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	Falun Gong was one of the Philosophy and religion good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones Date Process Result September 29, 2012 Featured article candidate Not promoted July 20, 2014 Good article nominee Listed December 27, 2015 Good article reassessment Delisted
Current status: Delisted good article

Under the media campaign section, in the final paragraph, there's a line which reads "much the same rhetoric employed by the party during Tiananmen in 1989". Since this is referencing the Tiananmen Square protests, please refer to it as such so as not to confuse the incident with the name of the square itself. Please change this line to "much the same rhetoric employed by the party during Tiananmen Protests of 1989". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sheikh25 (talk • contribs) 10:48, October 1, 2020 (UTC)

Please change, "Deerpark, NY" to "Deer Park, NY". In the first paragraph of this Wikipedia page, the headquarters for Falun Gong is incorrectly written as, "Deerpark, NY". In fact, the town is "Deer Park, NY". I am the source for this as I grew up in Dix Hills, NY, which borders Deer Park. Both towns are in Suffolk County, on Long Island, NY, just outside of NYC. Lostinnh (talk) 23:58, 17 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. @Lostinnh: Please provide reliable sources that Falun Gong has moved from Orange County to Suffolk County. —C.Fred (talk) 00:10, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I guess I can get the URL of a map to show where Deer Park is and what its correct spelling is. I was simply correcting the spelling of the name of the town. I considered this a minor edit/detail so did not think a reference other then my own knowledge of 12 years living there would matter.

As far as Falun Gong having its HDQRs in Deer Park, NY, that was already on that Wiki page and, again, I was simply correcting the spelling, not stating a location. I guess I can use Wikis own page on Deer Park, NY, as a reference for its correct spelling. 2601:19D:C080:3D20:38DA:8AF0:7A70:B63D (talk) 05:55, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, please disregard my previous effort. My apologies. I just did a lot of reading on both Falun Gong and Deerpark, NY. I was very surprised to learn that there are two towns in NY state with that name, just with different spellings. There is Deerpark, NY, in Orange County, NY, where Falun Gong is and Deer Park, NY, in Suffolk County, NY, near where I grew up. I was amazed. In my defense, I just read a good part of a long piece on ex-Falun Gong members and they kept spelling the town as, "Deer Park", which is incorrect. Lostinnh (talk) 07:48, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That is just probably because they were not actual ex-Falun Gong members but dummies or such or people paid for that story by the CCP. Just guessing. But why else would they not spell properly the place where they lived...? Marieke77 (talk) 19:33, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

LOL, if that were the only error in this Wikipedia piece. Anne Linstatter (talk) 01:36, 13 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

File:610 Office.jpg from "Faluninfo.net" is included under the "Persecution" section, and it includes some interesting content, but it is captioned only as "610 Office's organization in China", which I feel is a bit lacking in context or commentary that might be necessary for such a chart. Combining this with its relatively poor quality (absolutely chock full of JPEG artifacts and is unreadable at thumbnail sizes), I am wondering if the caption could in any way be improved to help the reader understand its context and its encyclopedic relevance, or if it could be removed? If I weren't subject to the blue lock, I probably would have just done the latter. Bakutosz (talk) 17:49, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The practice emphasizes morality and the cultivation of virtue, and identifies as a practice of the Buddhist school, though its teachings also incorporate elements drawn from Taoist traditions.

