Falun Gong-associated media entities are relatively more significant for Falun Gong, which is a new... religion... and they serve a function vis-a-vis the Chinese state actions against Falun Gong adherents in China - but I think that would make sense for the general approach. Without any benchmark for the appropriate way for a tertiary source to discuss something like this, what tethers the dispute? Indeed, why not make it the lead, and include Marx, anti-gay, anti-evolution, and every other thing we don't like that is associated with this group? There is a reason for it, and that reason relates to what encyclopedias are for and how they are supposed to read.

In the meantime, the second paragraph as it stands now is an embarrassment. It should just be removed. Put in some placeholder text about FLG adherents founding media and performing arts companies to spread their message, or whatever it may be. There's a way to write about this without either doing propaganda for or against the group, which is the entire point. Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk) 13:50, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

I was just about to create a new section to address this (per above), but will reply here instead.

Editors (who, from what I can tell, never touched this page before this week) continue to add a new second paragraph to this article (most recently here[1]) without attempting to obtain a consensus, and without addressing legitimate concerns that have been raised about this content. As some of those objections have been buried in other threads, I will summarize those objections here, and ask that these objections be resolved before reverting again. Apologies for the repetition.

• A neutral and representative lede section could absolutely include reference to the media/arts organizations established by Falun Gong adherents, particularly the most notable ones, like the Epoch Times and Shen Yun. Scholars tend to situate this as part of a broader claim-making strategy that the Falun Gong community adopted as a response to the suppression in China (refer to Ownby, Penny, Junker, Noakes, et al.), and that seems the appropriate context in which to address this.
• Putting this information into the second paragraph of the article[2] is narratively incongruous, and assigns it undue weight and prominence in the article. The creation of the Epoch Times and Shen Yun, along with other Falun Gong activism, can only be understood in light of Falun Gong's broader history and its suppression in China: these are essentially activities undertaken by members of an exiled diaspora community, as a response to a persecution. Narrative cohesion thus demands that we first introduce the facts of Falun Gong's suppression, and then explain Falun Gong's response, of which these properties are undoubtedly a part. The final paragraph of the lede has historically been the place where Falun Gong's overseas activism is mentioned, and that is where it makes most sense to include a reference to these organizations.
• The statement that Falun Gong "administers" the Epoch Times does not accord with the source. While it is beyond dispute that the Epoch Times was founded by persons who practice Falun Gong, this is not the same as being owned, operated, or administered by Falun Gong itself. There are groups that serve as quasi-official mouthpieces or press offices for Falun Dafa (e.g. the "Falun Dafa Information Center"), but the Epoch Times is not one of them. It should suffice to say that the Epoch Times is an initiative undertaken by adherents of Falun Gong, or that it was founded by Falun Gong practitioners, or similar. Because that much is absolutely clear.
• There's the question of neutrality, including
  WP:WEIGHT. We need to try to present issues from a neutral point of view. What does that look like? Well, just as we would not heap praise on the Epoch Times in the lede section by, say, noting the journalistic awards it has won, neither should we try to define it by cherry-picking the critical sources that we like. Both approaches serve propagandistic purposes, and run a risk of WP:recentism
  . The lede section of an article on Falun Gong is simply not the place to hash out arguments about the editorial merits or defects of a newspaper, or to debate its place within a Chinese-language media ecosystem, or whatever else. Remember: our goal is not to induce readers to think well, or poorly, of the Epoch Times.
• With respect to the statement that Shen Yun promotes anti-LGBTQ and anti-evolution messaging, this appears to have very thin support, and furthermore fails
  WP:WEIGHT. The claim about anti-LGBT messaging is not directly supported in the source; the source contains one passing reference to "homophobia," but the context is ambiguous (e.g. is that a reference to Falun Gong teachings, or to a particular scene in Shen Yun's performance? Not clear). Other editors have noted this concern elsewhere[3]. In any case, this is not a neutral or representative description of Shen Yun, and it certainly doesn't belong in the second paragraph of an article about the faith system of Falun Gong.TheBlueCanoe
  14:09, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

These attempts at promoting a sanitized version of the present article grow more strained by the day. There's no worming around or dodging the many, many media sources that have come to regularly report on this stuff since the Falun Gong's involvement in the 2016 US presidential election. Just one recent example, as discussed among many other references in a section of this talk page above:

• Braslow, Samuel. 2020. "Inside the Shadowy World of Shen Yun and Its Secret Pro-Trump Ties".
  Los Angeles Magazine
  . March 9, 2020.

Quote:

Among other pronouncements, [Falung Gong founder and leader Hongzhi] Li has claimed that aliens started invading human minds in the beginning of the 20th century, leading to mass corruption and the invention of computers. He has also denounced feminism and homosexuality and claimed he can walk through walls and levitate. But the central tenet of the group’s wide-ranging belief system is its fierce opposition to communism.

In 2000, Li founded Epoch Times to disseminate Falun Gong talking points to American readers. Six years later he launched Shen Yun as another vehicle to promote his teachings to mainstream Western audiences. Over the years Shen Yun and Epoch Times, while nominally separate organizations, have operated in tandem in Falun Gong’s ongoing PR campaign against the Chinese government, taking directions from Li.

Relatively unknown before 2016, Epoch Times enjoyed a surge in traffic after the presidential election thanks to stridently pro-Trump content. NBC News reported in 2017 that the site was drawing millions of visitors a year, more than The New York Times and CNN combined. But Falun Gong didn’t restrict its pro-Trump stance to the paper.

The organization and its media extensions are well known for its anti-LGBQT and anti-evolution stances, its promotion of conspiracies, and its funding of extreme-right politics, just to name a few. While it's alarming that this article has gone so long without mentioning what it is today best known for, 'defenses' like the above two demonstrate how this has gone on for so long. (@Fiveby:, @TheBlueCanoe: mentioned you as "other editors" by way of a diff, fwiw) :bloodofox: (talk) 16:38, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

You have not addressed the issues noted above. There are millions of things that have been written about Falun Gong in reliable sources. In determining what the lede of this article should consist of, we need to consider that material as a whole to determine that the most important, fair, and proportional representations are. You have just alleged that Falun Gong is "best known for" its "funding of extreme-right politics", "promotion of conspiracies" and "anti-LGBQT stances." That is a remarkable and unsupported claim. Perhaps that is what you associate with Falun Gong, but your personal opinions are not clearly reflected in the corpus of scholarly literature. I will ask again: are you willing to engage constructively and in good faith to address these substance of these concerns? TheBlueCanoe 17:40, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Unless you've been living under a rock, you'd be aware that the media coverage of these topics since 2016 has strongly emphasized the connections between Falun Gong, its extensions, and support of extreme right-wing politics and ideology in the US and abroad. It just so happens that Falun Gong extensions have been quite active politically since that time, and, in 2020, the new religious group is certainly most strongly associated with the activities of its extensions, especially The Epoch Times. That isn't likely to change anytime soon. No need to continue to invoke the invisible chorus of "other editors" for "consensus" when we have plenty of quality sources. :bloodofox: (talk) 17:50, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Let's tone down the rhetoric, shall we? I would like you to address the questions that I raised. These are all reasonable objections, which you have not addressed.

We can presumably agree, per

. We determine that by surveying the best sources available to use, which in this case would include the books that have been written about Falun Gong, as well other sources such as human rights groups, think tanks, and news agencies. Do you agree? If so, and setting aside even the question of factual accuracy and neutrality, your edit clearly fails to adhere to these requirements. I'll give an example. The topic of organ harvesting from Falun Gong adherents has received substantial, renewed media attention in the last two or three years. Last year an expert tribunal, headed by a famed international jurist, found the Chinese party-state has sanctioned the large-scale killing of Falun Gong adherents for their organs. There are at least three books that deal extensively with this issue, along with several academic journal articles. In short, thousands of pages of reliably sourced material has been written about the issue of organ harvesting from Falun Gong adherents. By contrast, less than one full sentence has been written in a reliable source about Shen Yun's alleged anti-LGBQT messaging (whether the "homophobia" in question was even properly credited to Shen Yun is, as I said, unclear). And yet you have given this more prominence in this article than thousands upon thousands of pages written about organ harvesting. You have edit warred to enforce your position, over the justified objections of other editors. This is just such bizarre behaviour.TheBlueCanoe 18:52, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

We can mention organ harvesting in the lede and emphasize repression in China more, but thats not an argument to exclude the other stuff... Including their undisputed control over the Epoch Times and Shen Yun and the fact that Shen Yun’s messaging is at times extremely homophobic. Denying basic facts of reality like those is to me much more bizarre behaviour.

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 19:06, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

This is getting ridiculous, please stop trying to use wikipedia to push the agenda/view of your organization.

) 18:59, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, I'm inclining more and more to take this to ArbCom.

In the mean time, you may want to dial back the unsupported talk page claims and ad hominem. TheBlueCanoe 17:53, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

That'd be more productive activity than your daily attemptd to scrub the article, and may well get more editors to help in improving the article. It currently reads largely as a promotional piece composed by the organization and needs a lot of work to get it into a neutral state. :bloodofox: (talk) 17:57, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

To me it still looks like the concerns User:BlueCanoe raised above have not been addressed by editors who have taken the initiative to rewrite the article. While I don't question that the rewriters have legitimate concerns, we're not really seeing any discussion over the relative weight of the newly proposed sources. The editors seem particularly favorable toward progressive (leftist) descriptions of the movement; for example, Jia Tolentino of the New Yorker Magazine is former Deputy Editor of Jezebel, which has been ranked just a half notch to the right from extreme left by mediabiasfactcheck.com [4]. Similar political orientation, to a lesser degree, has been recognized in the New Yorker [5], MSNBC [6], NBC News [7], and others. My personal political leanings don't matter, but I'm a classical liberal, and therefore this really caught my eye.

Note that I am not claiming that these sources somehow fail

WP:RS. They don't. In my view, these viewpoints should be presented fairly and honestly. It is their due weight in relation to other sources (or, if you prefer, the due weight of other sources in relation to them) that should be discussed on the talk page. There is no legitimate basis for constructing a narrative that mostly omits non-progressive media outlets and peer-reviewed academic publications, or tries to manufacture an impression of a consensus based on a cherry-picked selection of reliable sources. Per Wikipedia:Reliable sources and undue weight

, "just as giving undue weight to a viewpoint is not neutral, so is giving undue weight to other verifiable and sourced statements. An article should not give undue weight to any aspects of the subject, but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to its significance to the subject. Note that undue weight can be given in several ways, including, but not limited to, depth of detail, quantity of text, prominence of placement, and juxtaposition of statements." I am not suggesting that I have the answers, and I probably don't need to keep repeating that I have refrained from both editing and reverting. What I'm saying is that these matters need to be hashed out very carefully. (This is even more the case since we all know the movement is actively persecuted by a party that (nominally) identifies as extreme left and has a fair amount of leverage in the West as well.)

This applies equally to those who would prefer to have the article read like a Falun Gong puff piece, and those who believe that

epistemological presuppositions, such as secular materialism. I repeat once again my previous comment: this does not look like encyclopedia-building. Rather, it has started to look more and more like a struggle for definitional power. And as much as I agree with his point about the NRM label, I regret to say that User:Bloodofox seems to be spearheading these efforts without too much concern for addressing all the legitimate concerns that User:BlueCanoe has recently put forward. Bstephens393 (talk) 22:10, 24 May 2020 (UTC) Bstephens393 (talk

) 22:10, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Resorting to a strategy of attacking the credibility of a journalist at The New Yorker, the experts she interviews, and, ahem, "liberals" will take this conversation exactly nowhere. This particular journalist is literally one of thousands writing about this topic. None of this is any secret now. Take those attacks on coverage by The New Yorker to

WP:RS

.