Has 2 citations. 1 is relevant to this sentence, the second is a hit piece targeting the Epoch Times. Marieke77 (talk) 19:30, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Right now a significant amount of this article's discussion about the contemporary Falun Gong is cited to material from 2000 and 2003. A lot of this seems to be intended to claim that Falun Gong is some kind of decentralized spiritual movement rather than a full-blown new religious movement centered around whatever Li Hongzhi says. it also makes no mention of the entire org's hierarchy based out of Dragon Springs, which did not exist at the time. These sources need to be removed and replaced with contemporary sources. :bloodofox: (talk) 23:56, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The sections can be updated, but massive removal may be inappropriate, as the academically-cited parts removed shall remain true unless proven false, such as not charging fees, no system of membership, no rituals, no hierarchy to enforce orthodoxy, and the fact the Li doesn't intervene in practitioners' lives, among other things deleted. Li Hongzhi has been living in the New York area (not far from the current Dragon Springs) since 1999 or prior according to this WaPo article and U.S News & World Report article in 1999. Authors of sources published in the early 2000s (removed in recent edits) were unlikely to be unaware of this fact, as it was widely reported in 1999 that Li lived in NY at that time. Thus it would be inaccurate to say that these sources are outdated in terms of how Li influences the Falun Gong movement.

Dragon Spring is the campus of Fei Tian College, Fei Tian Academy of the Arts, and Shen Yun Performing Arts [1]. Having a physical campus for its performing arts troupe and affiliated schools doesn't necessarily change Falun Gong's organizational structure and the fact that Li communicates with his followers mainly through his teachings published on online. The decentralized structure of regional Falun Dafa Associations in the US and worldwide, as well as the voluntary nature of these organizations and their lack of hierarchy should remain true today, unless proved otherwise by reliable sources. Thomas Meng (talk) 02:19, 16 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I just got around to reading Andrew Junker's book, Becoming Activists in Global China, which was published in 2019. It reignited an interest in the topic for me, and I think it is a good reference on this issue. bloodofox has a point about the old sources, but the content that was removed wasn't incorrect in my opinion and the new sources don't refute them. In cases like this, I think it's best to improve, not just remove (maybe a new slogan for me, haha). As a note, Junker doesn't focus on Dragon Springs in discussing the groups operations. The book takes a global look at how a diaspora community coordinates with each other, which I think provides good context. Li Hongzhi and the Falun Gong leadership (if that's the right term for anyone except Li Hongzhi in their group) have always been in New York, even before Dragon Springs, and I haven't seen any references to a significant shift in the group's dynamics after they moved there. Summary: this section needs some updates, but I don't think the new sources put forward anything contradictory to what was there before. —Zujine|talk 14:11, 17 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Reality check: Thomas Meng is an adherent who haunts these articles and pushes the group's preferred narrative. He knows that coverage of Falun Gong has shifted to being extremely critical of the new religious movement over the past several years, and his edits are just more of a long line of adherents attempting to sculpt and obfuscate this page to echo the group's preferred narrative (scholars of this topic have even written about Falun Gong's repeated attempts at changing this page to exactly that). In reality, it's indisputable that Falun Gong is centralized around Li Hongzhi at their compouned at Dragon Springs. Pre-Dragon Springs sources are not acceptable on this topic. All these older sources in this article need to be purged as out of date. :bloodofox: (talk) 02:34, 23 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Andrew Junker's book Becoming Activists in Global China (Cambridge University Press, 2019), which is probably the latest academic book on Falun Gong, mentioned Dragon Springs 15 times, and Junker even went to Dragon Springs himself for field research. But nowhere in his book did he say Dragon Springs changed Falun Gong's decentralized organizational structure. To the contrary, he said (p.186):

"Practitioners learned how to execute a petition, march through a major city, conduct lawsuits to protect rights, produce a newspaper, lobby elected officials, get motions through the US Congress, hand out leaflets on street corners, use local and national laws to protect rights, register a 501c3 nonprofit organization in the USA, issue press releases, coordinate transnational information and telephone campaigning, and so forth. All of this mobilization, especially because it was so decentralized and emphasized individual initiative, facilitated skill development and politically consequential forms of agency." (emphasis added)

In a 2019 book review, social science scholar Chengpang Lee summarized Junker's book in this way:

"First and the foremost, it is the decentralised organisational structure of Falun Gong’s mobilisation that is key to its success [compared to the democratic movement in overseas Chinese diaspora]." (emphasis added)

According to Junker (p. 99), Dragon Springs was established in 2002. Though the media only started reporting on it in the recent few years, it has been there for over 20 years. Media spotlight doesn't necessarily change its role in Falun Gong's organizational structure. Please be aware of WP:RECENTISM.