Additionally, the new religious movement discussion is gone and over—there are simply far, far too many high-quality sources that flatly refer to the organization as a new religious movement over the past few decades. No attempt at mudying the waters is going to make that fact any less clear.

The article is certainly currently composed as a puff piece, avoiding mention of the extensive political and financial involvements of the organization and its extensions beyond the second paragraph, which the editor you're often chiming in to support attempts to remove daily. These daily attempts at scrubbing the article of mention for what the organization is today best known are not serving the reader. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:49, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Then address the concerns, discuss the relative weight of the sources in relation to others, seek to build bridges, consider others' viewpoints, and present your case constructively and in good faith. I did not make any complaints about WP:RS here, which you should be able to see just by rereading my comment above. The question is about the relative weight of various reliable sources and what is considered a fair and accurate description based on all the available WP:RS. I understand that you prefer action over discussion, but you seem to be extremely dismissive of anybody who disagrees with your Archimedean point. Be a discussant, not an activist. Bstephens393 (talk) 23:10, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Please notify me when you open that RSN thread about The New Yorker, mediabiasfactcheck.com, and "liberals". :bloodofox: (talk) 23:12, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Why would I open a RSN thread when I have never complained about the reliability of a source? Are you saying that, for example, these characterizations have nothing to do with reality, either? [9] Do you think all reliable sources are required to be politically "neutral"? Or did you experience some cognitive dissonance and did not even want to consider the point I was making? I'm at a loss for words here. Bstephens393 (talk) 23:22, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

The community college course link you've provided, which contains a graphic from allsides.com that places, for example, Jacobin and MSNBC in the same "left" political bracket and says that mediabiasfactcheck.com "is listed WITH SERIOUS RESERVATIONS", is (while humorous) irrelevant here. Here's a direct link to RSN, where such discussion would be far more appropriate. :bloodofox: (talk) 23:36, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Obviously the granularity of that graphic is coarse, but that does not refute my essential point: there is a correlation between the sources you deem the most pertinent and their positioning in several appraisals of their political leanings (not reliability). Your comments are based on the assumption that we're discussing the WP:RS policy, but we're not. Or at least I am not. Just to make it clear: we're not in disagreement about that policy. What we seem to disagree about is the proper (and, in the case of a controversial article, mandated) procedure for discussing the due and relative weight of a very large corpus of peer-reviewed academic literature about the subject matter, as well as a very large corpus of WP:RS newspaper articles. This is what needs our full focus, and it involves good faith and a willingness to treat fellow editors as peers, not as subordinates. Let's all just keep WP:Five pillars in mind, shall we? Bstephens393 (talk) 00:00, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Eh, just coming back to this. So what is the actual reason for the second paragraph, as it stands now? It's still not clear to me. It seems clear that these forms of activism are an important part of the Falun Gong experience, but the inclusion of the anti-evolution thing here is bizarre (not only the content), and it's still not clear why it's all meant to go in the lead?? Why not say that Cate Blanchette watched the performance (just to pick a random pro-Falun talking point for argument's sake)? What is the point of all this?

I think an important question is whether or not the media and other organizations are actually administered centrally by the Falun Gong. From what I can tell so far, technically there is no such thing as a central Falun Gong organization, but I'm happy to be corrected. This would make relationship between these entities and this page a bit more complex.

I am getting quite curious about all this. For the editors who have more experience on the topic, apart from the fairly sensational media articles that keep getting quoted, what should I read and what scholars should I look at? I have done some drive-by stuff on this page from time to time, and my main interests lie elsewhere, but the acrimony has piqued my interest. It obviously does not seem a matter of reliable sources alone? Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk) 15:25, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

I’ve never seen a WP:RS say that Falun Gong doesn't have a central administrative structure, that argument seem to be made entirely by Falun Gong followers. Why would a religious group with no central administrative structure make a palatial compound in upstate New York to house its administrative structure...

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 16:09, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm beginning to suspect that your reading of the academic literature on Falun Gong is extremely thin. That Falun Gong has a diffuse, horizontal network structure, rather than a centralized and hierarchical administration, is very well established by the scholarly sources who have conducted the relevant field work and research. This doesn't mean there is no organization at all, but that it is deliberately weak "as a point of doctrinal significant," as one source put it. No system of membership, no tithing, no direct intervention in the lives of followers, no clergy or ranks, none of that. This is all in peer-reviewed and academic sources.TheBlueCanoe 14:27, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

• Just a comment about the homophobia point: it’s not solely restricted to a passing mention in the New Yorker. For instance,

  Falun Gong has moralistic, socially conservative beliefs, preaching against homosexuality and sex out of wedlock.
  — The Guardian

  Among them, Li has railed against what he called the wickedness of homosexuality, feminism and popular music while holding that he is a god-like figure who can levitate and walk through walls. [...] Hurley, who wrote for The Epoch Times until he left in 2013, said he saw practitioners in leadership positions begin drawing harder and harder lines about acceptable political positions.
  “Their views were always anti-abortion and homophobic, but there was more room for disagreements in the early days,” he said.
  — NBC News

  Ma, who faced intense pressure from the city's Chinese community not to vote for the resolution, also came under attack because of Falun Gong's antigay teachings
  — Bay Area Reporter

  — MarkH₂₁^talk 15:56, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

All are references to the conservative sexual morality of Falun Gong, but not to Shen Yun. The New Yorker reporter appears to have conflated the two things as well.

As a curious aside, it's fascinating how much importance these left-wing outlets assign to teachings on sexuality, given the relative lack of importance accorded to it in Falun Gong's own precepts, and the non-existent place in Falun Gong advocacy. That a Chinese Buddhist faith system would have conservative values around sexuality is...not that shocking, honestly.TheBlueCanoe 14:27, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Its inappropriate to say that the reporter for a WP:RS is conflating the two when obviously they aren’t, the Shen Yun performance they attended was homophobic... End of story. If you would like to take this to RSN please do, otherwise drop the stick

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 16:33, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

The Last Paragraph of the Lead Section

@

] canceled a lot well sourced materials without a reasonable explanation, I have the following questions for you:

• You said "That doesnt reflect the talk page discussion". but on this talk page, if you check, you can find a few users noted on talk page that for the sentences starting with “Falun Gong administers a variety of extensions in the United States and abroad…” are not covered. I checked and found these notes are true. If you disagree, please quote the words from the sources showing sentences with the same or a similar meaning. I also found another line in the same paragraph “The new religious movement also operates Shen Yun” is not covered in the sources. if you can find similar lines supporting this statement, please quote them here. Otherwise, please do not add back not supported materials.
• The contents from the sources including Newsweekly, ABC AUS, MSNBC, SF Chronicle, Forbes, SF Gates, WSJ, etc, seem to be reliable. they should not be deleted. Precious Stone 18:54, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

"If you disagree, please quote the words from the sources showing sentences with the same or a similar meaning” I already did as did others, stop

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 19:23, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

i just ctrl+F your name on this page, cannot find any related quotes, could you please copy to this section of the talk page. i doubt it exists, as i checked the sources.

now you are saying "Adding sources and information to the lead which are not in the text of the article is inappropriate" the sources 20-25 in this lead section seem to have been added in recent weeks. you added them as well?

i provided quotes from the sources. you can compare the quotes from the contents. nothing misused there. Precious Stone 19:52, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

The text you seek to add is riddles with spelling and grammar errors, please don’t vandalize the lead like that. Its also not appropriate to say that Shen Yun isn’t a part of FG when that contradicts the sources given. You knew you did not have consensus for this edit, why did you make it again?

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 17:24, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

You are welcome to correct any spelling or grammar errors. Your other accusation has no ground. I never said shen yun isn't a part of FG. On the contrary, I specified FG followers formed Shen Yun in 2006 by providing source and citing the related lines from the source. You have never provided any citing to support the claim “The new religious movement also operates Shen Yun”, nor to the lines “Falun Gong administers a variety of extensions in the United States and abroad…” Yesterday you claimed “I already did as did others“. This is simply not true. Nobody did that. In fact, there is nothing like these lines in the sources. You are adding WP:OR to the article. A few spelling errors cannot be called vandalizing, but adding WP:OR content and lied about it could be vandalizing the lead page, and so could the deleting a lot of RS. Precious Stone 18:45, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

What OR content have I added? Shen Yun is based out of the headquarters of FG in upstate New York btw and is part of FG [10], thats well covered by the sources in the article. From NBC "The Epoch Media Group, along with Shen Yun, a dance troupe known for its ubiquitous advertising and unsettling performances, make up the outreach effort of Falun Gong, a relatively new spiritual practice that combines ancient Chinese meditative exercises, mysticism and often ultraconservative cultural worldviews.”[11]

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 19:00, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

The WP:OR contents you added were at least the line “The new religious movement also operates Shen Yun”, and the line starting with “Falun Gong administers a variety of extensions in the United States and abroad…”.

I have asked you about source evidences of these lines for 2 times, as per WP:V. You never provided them, and falsely claimed that you and others did.

Once again, I already told you I never said “shen yun isn't a part of FG. On the contrary, I specified FG followers formed Shen Yun in 2006 by providing source and citing the related lines from the source“. btw, your Business Insider source said Chinese experts view Shen Yun as part of falun gong's elaborate and well-put together public relation plan. That is different with your words.

Your NBC source considered this group as outreach effort of falun gong. Both Business Insider and NBC source have quite different meanings with the two lines we are talking about.

You are welcome to change the two OR lines with similar meanings from these two sources. other sources, like the NYT, if they did not touch this area, they should not be used to support the claims. In addition, you should add back the well sourced other materials. Precious Stone 20:25, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Your response is incomprehensible, do you think you can boil it down to a single line?

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 21:26, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

i just put them into separate paragraphs. Please review them again. The main point is that your cited contents from the two sources do not support your edit on the article page. Precious Stone 21:40, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

You appear to have missed "Shen Yun rehearses at the compound when it isn't touring cities including London, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington.” among other things in that article. Sources have now been repeatedly provided for those statements and they are to be found in the body of the article. The NBC piece seems to *exactly* match the contentions made about both, they aren’t just founded by followers they are part of the religion. I won’t be adding the rest of the material, its due perhaps a line or two more but lets save the paragraphs for the body.

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 22:11, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Again, your cited words "Shen Yun rehearses at the compound when it isn't touring cities including London, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington.” have nothing to do with the two lines we are talking about.

The NBC piece does not match the two lines at all, as I have discussed above.

In the body of the articles, i also did not see anything like these two lines either.

You can add anything mentioned in the sources, but you are not suppose to add original research. Any one is not allowed to misrepresent a source for promoting one's own narrative in Wikipedia.Precious Stone 22:55, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

I would characterize this debate as follows: User:Horse Eye Jack is inferring from the source, and User:Precious Stone is calling that WP:OR. I agree that we can't assume that the source implies something that is not explicitly stated. Bstephens393 (talk) 05:27, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand, Marvin 2009 is proposing significant changes to the lead and calling the status quo WP:OR. I have made no independent edits just a revert, however the original wording is supported by the reliable sources we have. If other users feel we need to flesh that out more in the body I think we could definitely add a few paragraphs in addition to the scattered sentences we have now. We certainly have the sources.

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 06:04, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

User:Bstephens393's is right on. Yes, what happening here is "User:Horse Eye Jack is inferring from the source." which is against the statement from WP:SYNTHESIS:

Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources. Similarly, do not combine different parts of one source to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by the source. If one reliable source says A, and another reliable source says B, do not join A and B together to imply a conclusion C that is not mentioned by either of the sources. This would be improper editorial synthesis of published material to imply a new conclusion, which is original research performed by an editor here.

According to the editing history, yes, User:Horse Eye Jack did not add those original research at the first place, but when others tried to fix the errors, User:Horse Eye Jack defended them in use of many false statements, as shown below

• 1 when I asked source evidences of these lines, as per WP:V. User:Horse Eye Jack did not provide, but falsely claimed that he and others did.
• 2 when I continued to ask about the supporting sources for the two lines, User:Horse Eye Jack provided a line from one source: "Shen Yun rehearses at the compound when it isn't touring cities including London, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington.” However, this has nothing to do with the two lines we are talking about.
• 3 User:Horse Eye Jack's claim "Sources have now been repeatedly provided for those statements and they are to be found in the body of the article. " is entirely false as well.
• 4 User:Horse Eye Jack's claim "The NBC piece seems to *exactly* match the contentions made about both" is not true either. You may go ahead to exactly cite these a few words from this NBC source (or describe the same meaning in use of your own words) for replacing the two original research lines. But you should not infer from the source, as per WP:SYNTHESIS. Plus, other 5 sources cannot be misused for supporting these two lines.
• 5 User:Horse Eye Jack's claim " the original wording is supported by the reliable sources we have. If other users feel we need to flesh that out more in the body I think we could definitely add a few paragraphs in addition to the scattered sentences we have now. We certainly have the sources." First, there is no source among the provided 6 sources that support those two lines. Secondly, now are you acknowledging your earlier claim "they are to be found in the body of the article" is false? If you believe those contents already exist in the body, why do you think you need add more. In fact, they do not exist in the body either.

In conclusion, there is no supporting materials from the provided sources for those two lines. The king does not wear clothes :) Precious Stone 13:26, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

You need to wait to have consensus before making your edit. I have reverted you. Your arguments are bleeding into

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 17:10, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

I moved the citations around, it now more than satisfies

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 17:19, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

You said “I moved the citations around, it now more than satisfies

WP:BURDEN

at all. Plus, none of the sources support the content.

I have explained each edit I recently did on the page in great details. You failed to provide any constructive argument, except for those false statements I listed above.

To list one’s own untruthful words is not a kind of WP:PA. It was to seek your further explanation.

It is good that you remember we should follow

WP:CIVILITY

, however, they are not manifested in each revert you recently did. I said you may add any sourced content you would like to add and you should not keep those WP:OR. This was to respect WP:NOR, WP:AGF and WP:CIVILITY.

You also remove many reliable sources. This is against WP:NPOV.

When those WP:OR lines were recently added at the first place. You did not ask for any discussion or consensus. Now when I provided reliable source to fix errors, I did provide detailed reason for each edit, and discussed with you here. It is clear that those WP:OR words have no source to support. Precious Stone 17:59, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

"The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and it is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution.” I have satisfied that condition. Where did you provide explanations for your individual edits? Also its not OR... And looking at the edit history I don’t think it ever was, these appear to be very basic and reasonable descriptions of available reliable sources.

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 18:08, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

nope, you did not, since your statements were false (as listed above one by one) and your cited lines from the sources are quite far from the two lines. For the reliable sources i added in, i often quoted the lines from the sources, so any one can easily compare the quotes with actually added contents. You failed to provide any quote from the sources that support those lines.Precious Stone 18:29, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

This is a comically bad edit, with a clear agenda to portray the group as harmless victims, while downplaying and obfuscating the new religious movement's close involvement with far-right politics and conspiracy theory mongering via its media extensions. We have multiple sources that outright refer to these extensions, particularly Shen Yun as, for example, propaganda. Attempting to obfuscate and hide activity from an organization like this on Wikipedia is a lost cause: Wikipedia isn't censored. :bloodofox: (talk) 19:16, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

As i noted below you provided 3 sources NYT, New Republic, and NBC for the extreme-right claim. NYT and NBC actually did not say so, only mention the word right-wing. you scolded me "with a clear agenda to portray the group as harmless victims, while downplaying and obfuscating the new religious movement's close involvement with far-right politics and conspiracy theory mongering via its media extensions. " this is false. The conspiracy theory claim was supported by the sources, so i did not touch it at all. For the extreme-right claim, it was not claimed by NYT and NBC. I made clear that NYT and NBC said righ-wing based on these two sources. It seems that someone has a clear agenda to portray the group as extreme-right by misrepresenting NYT and NBC sources. This is against WP:NOR, WP:SOAP. etc. Precious Stone 22:10, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

There are no shortage of sources on these topics. A handful of them are plastered all over this talk page. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:25, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

With respect to

21:57, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

These "concerns" that were "repeatedly raised" were done so by a bunch of single-issue editors and new editors who just happened to be aggressively pushing for a lack of inclusion of media coverage since 2016. This particular editor parrots these talking points has been pushing hard to scrub the article. Again, Wikipedia isn't censored, and attempts at hiding media coverage since 2016 will get you nowhere. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:05, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

In response to

There are no shortage of sources on these topics. A handful of them are plastered all over this talk page. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:25, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

Let me say again that the 6 sources User:Bloodofox provided do not support the contents being added in. User:Bloodofox also deleted a lot of reliable sources that are not serving an activist’s narrative. I am listing them below:

• http://newsweekly.com.au/article.php?id=56301%7Carchive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140223153614/http://newsweekly.com.au/article.php?id=56301
• https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-21/what-is-the-falun-gong-movement-and-does-china-harvest-organs/9679690
• https://freedomhouse.org/report/2017/battle-china-spirit-falun-gong-religious-freedom
• https://web.archive.org/web/20140223153614/http://newsweekly.com.au/article.php?id=56301
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewelinaochab/2019/06/17/the-china-tribunal-pronounced-its-verdict-on-organ-harvesting-in-china/
• http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3340868/ns/world_news/t/falun-gong-thrives-us/ Precious Stone 23:27, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

There seems to be a typo causing citation text to show up in the main article. In the Persecution section, Causes subsection, paragraph 3, there is nonsense at the end ",.ref name="ReidG">Reid, Graham (29 April–5 May 2006) "Nothing left to lose" Archived 30 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine, New Zealand Listener. Retrieved 6 July 2006.</ref>". I would fix it myself, but I don't have edit permissions. Astropiloto (talk) 20:15, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

@Astropiloto:  Done thanks! — MarkH₂₁^talk 20:30, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

In the lead, The Epoch Times is described as promoting extreme-right politics. There are 3 sources provided: NYT, New Republic, and NBC. I checked these 3 articles one by one and found that both NYT and NBC mentioned "right-wing", only New Republic mentioned ET has in common with "extreme right-wing". I feel it is not a good idea to mislead that NYT and NBC associated the ET with extreme-right, so we should make it clear. The notability of New Republic is not as good as NYT and NBC, I suggest we move this reference to somewhere in the body. Precious Stone 14:57, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I would be wary of using language like "extreme right-wing," particularly when the label is applied by sources that are quite far to the left, where perceptions of what constitutes "extreme" are....rather strained. Support for Trump is not evidence of "extreme" right-wing tendencies. TheBlueCanoe 21:51, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

Let the record show that the above editor just referred to The New York Times, The New Republic, and NBC News as "quite far left". Funny stuff, and much in line with the user's frequent attempts at scrubbing the article. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:21, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

I'd just like to say that the discussion and edit warring going on here is quite dismal. The point is not "scrubbing" content, or constantly emphasizing that "look, they're RS." The point relates to WP:DUE and what constitutes a neutral, informative, encyclopedic treatment of this issue. The material can be presented in a neutral tone, with proper context, and perhaps a clearer delineation of the actual relationship between the entities in question. This stuff is in scholarship I have been looking at, and we don't need to rely on reporters pursuing a story against a competitor to tell us about the organizational structure of Falun Gong. For that, we look at the research of those who have lived among Falun Gong for years and wrote ethnographic studies on it. That is how this stuff should work.

It's also my observation (as a drive-by editor/commenter on this page) that there was hardly any genuine attempt to build a consensus on how to properly present this material. The favored presentation was repeatedly added, discussion was called censorship, and now here we are. I think it's better to simply edit the content to make it better and more neutral than remove it, however. That is not helpful. Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk) 15:01, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

"reporters pursuing a story against a competitor"—what are you talking about? :bloodofox: (talk) 17:23, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Due to ongoing

21:44, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

@Guerillero: The edit warring here is ridiculous, and editors who have been deleting / inserting content while discussions are ongoing should be sanctioned.

I think that indefinite full protection causes some collateral damage though, since not all of the recent edits nor editors have been involved in the prolonged dispute. Only five editors that have been involved in the edit war, and not all of them have been forcing their edits through mid-discussion. — MarkH₂₁^talk 21:54, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

@MarkH21: I full protected for 10 days, and I will look dimly upon a return to edit warring when that expires. --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 21:58, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

@Guerillero: Ah, sorry I looked at the timespan of the move protection instead of the edit protection. Nevermind then! Yes, please do, this article has seen more than enough disruption. — MarkH₂₁^talk 22:02, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

I think this would help deal with the issues and bring in editors who haven't been involved with the article, but I don't have time to do it. It needs to be done in strict accordance with

08:39, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Not sure what an RfC is gonna solve, the problem isn't lack of new faces its a lack of new faces who stick around under assault from the “regulars” here, anyone who disagrees is labeled an “activist” and threatened with ARBCON [12]. I would have left this page as quickly as I came a month or so ago if my normal reaction to being hit wasn’t to hit back 2x as hard, the abuse you have to put up with to contribute here is more than any wikipedia editor should ever have to endure.

I’d support an ANI for BlueCanoe and Marvin 2009. Both seem to have spent the last decade being disruptive on FG related articles, Marvin’s first edits more than a decade ago were promotional edits for

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 16:39, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

@

WP:ANI. But thinking about it more, an RfC over the NRM issue would probably be a good starter. I'm not going away. If no one else wants to start one, I will on the NRM issue alone. Doug Weller talk

18:13, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

@

Horse Eye Jack

: It is a pity you used an inexperienced new user's editing error (the first edit over 10 years ago) for misleading people. I have relied to you on this topic twice.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/3RRArchive410#User:Marvin_2009_reported_by_User:Horse_Eye_Jack_(Result:_)

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Marvin_2009#Conflict_of_interest

As to your accusation "spent the last decade being disruptive on FG related articles". I have mentioned to you:

As far as I noticed, historically speaking, activists often came to do things forbidden in

WP:OR

contents or CCP related unreliable sources. They are not necessarily CCP followers though. BTW, users who try to prevent activism shouldn’t be called “disrupting” wiki pages, nor should they be labelled as FG followers or COI in an attempt to discredit them.

Preventing vandalism by some activists on controversial topics, spent many of my edits. While other pages are not as controversial as these, there is no need for much talk or changes. The key for identifying activist is as WP:SOAP mentioned

“content hosted in Wikipedia is not for: Advocacy, propaganda. …You might wish to start a blog or visit a forum if you want to convince people of the merits of your opinions.“

I did not advocate my own opinions in the articles, but have rather accurately represented what reliable sources say which was not “deflected criticisms” of Falun Gong.