@Bloodofox: If you can specify which quote from which academic source published between 2000 and 2003 is refuted by which recent reporting, that would be more helpful (than WP:PAs). Then we can discuss either removing or updating it. Thomas Meng (talk) 09:44, 25 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The organization can be decentralized and still have a headquarters and a supreme leader. Those aren't contradictory as much as you'd like them to be, one certainly does not refute the other. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:05, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The recent improvements should stay in the article. Too much WP:WEIGHT is assigned to outdated reports. The outdated stuff is shown to be wrong by Heather Kavan and James R. Lewis, especially the sentence "Students are free to participate in the practice and follow its teachings as much or as little as they like, and practitioners do not instruct others on what to believe or how to behave." More recent accounts show that practitioners are subject to intense peer pressure; not "free" to leave. Binksternet (talk) 14:56, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've only seen an opinion article (not reliable for fact) that mentioned a few anecdotal accounts of family members trying to persuade their youngsters who had stopped practicing Falun Gong. But I haven't seen any WP:RS regarding "peer pressure" beyond familial contexts.

As for the work of Heather Kaven and James Lewis, can you specify which publication of theirs contradicts which removed sentence?

Additionally, please note that the late James Lewis was a faculty member at the Chinese government-funded Wuhan University. Such affiliations raise questions about conflicts of interest.Thomas Meng (talk) 11:58, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There is no non-family pressure? Can you explain this then [2]? Specifically the lines which follow "But as soon as he loses the Fa, do you know what he faces?" Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:25, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That COI argument has been rejected again and again. You just cited Andrew Junker and Chengpang Lee yourself, and they're currently at institutions funded by the Chinese government - unlike Lewis, who was working somewhere else when the source in question was written. MrOllie (talk) 15:29, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Just came across this blatant instance of personal attack by Bloodofox against Thomas Meng. Bloodofox, lately I have seen editors [banned indefinitely] for lesser instance of WP:PA than the one you are committing and I warn you not to engage in such WP:PA again.

The two disputed paragraphs in this talk discussion has been stable for at least the past several months before it was deleted by Bloodofox on Sep 27 in two edits 1 and 2. When other editor restored to the previous stable version, Bloodofox reverted this restoration and restored his deletion of substantial stable content.

The alleged reason for this large scale deletion is that the content being deleted is outdated because as "being from 2000 to 2003". Without contesting this argument, in reality, some of the sources being deleted are as recent as 2019. One example is Andrew Junker's Become Activist in Global China 2019, which is a full blown scholarship published by the Cambridge University Press.

Ironically, I note the same 2019 Junker source was cited extensively in other parts of this article, bearing on a certain "secretive", New York compound. These editors have no issue with this source in those parts. The same editors, however, began to have issues with this source, when it speaks to decentralization of this religious movement.

In my respective view, we are witnessing a vandalization and clear POV-pushing on this page, committed by Bloodofox and Binksternet, and a few others. The previously stable content should be restored without delay. HollerithPunchCard (talk) 21:37, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Complaining about personal attacks while making personal attacks yourself in the same message is a strange tactic. MrOllie (talk) 21:43, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, it appears to be a willfully ignorant argument. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:48, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

On hindsight, vandalism is probably a strong allegation to make in the circumstances. But there's definitely a serious personal attack and POV-pushing by the editors that you support, and it's telling that you did not deny in your comment above.

And no - calling someone out for POV-pushing or vandalism is nowhere the same as accusing another editor for being a Falun Gong "adherent", who "haunts this article" and "pushes the group's preferred narrative", which is a clear instance of WP:PA, against an editor's perceived religious affiliation or belief.

You should not be defending such behaviour, regardless of whether you agree with the infringing editor's POV. HollerithPunchCard (talk) 02:50, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

As with most things the ideal version of the page probably exists somewhere between the two extremes. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:01, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]