I have confidence my edits were made while sticking to Wiki rules and under good faith. Again, I have never been and am not paid by anyone to make edits in Wikipedia.

BTW, there are really a lot warnings and a lot of AN/I on your talk, including one friendly message from admin Doug: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Horse_Eye_Jack#[He's_taken_you_to_WP:ANI I also saw another long AN/I processing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#User:Horse_Eye_Jack_continued_undiscussed_mass_removal_of_sources May i ask if the editing behavior associated with actively frequently edit-warring with many users looks, adding original research contents and making huge changes prior to any discussion look like a pattern of activism? Precious Stone 21:01, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

@

ad hominem. Can we focus on this? — MarkH₂₁^talk

21:52, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

that was to address the false accusation “spent the last decade being disruptive on FG related articles". I have no intention to attack any one. Precious Stone 22:05, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Not a false accusation, 7 of your top 10 edited pages were within the FG space and 10 of 10 of your top edited talk pages were within the FG space when I first advised you of how your editing history was likely to be perceived as

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 22:38, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Let’s focus on the content dispute. — MarkH₂₁^talk 22:55, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

An RfC would be extraordinarily helpful and effective in resolving at least part of this series of disputes. — MarkH₂₁^talk 21:52, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

I revisit this page after years to find it's like being in a time warp. The SPAs are still there pushing their propaganda, and fighting even the smallest attempts to steer the article away from their orthodoxy. Plus ça change. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 15:23, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Seeing today's set of reversions and in an attempt to keep the article from descending into another bout of edit warring, I am imposing a

16:22, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Suggesting for editing this contentious topic and getting on the 'same page'

In the current set of edits that were just made (and reverted) and in the ongoing discussions above, there are multiple open 'lines' of discussion and disagreement. I suggest that these been broken up and discussed separately, in multiple threads simultaneously. For example, one section could be about the lead. Discuss only what should be in the lead paragraph on the FLG's* involvement in media etc. Another section is about the section in the article where these issues are hashed out. And when editing, I suggest NUMBER YOUR EDITS and write a corresponding number on the page, so //that actual edit// can be discussed. It is completely unproductive and pointless to do reverts which are going to include like 20 contentious things. Break each of the contentious things up into 20 (or whatever) separate disputes, and hammer each one out, in the section which it corresponds to.

For example, maybe someone objects to the block excerpt from NBC because it's simply a WP:DUE issue; or objects to the point about the precise financial relationship between "Falun Gong" and those media companies being unclear (when, according to these scholarly works, it's actually quite clear); or objects to whatever else. Edit it as you see appropriate (delete, refactor, find a better source), NUMBER IT, start a discussion ABOUT THAT EDIT. Then the editing and discussion can be dynamic, multi-threaded, and consensus reached on each point of dispute separately.

I don't know if this is standard practice, and if anyone has a better idea, please suggest it, but that is how I propose we proceed. Please let me know if this suggestion is not clear.

*well, the article is not going to put it vaguely like that: "the FLG" is a shorthand we use. In most cases we would specify if it's "the teachings of FLG," or "people who practice FLG," or "an organization founded and primarily staffed by people who practice FLG," or whatever it may be. This is not a single organizational structure, but a practice spread across the world, where the individuals who practice it do things in order to gain social recognition (and in their religious goals, "saving people," if I have the terminology correct.) And yes, I have been reading David Ownby's book and three dissertations by anthropologists which we should be citing. Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk) 15:24, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

I get that there's an effort by adherents to paint Falun Gong as an 'ancient and international spiritual practice' rather than a new religious movement centered on Li Hongzhi that operates out of a secretive compound in Deerpark, New York. However, as numerous media sources make abundantly clear, the organization is also quite politically involved, and there will be no scrubbing this from the article because Wikipedia isn't censored. :bloodofox: (talk) 17:18, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

"This is not a single organizational structure, but a practice spread across the world, where the individuals who practice it do things in order to gain social recognition (and in their religious goals, "saving people," if I have the terminology correct.)” Yeah, that describes almost every single religion on earth... FG isn’t special or unique, we treat them like any other New Religious Movement. I see no disagreement among non-SPA editors btw so I’m not convinced there are any real content disputes here.

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 18:27, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

@

Horse Eye Jack: I have no idea what "the efforts of adherents are," or who are supposed to be the SPAs here. My comment above was a meta-proposal as to how disputes be navigated, as a technical manner, going forward. Would you both please respond to the suggestion itself rather than simply reiterate your personal opinions about Falun Gong and other editors? Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk

) 06:47, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Are you sure you have no idea "what "the efforts of adherents are," or who are supposed to be the SPAs here.”?

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 17:48, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

I have been following this topic for awhile. My interest in this wiki page was piqued after reading the recent NBC piece accusing EpochTimes of "racism" and propagating conspiracy theory that the Chinese Communist Party manufactured COVID. NBC subsequently amended parts of this article and its title. For good reason--its piece on youtube garnered 3000 downvotes and 265 upvotes, a staggering 91.9% disapproval rating.

I am curious and would genuinely like to understand how and why this page is being thus organized. We know that this group has been on the receiving end of abject human rights atrocity in China. We know that this group has been subject to forced organ harvesting, which in the decision of the China Tribunal on Forced Organ Harvesting, has been taking place against a large number of member of this group for a substantial period of time. There is an article that described the cold genocide of Falun Gong.

I would genuinely like to know why, despite all these humanitarian crises, this wiki page decides to confer the top priority, and place the spotlight, on a quote from a report by a Los Angeles magazine describing Falun Gong as a conspiracy theorist cult obsessed with aliens, and on where some of their members live, how they have arranged relationships, and their zoning disputes.

Some of these assertions may well be true. But it confounds me they were given such preeminence, over and above an objective and partial account of this movement, its central teachings and belief system, its exercises, and its experience of abject human rights abuse. It reminds me of what happened during the era of Nazi Germany, whose press is obsessed with the Jewish conspiracy, such as the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", when its people are being culled in the millions.

It may be a truism to say that the representation of a topic must inevitably adopt a narrative, and different narrative forms, in turn, will produce different responses to the social practices involved in genocide: empathy and ownership, or revulsion, alienation, and dehumanization (Daniel Feierstein). The narrative I see that is being propagated now on this page, is a narrative of conspiracy and political radicalism, calculated to invoke revulsion and dehumanization against the victims of genocide.

The accuracy of these assertions of political radicalism, and conspiracy theories aside (I look forward to discuss this at another time), I'm all but certain that the current portrayal violates the standards on "article structure", "due and undue weight" and "balancing", by giving priority to a fringe aspect of this movement, over its central elements and experience.

Ultimately, I think it is an issue of basic human decency. I may stand corrected, but it seems to me that the forced organ harvesting on 5-6 figure scale is probably more important than a zoning dispute that some of these members have with their neighbours.

I am genuinely, and honestly curious about others think. Am I really alone or wrong in thinking this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by HollerithPunchCard (talk • contribs) — HollerithPunchCard (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

Presumably Falun Gong/Dafa has some main corporation/association/charity (in USA)? Probably we should include official info on that "main" corporation, give it considerable weight (if it exists), and also find which other organizations are associated with Falun Dafa. Notrium (talk) 03:13, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

• I'd also like to know, including the entity that owns the Deer Park compound and that presumably enjoys 401 status. It would explode their "there is no organisation" narrative, though . -- Ohc ^¡digame! 23:26, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

+1 on curiosity about this too. My reading so far indicates that all of the organizations somehow function "independently" (with presumable backchanneling), but if there is detailed and reliable information about a central organization overseeing it all then it would be relevant for us. FYI I believe you mean 501(c)3 status which designates nonprofit entities in the United States. Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk) 15:05, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

The owner of the Deer Park holding is likely: International Falun Dafa Association Inc. EIN: 82-2273365 | Cuddebackville, NY, United States (the last entry at the following link). Or possibly one of the others. Mojoworker (talk) 20:26, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

The Junker source identifies the site at Dragon Springs as operating as a registered charity (presumably a 501(c)c?). If I understand correctly, that is not inconsistent with the claim that it's registered as a "church" or religious organization as well. There are also "Falun Dafa Associations" registered in probably dozens of international jurisdictions, so this isn't new. One question, however, is whether it makes sense to say that "Falun Gong" operates out of Deep Park, and this goes to the question of what Falun Gong means in this context. Is it a body of moral teachings and physical movements? If so, it is not "based" out of a geographical location. Is it a community of believer? The community is globally dispersed, there are legally registered Falun Dafa charities and not-for-profits in numerous jurisdictions, and most of it followers are in Mainland China. So the claim in the lede that Falun Gong is "based" out of Deer Park doesn't make sense.TheBlueCanoe 22:24, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Reliable sources repeatedly and consistently note that the Dragon Springs compound in Deerpark is Falun Gong's handquarters, where Li lives nearby. Shen Yun is also based out of Dragon Springs. This isn't in question. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:50, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

I'm looking through my copy of Junker's book, which is the only scholarly work that deals with this topic, and I don't see Dragon Springs described as Falun Gong's headquarters. There's one reference to Falun Gong networks headquartered in New York, but that could just as easily be a reference to something like the Falun Dafa Information Center.TheBlueCanoe 23:26, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Surely you're well aware that this topic has been covered by media sources since at least 2015, and that a certain organization under the name DRAGON SPRINGS BUDDHISTS INC trademarked the phrase FALUN GONG in 2005-2006.

A few examples of coverage include:

• "Dragon Springs buddhists Inc" trademark of "FALUN GONG" (2005-2006)
• AP Dragon Springs report (2019)
• Record Online Dragon Springs report (2015)
• report of Falun Gong-affiliated local election candidates and accompany controversy surrounding Dragon Springs (2015)

And there are plenty more. Remarkable that this article has somehow just sidestepped all of this for so long. I'm also not convinced that scholars have not discussed Dragon Springs yet: I'm currently pulling results for Shen Yun's connection to the schools in and around the compound in scholarly literature, which I'll post about. :bloodofox: (talk) 00:02, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Currently the "history" section discusses persecution by the Chinese government, only for it to simply drop off when the move to the United States—specifically to Dragon Springs—occurs in the early 2000s. While this once again emphasizes a variety of claims of persecution, this is not where the new religious movement's history ends, and it needs to pick up from there to discuss things like the new religious movement's move to its Dragon Springs headquarters in Deerpark, New York, as well as its political turn at around 2015-2016. There's about 20 years missing from the history section. :bloodofox: (talk) 23:18, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

The section is titled "history in China." The section actually describes not the whole history in China, but the development of Falun Gong in China prior to 1999. A renaming of the section might be the solution here. TheBlueCanoe 23:26, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Much of that seems to be covered under the Falun Gong outside China section and the dedicated

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 23:27, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

What are these issues that necessitate a rewrite? Are any of you able to catalogue them, through reference to a thorough survey of the relevant literature? TheBlueCanoe 23:30, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

The issue is that disruptive accounts like yours have/are whitewashing the page. The babe in the woods act isn't cute.

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 15:10, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

With all due respect, if there is an argument, make it. Bald and loaded assertions of disruption and whitewashing are not constructive HollerithPunchCard (talk) 15:21, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

This is what I've been saying all along. These repeated ad hominem attacks have to stop. I have seen User:TheBlueCanoe as a good faith editor all along and I certainly haven't witnessed him engaging in personal vitriol. Furthermore, many of his well-formulated arguments have gone unanswered. When there are changes to be made or suggested, the standard Wikipedia procedure for controversial articles applies, even if some editors would rather approach this like storming the Bastille. Bstephens393 (talk) 20:02, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Given the intense interest in questions of categorization, what do editors think of having a sub-section, in the area dealing with the anti-Falun Gong campaign, about the thinking around whether the Chinese government's actions against the Falun Gong should be considered a genocide?

Some of the relevant references on this issue might include:

• Bejesky, Robert. 2004. “United States Obligations under International Law and the Falun Gong v. Jiang Zemin Lawsuit: A Justified Reaction to a Threat to Public Security or Genocide-You Decide.” UC Davis J. Int’l L. & Pol'y 11: 295.
• Cheung, Maria, Torsten Trey, David Matas, and Richard An. 2018. “Cold Genocide: Falun Gong in China.” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 12 (1): 6.
• China Tribunal. 2019. “Final Judgement Report.” China Tribunal. June 17, 2019. https://chinatribunal.com/final-judgement-report/.

It's also noted in Dictionary of Genocide (ABC-CLIO, 30 Nov 2007) by Paul R. Bartrop and Samuel Totten (a giant in the genocide studies field).

Note that the China Tribunal judgement, which makes extensive discussion of the genocide question, was rendered by a former war crimes prosecutor who prosecuted Slobodan Milošević. I can pull out some quotes from the above sources if that is helpful. Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk) 08:25, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

I agree with your suggestion. The China Tribunal judgement was reported all around the world by mainstream media, and this consortium of legal professionals seems to have no political or ideological vested interests in the FLG/CCP mudslinging, so I think this is a crucially important topic that deserves prominent coverage in the article. Bstephens393 (talk) 20:50, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Do either of you want to offer a proposal for what this could look like on the page? TheBlueCanoe 23:24, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

HollerithPunchCard (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) made the following claim:

"We know that this group has been subject to forced organ harvesting, which in the decision of the China Tribunal on Forced Organ Harvesting, has been taking place against a large number of member of this group for a substantial period of time."[13]

There is an (obviously unreliable) Falun Gong source that makes the same claim: [ https://faluninfo.net/forced-organ-harvesting-in-china-falun-gong/ ]

And it has made it into these Wikipedia articles:

• Organ transplantation in China#Allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners
• Persecution of Falun Gong#Organ harvesting
• Organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China
• Falun Gong#Organ harvesting

There are some obvious problems with these claims, such as using [ http://organharvestinvestigation.net/] and The Weekly Standard as sources, but is there any credible evidence that these accusations against the Chinese government are true? --Guy Macon (talk) 11:14, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

There is almost no doubt its true... FG’s allegations have been corroborated by the independent press and were known to academics before FG’s public campaign. The only open question in the literature is on what scale the forced organ harvesting happens (is it tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions). China’s system of forced organ harvesting also predates the founding of FG, they aren’t the first or last group that will find themselves the target of this even if they sometimes like to pretend like they’re the *only* victims of it.

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 18:11, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science#Organ harvesting:

From Reuters: China is harvesting organs from Falun Gong members, finds expert panel.

From The Daily Telegraph: British government 'ignored' Chinese organ harvesting, Tribunal rules.

From The Guardian: China is harvesting organs from detainees, tribunal concludes.

All of the above are quoting the

Martin Elliott (surgeon) who sound like reliable chaps. Alansplodge (talk

) 19:07, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

And the

British Medical Journal: China’s forced organ harvesting constitutes crimes against humanity, informal London tribunal finds (July 2019) and Chinese doctors admitted in undercover calls that harvested organs were available, informal tribunal finds (March 2020). Alansplodge (talk

) 19:09, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

There's indeed a persecution complex issue so weight matters, but it unfortunately also seems to really exist. If the sources are questionable that still should be addressed of course... —PaleoNeonate – 22:11, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Currently the article goes to some length to claim that the Falun Gong is "decentralized", often backed by non-

) 23:11, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Just to be clear, the section of Falun Gong's organization contains 26 citations. One of these is to the Falundafa.org. Twenty-five are scholarly sources, most of which represent the work of scholars who have done extensive field work with this community. Incorporating more recent scholarship (e.g. Junker, Penny, Gutmann) would make sense, though I don't think their findings are at odds with earlier scholarships, but is complimentary.TheBlueCanoe 23:26, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

The number of citations is completely irrelevant. What is relevant is what they actually say, and if what they say is still valid. It's pretty clear in 2020 that FG is not "decentralized", despite what the article claims. :bloodofox: (talk) 23:34, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

It's not about what Falun Gong claims. These are the findings of scholars who have studied the topic extensively. And a quick survey of the latest academic work on Falun Gong's diaspora organization does not refute the claim that Falun Gong is "decentralized." The whole book is about how Falun Gong's diffuse, decentralized structure made it more effective than the hierarchical, centralized Minyun movement in organization as a social movement. Here are a few examples (From Andrew Junker's "Becoming Activists in Global China", published in 2019):

• "This turn to social movement activism was carried out in a diffuse, decentralized, and bottom-up way motivated by Falun Gong’s religious ethic of activism. The charismatic leader did not direct the mobilization. Instead, the followers “led” by transforming themselves into a modern, nonviolent protest movement." (p. 11)

• "How many Falun Gong practitioners are carrying out all this activism? Even after years of research, I cannot answer that question with certainty. The Falun Gong does not have official membership lists, congregations, dues, or other means of directly accounting for its size. Local activism is carried out in decentralized ways by intensely committed devotees, either in small cells or even as solitary individuals. "(p. 22)

• "I have signaled this theme a few times in the book when I spoke of the “progressive potential” of Falun Gong mobilization, especially in reference to how practitioners acted on their own initiative in a decentralized way and to how they emphasized persuasive outreach to publics." (p 184)

• "[Mingyun's] organizational template of a quasi-political party, however, was poorly suited to mobilization in diaspora. Simply maintaining and running a formal institution, according to highly bureaucratic rules, which were themselves frequently debated, absorbed too much time and too many resources. Furthermore, the bureaucratic model emphasized hierarchy and impeded decentralized, grassroots, voluntarist, creative initiative by participants. In this respect, Minyun’s organizational template was the exact opposite of Falun Gong’s ethic of activism, which imbued each individual with a sense of personal duty to “step forward,” but did not dictate the means or attempt to coordinate in any high degree the specifics of protest. The Falun Gong organizational form avoided paralyzing battles over leadership while maximizing the resources and creative capacities. The new religious movement had higher levels of grassroots participation and found more rewarding and meaningful ways to engage members. Ironically, the democracy movement emphasized hierarchy and centralized control, whereas the indigenous Chinese new religious movement encouraged self-authorized, direct participation and autonomy. The latter model was not only more participatory, it was also better suited to diaspora, where the activist community was thinly spread across many cities and contexts. Any bureaucracy would struggle under such conditions to coordinate effective action; one that aspires to be a stateless political party or exile government faces even higher challenges.

When I have a moment I can do the same survey of Noakes, Penny, etc. TheBlueCanoe 23:54, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

James R. Lewis describes an organization that is ruled from the top by Li Hongzhi. Joachim Gentz describes how the Falun Gong membership follows whatever is said by the "charismatic leader" Li Hongzhi. It is true there is no rigid hierarchy in the Falun Gong membership, but everything points to the man at the top, which forms a central locus of thought. Binksternet (talk) 00:23, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

I think Binksternet is getting somewhere. However, assuming that the Falun Gong membership follows absolutely Li Hongzhi's words, this is a necessary, but not sufficient condition to make the claim of centralization. Centralization presupposes structure. It requires not just a locus of thought, but also a concentration of initiative, power and function. It is a basic presupposition of most, if not all religion, that the authority and validity of the founder's teachings/instructions are unconditional and self-evident within the sphere of that religion. Unconditional adherence is not, in and of itself, equivalent to centralization. HollerithPunchCard (talk) 15:45, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

If the leader is still alive then yes unconditional adherence is in fact equivalent to centralization.

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 15:54, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

This is actually an interesting question that I encountered while doing research on a distantly related topic. While I agree that Li seems to wield full definitional power and interpretive authority in regard to FLG's teachings, research does not seem to indicate that the organizational structure and/or everyday life of practitioners would place emphasis on unconditional adherence. Craig A. Burdoff wrote an article for Nova Religio after conducting a field study with Falun Gong practitioners: "there are several structural components of the movement that work against Li’s ideological power. While Li’s rhetoric does emphasize millennial and totalistic themes, the organizational structure of Falun Gong works against totalistic control. Practitioners have little if any contact with Li except for his writings and very few and brief public appearances. Falun Gong has at best a virtual central organization, comprised of independent cell-like local groups. There is no hierarchy in place to enforce orthodoxy and little or no emphasis upon dogmatic discipline. There is no “official” membership, and practitioners are free to participate as much or as little as they like without censure. There is no attempt to isolate practitioners from society, and no manipulation of sexuality or finances other than emphasizing the need for strict moral behavior." Furthermore, Burdoff also observed that there are no suggestions or requests about contributing to group expenses, nothing but voluntary activities, no discrimination against people who participate only infrequently or partially in the practice or decide to stop practicing altogether, and no group isolation or withdrawal. [14] Since Nova Religio is a peer-reviewed academic journal specializing in NRMs, and this is based on actual field research and therefore has great weight as a tried and tested description of the movement's grassroot reality, I suggest that we include this in the lead section. Any thoughts? Bstephens393 (talk) 20:17, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

This article is from 2003. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:13, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, nothing in peer-reviewed literature suggests that the above description would not be valid, and in fact the findings seem to have been corroborated by further field research, including by Noah Porter. Please let me know if you have high-quality references to research conducted among the movement's adherents that would directly counter these claims. I will obviously give more weight to academic journals. Bstephens393 (talk) 22:34, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

An article from 2003 is of historic interest, and that's the extent of it. That was 17 years ago. Here in 2020, the FG is a highly political organization with numerous media extensions, schools, and a large compound in New York. Passing off an article about the NRM from 2003 as if it is still relevant in 2020 is, to put it politely, laughable. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:40, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Your attempt to divert the discussion from the field research focused on the movement's grassroot reality is rhetorically weak. I've never opposed covering FLG's connections with these media extensions, schools etc. Whether the movement is exercising totalistic and centralized control over its adherents' lives is the topic at hand in this thread. I am asking you to show me the relevant studies that counter these peer-reviewed findings and are based on actual observations in the field. Thanks. Bstephens393 (talk) 23:04, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

What you're trying to do is put information form a 2003 article into the lead, as if it were current. That's obviously not happening. Please stop wasting your time and mine. :bloodofox: (talk) 23:36, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Wait, why does the date of publication matter for the content of the article? And how is it that you get to decide how the nature of the practice has changed from 2003 to 2020, based on recent media reports and so forth? Why are reports by NBC and The New Republic, covering a newspaper staffed by Falun Gong people and tracking their reporting on Trump, more significant and reliable about the nature of Falun Gong than an academic paper? I have to read that paper in question but the responses so far are non-sequitors. They set arbitrary standards by which different sources should be evaluated. For example, to be concrete — you'll need to show with some other reliable source that the specific assertions there are not true, or have been superseded. Everything else you're saying is simply about media. User:Bstephens393 I think you should go ahead and add it unless there's some serious reason not to? Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk) 15:28, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

This response is so aggressively absurd that it's hard to say where to begin. First, as much as you attempt to downplay them (and anything else you perceive to be 'negative coverage' about the Falun Gong), the organization's activities through its many media extensions (whether it's The Epoch Times or New Tang Dynasty or any of the other propaganda arms the group operates) are extremely relevant and quite active. Second, since then, the group has built an expensive and lavish compound in New York, where it operates schools and another propaganda arm, Shen Yun. Yeah, there have been some changes. Finally, we simply don't report on reports from 2003 as if they were current, and that should be obvious to even the most aggressively FG editors out there. :bloodofox: (talk) 16:59, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Currently, the first section of this article following the lede is titled "Shen Yun, The Epoch Times, and political involvement.” It includes long excerpts of exclusively critical/one-sided news reporting on these two entities, with a fair bit of loaded language thrown in for good measure.

Editors defending this section have argue that the material is “well sourced,” and therefore should not be removed. Alas,

is not the only content policy on this encyclopedia. If it were, the encyclopedia would become a massive garbage heap of disjointed facts and statements. We are editors: our job is to curate, to select, to summarize, and to present information in a manner that is narratively coherent, digestible, and that represents a neutral point of view.

To that end, even if this entire section passes

. Here’s a non-exhaustive explanation of why:

• The placement of this section at the top of the article’s body is narratively incoherent, and assigns it undue weight and prominence. The article should absolutely include summary descriptions of the media/arts organizations established by Falun Gong adherents, which include Shen Yun and the Epoch Times. But these organizations didn’t arise in a vacuum. They grew out of a very specific context: scholars tend to situate this as part of a broader claim-making strategy that the Falun Gong community adopted ‘’as a response to the suppression in China’’ (refer to Ownby, Penny, Junker, Noakes, et al). The creation and orientation of these organizations can only be understood in light of Falun Gong's broader history, beliefs, and its suppression in China. These are essentially activities undertaken by members of an exiled faith community, as a response to a persecution.

Narrative cohesion demands that, in an article about Falun Gong, we first introduce what Falun Gong is, the historical context in which it arose, the history of antagonism and repression by the Communist Party, the scattering of a diaspora, and the response from Falun Gong to that repression, and the assessments thereof. That is why information about the Epoch Times and Shen Yun (etc.) had been placed under the subheading “Falun Gong’s response to persecution.” It either belongs there, or perhaps “Falun Gong outside China” or “international reception.”

• The placement of this section at the top of the article’s body is an example of
  WP:UNDUE
  . This is not an article about the Epoch Times and Shen Yun. This an article about the faith system of Falun Gong. There are multiple books written about the persecution of Falun Gong, the history of Falun Gong, the beliefs system of Falun Gong. There are ethnographic studies of the diaspora communities, and books about Falun Gong’s international advocacy. There are at least three whole books focusing on allegations of state-sanctioned organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China. An article about Falun Gong should cover these topics in a way that is coherent and proportional to their prominence in reliable sources. That some Falun Gong-adjacent organizations have been criticized by left-leaning media organizations for their support of Trump or for disagreeing with the theory of evolution (or whatever) is not the most important thing about Falun Gong, and we misrepresent the body of literature on this topic when we pretend that it is.

• The placement of this section at the top of the article’s body is an example of
  WP:RECENTISM
  . This one is obvious. In an article about a globally dispersed faith community with an interesting and complex history, we should take a long-term, historical view, and not allow the article to be overtaken by whatever the recent controversies are.

• The content of the section is exclusively negative, and is not a representative sample of the full range of academic discourse on these topics. This section is sourced entirely to fairly recent (last few years) news article, from organizations that are all identified as leaning quite far to the left of the political spectrum, and all making essentially the same criticisms. Irrespective of where this section is in the article, the content of the section itself fails
  WP:NPOV
  ; it is cherry-picked and fails to represent a full or representative spectrum of views in a neutral and proportional manner. Positive, or even neutral, assessment of the Epoch Times or Shen Yun are missing entirely, as are responses from these organizations to the criticisms that have been made. The use of lengthy excerpts lifted straight out of these articles is especially bizarre.

I'll note that the addition of this material never gained consensus on the talk page. Editors have simply edit warred to keep it in, in various incarnations. The

20:16, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Man, these attempts at scrubbing the article to parrot the Falun Gong's narrative sure are relentless, but they're rarely this transparent. The "globally dispersed faith community" this guy is talking about is new religious movement based out of Deer Park, New York that rotates around the teachings of one man, Li Hongzhi.

For years, this article has been haunted by editors such as this guy, who have aggressively pushed, lawyered, and edit-warred to ensure that the article reads as a puff piece for Hongzi's new religious movement. These swarms of editors are now on the defensive because within the last year media has caught wind of the Falun Gong's politicial activities and support of far-right groups and conspiracy theories, alongside relentless promotion of Donald Trump through the group's media extension, The Epoch Times.

Now they're pushing to have the material wholesale removed—the sources are legion, and it's not happening. In fact, what the article needs is a total rewrite reflecting what reliable sources actually say about the pyramid-like structure of this particular new religious group and its activities, something this article currently goes to great lengths to avoid. :bloodofox: (talk) 20:50, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

I don't see how the above has anything to do with aggressive pushing or lawyering. I agree that the criticisms can and should be summarized and placed in the article appropriately per WP:NPOV. The article should read like a well-structured scholarly overview.

I also want to add the only way forward is for each of us to go through the discussion points one by one and calmly defend our views with reasonable arguments. Wikipedia is based on these kinds of discussions. Some editors still seem unwilling to engage in that process. Bstephens393 (talk) 07:12, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Note that the above account, Bstephens393, had last edited in 2013 before snapping back into editing on May 20, 2020 to edit Falun Gong articles and to weigh in on RfCs against editors aiming to keep the article from parroting Falun Gong talking points.

This return from a long retirement occurred exactly as the Falun Gong article saw a push to insert material not in line with how the new religious movement presents itself, including the introduction of discussion regarding The Epoch Times' and Shen Yun ([15]).

The account generally supports TheBlueCanoe's requests and pushes the same similar 'hey, mainstream media is left-wing!' narrative (example), while tauting that it has not edited the article. This sort of thing is all too typical for this and other Falun Gong-related articles. :bloodofox: (talk) 08:50, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Blood of ox, you need to actually respond to The Blue Canoe and stop the ad hominem. He provided a quite extensive argument and your response is... "attempts at scrubbing the article to parrot the Falun Gong's narrative"? Please. Respond to the arguments and refer to Wikipedia policy when doing so.

Specifically on the procedural rather than content issues at play, the observation about the manner in which the editing has been conducted seems quite accurate. In fact, that is why I find myself here right now. Rather than attempting to persuade anyone or engaging in serious argument, you're simply accusing people of being FLG puppets. I urge you to actually respond to the substantive arguments that have been put forward. Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk) 14:04, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

The high relevance and importance of Falun Gong's media wings and their political activity is obvious, and backed by a plethora of sources. The Blue Canoe's above call for "positive" coverage of The Epoch Times is also ludicrous. And while wont to complain about tone and "white fury" toward Falun Gong (and also the Chinese government), the above account also started editing in this space around May 20, and immediately attempted to have yours truly topic banned at arbitration. This attempt was rejected and editors noted that there appears to be some level of off-wiki collusion going on at this articles and others. Whatever the case, like the Blue Canoe, Cleopatran Apocalypse has also repeatedly tried to scrub the article, removing any and all mention of Shen Yun and The Epoch Times and the phrase new religious movement, of which the FG does not approve. Not a surprise that the account consistently echoes the above two accounts. :bloodofox: (talk) 16:03, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

@

WP:SPA editors like TBC have been running around for years, working to polish up the image of FLG whilst removing anything remotely critical of the movement. These editors are extremely disruptive and do not deserve any sympathy. I am glad they are facing strong push-back. -- Ohc ^¡digame!

22:45, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm noting that Bloodofox has not responded to the objections raised above, but has instead a) doubled down on casting aspersions against other editors; and b) continued to perpetuate the same problems noted above by adding another lengthy,[16] out-of-order section at the top of the article body that gives undue prominence to the location of FLG's U.S. based of operations. Again, no problem including something about this in the article, but this presentation fails

23:52, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

I have in fact responded to your attempts at replacing the phrase "new religious movement" with "indigenous religion" and all sorts of other absurdities, and will continue to improve the article despite these attempts. The fact that this article made absolutely no mention of Dragon Springs is just as ridiculous as the fact that it made no mention of the fact that Shen Yun and The Epoch Times are media extensions of the new religious movement until recently. Not to mention the organization's political involvement. All of this is quite telling.

Of course, the three above editors (and various other single-issue editors that have a tendency to crawl out of the woodwork on this topic) have fought these additions tooth and nail by way of a variety of tactics since their introduction—as illustrated above—but the article continues to march closer toward reflecting reliable source coverage by the day. :bloodofox: (talk) 00:25, 26 June 2020 (UTC)§

Transparent scrubbing attempts like these are classic examples of obstruction and are unacceptable. :bloodofox: (talk) 00:29, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

• Very briefly, I agree that the section could be moved further down in the article. The block quotes are also too long. Much of the content can still be preserved outside of block quote form though, moreso than the latest edit. There’s a middle ground here. — MarkH₂₁^talk 00:33, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, thank you. Agreed. TheBlueCanoe 00:37, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

I support condensing any excess quotes to prose, as is typical on Wikipedia. However, I fully expect the material to be repeatedly removed or obfuscated, and so I recommend including the quotes in the citation for readers to follow. :bloodofox: (talk) 00:45, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

I made a comment earlier today and realized that it might fit better in this discussion. I also realized that I'm not alone in my concern about prioritizing a number of block quotes portraying the fringe aspects of the movement (obsession of aliens, arranged relationships, zoning disputes) over the main introduction of the movement, such its central beliefs, teachings, practice, exercises, and its experience of human rights persecution. Assuming that these fringe aspects are true, they should be relegated to one of the back section, in a manner commensurate to their degree of importance in relation to the overall movement.

Honestly, I am quite surprised that there is this much controversy over a straightforward religious group that is persecuted in China. It is almost like human rights and lives do not matter (at least not as much as whether these people have arranged relationships, whether they were informed that their visas expired, whether they have zoning disputes, and whether they believe in the existence of aliens). — Preceding unsigned comment added by HollerithPunchCard (talk • contribs) 16:50, 26 June 2020 (UTC)— HollerithPunchCard (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

• I came for the RFC, and thought I'd leave my thoughts here as well, as an outside perspective. A good wikipedia article will cover controversies on a given topic with no regard for politics or ideology. However, an article about a religion *beginning* with discussion of controversies, particularly discussion of a single controversy, does strike me as
  WP:UNDUE
  . In looking at several articles of other religions or religious groups, including ones with significant controversy around them, every single one of them begins with an overview of its history and belief system, and this article is a clear outlier in how it's presented.

I don't know or care the history of the editors involved in this discussion, my interest is in addressing the issues being discussed in line with Wikipedia's policies. While certain aspects of individual editors' edit histories could be concerning, that is not an argument to ignore valid points they're making. In particular, I don't see anyone in this current discussion advocating for "scrubbing" this article to push a viewpoint that doesn't belong, because at face value, the point is valid. As far as there are "sides" to the controversies in this article, this discussion makes it clear to me that if ideological editing is happening, it's likely not happening just from one side. This is why wikipedia has policies, let's please stick to those. Arathald (talk) 20:43, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

If one were to divide the page's recent history into 'camps', then there are two here:

A.) A camp that had ensured that up until last month the article made no mention of the organization's media extensions and ensured that the article contained no mention of the group's controversial headquarters compound in Deerpark. Accounts in this camp edit-war to return to that. They consist primarily of a swarm of single-purpose accounts. This camp will frequently also complain about "left-leaning media organizations", as you see Blue Canoe doing above, and will also repeat some variation of the line 'everything must be understood in the FG's history of oppression'. This includes Falun Gong's support of the extreme right in locations like over here in Germany (cf. New Republic's report).

B.) Second, thee's a camp that treats this like any other Wikipedia entry by reporting on what an increasing and already overwhelming numbers of reliable sources say by adding that content to the article. In response, the camp A repeatedly removes these sources or, when that fails, attempts to downplay them, frequently emphasizing persecution instead, and gooes on lengthy and vague diatribes on this talk page that usually distill down to 'you don't understand'.

Here's an explicit example of camp A scrubbing from just yesterday and then there's attempts at removing any reference to The Epoch Times and Shen Yun ([17], [18], etc.), and/or the phrase new religious movement—despite extensive sourcing, at times replacing this text with more flattering couching not backed by reliable sources (eg. [19]). A constant thread is the removal of numerous reliable sources of which the group clearly doesn't approve. This data was first introduced to this article last month. Since then attempts at scrubbing it off have occurred dozens of times. Again, what we're talking about here is basic information: Well-sourced discussion of FG's media extensions and its headquarters compound.

Currently the article largely reads as a misleading puff piece: It still downplays, for example, the place of founder and leader Li Hongzhi as central to the organization's operations, decisions, and ideology throughout, instead emphasizing that the new religious movement is some sort of 'indigenous religious practice', and simply repeating what FG says about itself.

Falun Gong's political activity and media extensions make for a unique case. If you can find another similar situation out there, I'm sure many of us would like to hear about it. The closest comparison I can make is to Scientology, which has its own sordid history with Wikipedia (Church of Scientology editing on Wikipedia), but Scientology, to my knowledge, never backed political groups and promoted political conspiracy theories quite like FG does through its various media extensions.

There's a reason this has gotten—and is getting—so much media attention: An explicit political shift around 2015-2016 by FG, and the aforementioned hardline promotion of the extreme right in places like over here in Europe. It'd be nice to know how to fend off the repeated attempts at scrubbing to get this article up to at least

WP:GA status. :bloodofox: (talk

) 22:10, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

With all due respect, I did say I didn't care about the history. I'm here to provide my perspective on how to keep this page and discussion in line with wikipedia's principle's and policies. Not once in this discussion have you actually addressed the issue at hand, resorting to ad hominem attacks on other editors and while I'll still assume good faith, it's hard not to read this as an attempt at poisoning the well as other editors are coming in to respond to an RFC. Falun Gong's political activity has zero bearing on the subject at hand and my opinion about it, unless you're proposing that reordering the article is some kind of retribution for alleged bad faith editing. I'm well aware of the issues with other religions/religious groups including Scientology, and indeed, that's one of the pages I looked at to determine treatment of other religious groups on wikipedia. Frankly, your focus on behavior and issues unrelated to the question of article ordering is somewhere between a straw man and whataboutism. If you believe there are other issues in the article (which I don't entirely disagree with), you are free to have a discussion about that elsewhere on the talk page instead of trying to derail this discussion on article order. If you wish to do something about other editors' behaviors you view as inappropriate, you need to follow the proper channels to do so. Attempting to do so by repeatedly making ad hominem attacks to the exclusion of any rational discussion of the matter actually being brought up is inappropriate, counterproductive, and if you haven't already run afoul of the project's policies and standards, in my opinion you are very close to doing so. If you wish to continue this discussion, please focus on discussing the matter at hand, the order of the article, which as I pointed out is inconsistent with every other article concerning a religious group that I looked at, including ones with similar political controversies. I'll reiterate that I support reordering the article so that it doesn't begin with a discussion of controversies. I do not support removing the information from the article, therefore your concerns about "scrubbing" the article are unfounded insofar as the opinion I've expressed is concerned. Arathald (talk) 20:05, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

The concerns about scrubbing are very real, the last move wasn’t as much a move as borderline vandalism by one of the regulars here [20]. Thats the context I think Bloodofox should be taken in, yes they are mad and maybe getting a bit ad hominem but there is also a large contingent of editors (some SPA) who are trying to remove all negative information about FG from the page. I agree with you that the section should be moved, however I also agree with Bloodofox that this page has some of the most serious POV issues I’ve ever seen in wikipedia.

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 20:13, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

I didn't mean to imply in any way that the scrubbing wasn't real, I just intended to convey that we should look at whether the section should be moved as an independent question. If there are also concerns about specific editors, that can and should be dealt with as a separate matter. As it stands, I do think that the way the article is arranged is a violation of

WP:NPOV considering how all other articles on religions are arranged. I appreciate that you did take the time to respond to that point, especially as the rest of this discussion got entirely sidetracked from that question. Arathald (talk

) 01:18, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

TheBlueCanoe's terrible edit was not technically vandalism but it was extremely disruptive and worth a block. I think TheBlueCanoe should be topic-banned from Falun Gong for that. Binksternet (talk) 21:29, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Seconded. It's the sort of blatant censorship that we banned employees of the Church of Scientology for trying. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:52, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Why is it called "scrubbing" when this person has written a detailed argument as to why they believe the various points at dispute should be given this-or-that emphasis, all with clear reasons... and the response is not to argue against them but accuse them of being a Falun Gong hack and call for them to be banned? No. Everyone saying that should stop and actually respond to the arguments being made. Everything else is simply a waste of time and a distraction. This editor is clearly extremely familiar with the literature (a deficit I am trying to remedy myself).

We're at the point where these are all questions of recentness, dueness, and disputes over the reliability of sources. People can disagree about that stuff. It's standard fare, in other words. Respond to the arguments themselves rather than call names. Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk) 15:00, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

CA, TheBlueCanoe isn't familiar with the literature and your frequent boosting of them looks weird based on that. Compliments are nice, but when they aren’t true its makes people wonder.

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 17:10, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

@

you don't think that process only applies to the side you disagree with, what have you to say about the obvious off-site coordination to engage in censorship? Ian.thomson (talk

) 22:20, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Agree on the topic ban, I would also put Cleopatran Apocalypse up for a topic ban as they have a very similar editing history as TheBlueCanoe and are being similarly disruptive (albeit very politely, but polite disruptive editing is still disruptive).

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 17:12, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

I simply disagree that the diff you pointed out is a case of censorship. The user provides a bunch of reasons for why the same information should be integrated/summarized in the article, not at the very top of the article... no one responds to those reasons but instead calls them a hack and so on. It is actually a question about whether some compound the group has in New York is more relevant than, I don't know, organ harvesting. Isn't it? Most of these seem to be post-Trump media things, which does strike me as classic recentism. Just respond to the arguments themselves.

I haven't complained about issues of apparent coordination and whatever else because... how to prove anything, and where does it stop? By the same logic one could point to the appearance of a bunch of previously uninvolved editors and say it's a conspiracy. Including on the other side. There's just no point in any of these meta-arguments. I keep saying: let's respond to the actual disputes about how the numerous RS should be represented on the page. Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk) 00:23, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

I missed the personal attack above by Bloodofox. The revert in question was after you had put all the information on the page while thumbing your nose at discussion and calling everyone FLG hack cultists. I was more concerned with what I felt was the bullying and aggression than the content itself. And the reporting to arb com was for the same reason. Don't try to twist it around and claim that I was trying to delete any and all reference to NRM, Shen Yun, Epoch Times, etc., which is ridiculous. The problem was the biased approach. If FLG activists come and shove in stuff about torture and so on into the first paragraphs, and edit war to put it back in, and accuse anyone who disagrees of being a shill for the Chinese government, I will revert that too and report them. (And then be accused by them of being a Chinese government agent, perhaps? Amazing.) Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk) 00:31, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

If (overt) FLG activists (who openly admitted as such) come to the article, would you stick words in their mouths too? So far, the only persons using the words "hack" or "cultist" in this discussion is you.

not have a hard time not reading their use of "we" as identification with said group? Ian.thomson (talk

) 22:42, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

• I am following the discussions on this page with interest. I am new contributor, but a long time user. Never have I seen a wiki page fraught with such heated controversy, with such inflammatory and toxic attacks hurled against one another, and such serious allegations being freely mounted. It is not lost on me that there is a war over public opinion going on surrounding the issue of FG, and it is becoming increasingly apparent that that war is being fought in this space.

Without dwelling deeper at this time, it seems disingenuous to me that one camp (yes this are clearly camps here) would purport to champion free speech, and condemn censorship, and yet in the same vein call for wholesale topic banning against the alternative voice. One would think that censoring an expression, is lesser evil yet than taking the voice away from a person altogether. It seems that the interest here is less the merits of the subject matter, than victory by any means necessary, at all costs--please correct me if I'm wrong. Feel free to disagree, but I personally find this attitude morally reprehensible.

We are dealing with a unique subject matter here (although such uniqueness certainly does not exempt this topic from the standards of objectivity and truth, in fact, the converse is true). Discussions of a group's practice and belief is not the same as the description of, say, a lawn mower. Elementary principles of mutual respect, religious freedom and respect for diversity, means that insider perspectives should, at least, be accorded a minimum standard of respect, and allowed a reasonable degree of representation. In fact, contemporary social research has held that differences should not only be recognized--"insider expertise" should be privileged. As such, LGTBQ people are understood as having certain special knowledge or authority on queer issues, women on gender issues, racial and ethnic minorities on race issues, etc.

What I have observed so far on this page is quite the opposite. Internal perspectives on FG are being driven out, precisely on the basis that they are held by the FG community itself. Editors are being witch hunted, and scrutinized, not for the merits of their contributions, but for any possible or suspected association with FG. It is almost as if this community does not get to speak about their own beliefs and community. I find this contrived effort to marginalize the FG community on this page downright reprehensible. If you are to replace all mentions of "Falun Gong" on this page with say, "Jew" or "Islam", the average bystander would find the discussions on this page a shining example of antisemitism and islamophobia.

In a way, I'm not surprised. Since long, I have been trying to figure out why is no one speaking out on the gross human rights violations taking place against FG in China, including forced organ harvesting, despite the sheer gravity of the matter. I think I found my answer on this page. HollerithPunchCard (talk) 00:58, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Re Never have I seen a wiki page fraught with such heated controversy You've almost no experience with the site, then.

Re such inflammatory and toxic attacks hurled against one another Please point to an example of a personal attack instead of

making unevidenced accusations (which is a type of personal attack)

.

Re it seems disingenuous to me that one camp (yes this are clearly camps here) would purport to champion free speech, and condemn censorship, and yet in the same vein call for wholesale topic banning against the alternative voice It seems even more disingenous to lie about what one group of editors is saying. Some users have only called for topic bans of notably disruptive users who are removing any voice other that FG's -- it is hypocrisy for you to to not condemn pro-FG censorship in the same breath you accuse us of censorship with.

Re "insider expertise" should be privileged -- which is why we favor academic and journalistic sources that worked with the LGTBQ community over those that have not, and why we cite academic and journalistic sources that have actually studied FG over those going off of hearsay. The problem here is that some FG members don't like the conclusions drawn by those academic or journalistic sources because it doesn't fit with the narrative put out by Li Hongzhi.

Re Internal perspectives on FG are being driven out, precisely on the basis that they are held by the FG community itself. This false accusation is the sort of personal attack you accuse others of making.

Re Since long, I have been trying to figure out why is no one speaking out on the gross human rights violations taking place against FG in China, including forced organ harvesting, despite the sheer gravity of the matter. And now we know you haven't even read the article at all. No one is contesting the material in there, which rather disproves your accusation that the NPOV editors here are 'anti-FG'.

Come back when you actually understand the situation instead of cluttering the page with emotional propaganda. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:42, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

I am amazed at the kind of cognitive dissonance that someone has to contend with to churn out the kind of response given above. Throughout my contributions on this page, I have made every effort not to name names, and indeed, I have not named anyone in my comments. Most if not all of my comments are framed as general, impersonal observations. Yet, there are person(s) who immediately and spontaneously identify themselves with my observations. It is *almost* as if such persons are aware that they fit the descriptions I made.

Those who have seen my earlier comments would know that my concern surrounding the important human rights issues experienced by this group is not that they were not incorporated in the article, which is clearly a straw man. Rather, the concern was that they were not given due weight, as at one point, the article began with discussions of some New York compound, some zoning disputes, arranged relationships, issues about not being informed of Visa status, and discussions of belief in aliens--matters that appears absolutely peripheral to the central beliefs and experience of this movement.

Within a single response, I have been accused by this kind user of (i) cluttering the page with emotional propaganda, (ii) making false personal attacks, (iii) being disingenuous, (iv) lying and (v) being hypocritical. It is *almost* as if my observations about toxicity and bad faith on this page are true. HollerithPunchCard (talk) 14:54, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

You initially wrote "no one is speaking out", but after you were schooled on that, you try to redefine your comment as one of due weight. Nobody is fooled by such arguments. Binksternet (talk) 15:09, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

It's almost as if your previous post was made with the assumption of bad faith toward users trying to balance FLG's claims with outside sources, attacked such users with false accusations (such as lying about what anyone can see people have written on this page), and making accusations of censorship that you should be pointing squarely at FLG activists but didn't.

And you're still mischaracterizing the comments that people can read on this very page. That's just straight up gaslighting. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:46, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

There seems to be an agreement that the excessive use of block quotes is inappropriate in this article. I attempted to summarize this content, but that was reverted and replaced again with lengthy block quotes. Unless someone can provide a good reason why these should be retained, and why the article should have multiple, redundant sections and internal POV forks as it relates to Shen Yun and the Epoch Times, this content should just be summarized concisely in the appropriate parts of the article.TheBlueCanoe 22:24, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

What

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 22:38, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

As this is what TBC has so far called "summarizing" and "condensing", I think anyone following this knows what to expect: Scrubbing. These sort of systemic attempts at removing information about the group's headquarters and media extensions should be taken seriously: When this article isn't watched, you can expect that TBC and other single-purpose will zero in on these sections and remove them, returning them it to its previous state. For this reason, I'll add my voice to the chorus above in support of a Falun Gong topic ban for TBC account.

What isn't being discussed here is the bizarre misinformation in the article, and the fact that many of these sources stem from the early 2000s. Falun Gong is squarely focused on Li Hongzhi, but you'd never know this by reading this: The vast majority of the article's space is spent discussing claims of organ harvesting. It often simply repeats Falun Gong narratives about itself, rather than discussing topics that readers will find far less palatable. This article needs a section-by-section review and rewrite, rather than constant attempts to scrub away any mention of the FG's headquarters compound and media extensions. :bloodofox: (talk) 23:00, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Some users appear to be unaware that

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 23:09, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

• "The vast majority of the article's space is spent discussing claims of organ harvesting." - Really? You might want to look again.
• This article has hundreds of citations, most of them to high quality academic sources.
• "Falun Gong is squarely focused on Li Hongzhi" - I don't know exactly what that means. Clearly Li is the teacher of the practice and has an active role in it, but if you read the work of scholars who have done a lot of field work within the Falun Gong community, you would find that the structure and teachings of the practice actively militate against worship of the person of Li Hongzhi, who has no personal contact with the vast majority of Falun Gong adherents.
• There have been no attempts to "scrub" or remove information about Falun Gong's media extension. The article has contained information on Shen Yun and the Epoch Times for years, without controversy. No one has argued that these references should not be included. But they should be included in a way that is neutral, proportional to their prominence in the relevant literature, and narratively coherent. Anything less disrespects our readers and runs afoul of a core pillar of the encyclopedia. The edits you have made clearly failed those standards, and the continued inclusion of lengthy block quotes highlighting your preferred point of view, to the exclusion of others, also seems
  WP:UNDUE
  .

Not everyone who disagrees with your style of editing is "scrubbing" or "obstructing" you, and repeated accusations to that effect are disappointing. I would suggest again that you address the substance of the concerns raised, rather than continuing to attack other editors.TheBlueCanoe 23:13, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

The "information" you mention is trite. For example, from 2019 ([21]):

• "In 2006, Falun Gong practitioners in the United States formed Shen Yun Performing Arts, a dance and music company that tours internationally"

No mention of the fact that the group operates out of Falun Gong's Dragon Springs headquarters, by where Li lives. Ain't that funny? The same goes for the puffery surrounding The Epoch Times, with no mention of Li's personal involvement of the paper, which is only coming to light over the past few years due to media reports. The way they're both written, readers would think that these individuals had somehow independently come up with these ideas. Of course, in 2020, it's clear that isn't the case.

Speaking of the Dragon Springs compound headquarters, the article quite conveniently made no mention of it at all until last month. Considering the compound has been owned by Falun Gong since around 2000 and has thereafter been its headquarters, one might wonder exactly why it has been left out of the article space.

The scrubbing attempts are transparent but they're also old news: They're expected from TBC and other single-purpose accounts and will likely continue until an admin steps in, but we should now really be looking at the many problems with the rest of the article, because there are many. :bloodofox: (talk) 23:29, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

• "Considering the compound has been owned by Falun Gong since around 2000 and has thereafter been its headquarters, one might wonder exactly why it has been left out of the article space."

Probably because the first mention of it in scholarly literature was in a book published in 2019. It's not a conspiracy dude.TheBlueCanoe 23:33, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Media reports about the compound and records of its ownership have been around for quite some time, at least several years before Junker's mention, obviously. :bloodofox: (talk) 23:39, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

In or around the Dragon Springs compound exists at least two schools: Fei Tian College in Middletown and Fei Tian Academy of the Arts. Remarkably, the article makes no mention of either of these private schools. With very few exceptions, private schools that hold religious affiliation in the United States are either Christian or Jewish, and very rarely maintain association with new religious groups, which makes the existence of these schools notable and remarkable.

As sources that mention it note, the Dragon Springs compound is notoriously secretive, but it is obviously the new religious movement's headquarters in the US, as well as some of its extensions, like Shen Yun. Fei Tian Academy of the Arts has received less media coverage, but there are mentions of it more broadly.

Here's a report on the school from 2017 to start with, but there are various other mentions of it, and Fei Tian College seems to hold CHEA accreditation via the New York State Board of Regents (see also NYcollegesorg), but I can't find any information from the U.S. Department of Education on its status otherwise. The college also has a Twitter account. One of its two posts is an Epoch Times promotional piece, of course. I'll build a section on the topic and add it. :bloodofox: (talk) 00:13, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

The idea that the movement has an actual headquarters — of the kind that performs administrative and organizational functions for the global body of adherents — quite undercuts their own claims, as well as those in much of the ethnography I've been reading recently. Can you provide exact excerpts from the reliable sources which you believe show that it is "obviously the new religious movement's headquarters in the US"? Of course this would discuss what that actually means. And the specific evidence on which the judgement is based. I.e., do we mean a "headquarters" in a kind of symbolic sense? ("This is where the master lives, this place is very special") or in a very practical sense ("This is where we have the 9-5ers processing membership donations from the flock and organizing parades in St Louis.") Thanks. Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk) 08:29, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

The headquarters according to reliable sources is in New York at the Dragon Springs compound/palace. I guess that since Li is what would be called in the context of Indian spirituality a guru or

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 15:14, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Yep, according to NBC News, Li lives near Dragon Springs:

Li lives among hundreds of his followers near Dragon Springs, a 400-acre compound in upstate New York that houses temples, private schools and quarters where performers for the organization’s dance troupe, Shen Yun, live and rehearse, according to four former compound residents and former Falun Gong practitioners who spoke to NBC News.

They said that life in Dragon Springs is tightly controlled by Li, that internet access is restricted, the use of medicines is discouraged, and arranged relationships are common. Two former residents on visas said they were offered to be set up with U.S. residents at the compound.([22])

It still amazes me that somehow editors managed to keep mention of Dragon Springs off of this article for so long. :bloodofox: (talk) 17:03, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

I think that answers our question beyond a shadow of a doubt then. It is weird to have so many people call day night, but not unprecedented when dealing with the more dangerous NRMs like FG or Scientology.

Horse Eye Jack (talk

) 17:17, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Do you both need to be reminded again of NOTFORUM and the one about "righting great wrongs"? Wasn't the article only published recently? So what is the talk of the conspiracy aiming to keep it off the page? For goodness sake, gentlemen. The fact that this compound/palace/temple complex/campus exists and that Li lives... near there?? Or there??... is that considered a taboo in Falun Gong world? I think the issue here is really the stupidly long block quote. How much other stuff gets big block quotes? And why on earth is the anecdote about Tiger Huang so significant as to be blockquoted..? These are the questions, really. Amusingly, it says she's actually married to the fellow they set her up with. Some cult. At least they're good at matchmaking.

While I'm at it: you won't find language of "Falun Gong extension" in the sources you're citing, so that should be made accurate. Finally, it appears that Junker's book is out of date, because it seems they closed their office: I just googled and found this https://www.facebook.com/epochorange/ which links to this: http://epochorange.com/. So, while we are not meant to include primary research, it's a bit awkward to have apparently incorrect facts on the page.

Oh yeah and what is this based on? "Falun Gong operates out of Dragon Springs..."? I mean, what does it mean, and where is it in which source, which defines what it actually means? Thanks. Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk) 15:23, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Although Falun Gong propaganda arms such as New Tang Dynasty, The Epoch Times, and Friends of Falun Gong, and editors such as yourself are keen to reject the NBC News article, it is a high-quality source per

WP:RS

standards, and it's not going anywhere.

Your bizarre response to the NBC News report's section on FG's purported marriage-for-visa-status arranagement of "at least they're good at matchmaking" is also highly inappropriate and unwelcome. :bloodofox: (talk) 17:10, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

You're right. It was inappropriate to call them a cult. I retract that. I was being facetious. In fact that is a dehumanizing way to refer to people.

This is an article about a Chinese religion on which hundreds of thousands of pages of scholarship have been written. You think the case of one person having confusion about their visa warrants a block quote?

Or that people went on consensual dates in a faith community? That is also worth a block quote? Really?

Can anyone explain how this conforms to

WP:DUE? Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk

) 07:37, 7 July 2020 (UTC)