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Talk:Falun Gong outside mainland China/GA1

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Reviewer: Keihatsu (talk · contribs) 20:15, 28 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm happy to start this review, but invite others to add comments as well. I'll have preliminary feedback within a day or two.Keihatsu talk 20:15, 28 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry this is taking me longer than expected. I haven't forgotten, but I might have to do the review in stages. Here are some initial comments (more will follow)
  • Most of the section titles use Title Case, but some use sentence case. They should be made consistent.
  • A number of the sentences in the intro are quite long, and convey several different ideas. This can be disorienting for readers who don't know what Falun Gong is or who have a hard time keeping up with the various Chinese names that are introduced early on. You can keep all the same content, but try to simplify a bit and break up long sentences.
  • In the second paragraph, same thing: don't assume that readers know much about the topic. Some people are not aware that Falun Gong is persecuted in China. You do not need a long treatise to explain this, but one extra sentence could improve comprehension.
  • There is a bit of repetition in the third paragraph under "Organization." Nothing too major, but you could consider tightening it up a little.
  • "Falun Gong' reliance on the internet" — typo
  • Article alternates between using "Mainland China" and "mainland China." Also between Falun Dafa and Falun Gong (it might be best to just pick one, or else to explain the two terms).
  • Some terms are put in single quotation marks, others in double quotations. The difference seems arbitrary.
  • Under "Demographics," the first sentence has a citation tag that needs to be addressed (or removed—it's plainly obvious if you read the reference who the claim is attributed to).
  • "Ownby says evidence suggests that" - try to minimize this type of thing in the writing. The "evidence suggests" is completely unnecessary.
  • "an Argentine judge concludes that..." — typo. Use past tense.
  • "Falun Gong adherents have been filed" — delete "been". This same paragraph is also suffering from citation overkill.
  • "in accordance of a by-law" — typo?
  • "supporters and sympathizers have also founded groups such as Friends of Falun Gong and the Committee to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong(CIPFG), and Friends of Falun Gong" — delete second Friends of Falun Gong.
  • "which toured to over 35 of countries in 2007 and 2008" — delete "of"

I am stopping here for now. Hopefully this gives you some things to work on while I read through the rest and provide a more formal review based on the GA criteria. Keihatsu talk 06:24, 2 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Note: Keihatsu has not edited on Wikipedia since the above post 30 days ago. Will be adding a "second opinion" tag to the review template in the hopes of attracting someone who is willing to complete the review, though it may turn out to be better to put this back into the reviewing pool, something that is also a possibility. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:08, 1 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
So sorry for the delay. I don't normally stay logged in to Wikipedia, and got really busy with travel this summer, so I didn't notice the messages piling up. The rest of the review will be completed later today. Keihatsu talk 07:02, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I read the rest of the article. The second half especially is quite engaging, and the tone seems neutral. The story of the overseas suppression is an important topic, and you could probably write much more on it, but I think the examples used here give a good sense of the overall situation. Feel free to keep adding more over time as you come across more information.

The article is well written (with a few small suggestions below), and there are no edit wars or major editorial disputes, so you easily pass there. The photos and captions are mostly good and have free or fair use rationales, but it would be nice to have more photos of people practising Falun Gong in different regions outside China, if possible. The only image with a somewhat questionable license is the Ny-shengjiang-01 file. It might be fair use, but the rationale given doesn’t convince me, and I don’t think we’d be losing much if we got rid of that one.

In terms of the completeness of the coverage, one thought I did have is about Hong Kong. If you’ve visited in the past year, you may have seen that the Chinese government has a very public campaign against Falun Gong there, resulting in a lot of backlash from HK citizens who worry that it's a harbinger of more encroachment to come. That’s probably worth covering at least a little. I also found the parts on monitoring of electronic communications to be a little bit weak, so if you find more on that topic you can think about adding more there.

There are also a few incomplete citations, like where you only have a link and name. Please try to fill those references in.

Here are some other small suggested edits:

  • Going back to the part on media organizations, the treatment of the names of different media groups is different—some are in italics, some have the Chinese pronunciation, etc. Please make these consistent.
  • The first sentence of the second paragraph under suppression overseas: “...United States by agents of the Communist Party; it reported that...” - Suggest using a period rather than semicolon.
  • “The overseas campaign against Falun Gong is described in documents of the government's Overseas Chinese Affairs Office” : Since the previous paragraph discussed U.S. Government actions, you should clarify again which government you’re talking about here. Also, you don’t need the semicolon at the end of this sentence.
  • The last bit of the third paragraph is in italics, but it should be in quotation marks.
  • “In 2005, two defectors to Australia...”  : This is a bit confusing. It says two defectors to Australia, but it mentions three Chinese government defectors, and only one of them is indicated as defecting to Australia.
  • “Jennifer Zeng, a Falun Gong victim of torture in China...” : This phrasing suggests she is still in China, which doesn’t make sense in the context of this sentence.
  • The name Hao Fengjun showed up in the 6-10 Office article as well, and I mentioned at that time that you might consider making an article about him. *nudge nudge*.
    • Agreed, will look into it
  • “MSS agent working with the Chinese embassy in Berlin...” There’s no harm in spelling out these acronyms each time they appear in a new section.
  • “According to Der Spiegel...”: Link/Italicise newspaper names
  • “...and may use these blacklists to impose travel and visa restrictions...” : May use the lists? They have used them, it would seem.
  • Chen “ relayed in 2005 that approximately...”  : Change to Chen "said in 2005...".
  • “protest outside South Africa-China Binational Commission (BNC) meetings” : Add a ‘the’
  • “Politburo member Luo Gan”  : A good place to add more wikilinks (there are a few more, but I'll leave it to you to identify others)
  • I think there are more examples of media organizations succumbing to diplomatic pressure on this issue. If you can find anything like that, it could help give a more complete picture. This is important because I think one of the main questions a lot of people have about Falun Gong is why is it not in the news more. And this is part of the answer.
  • “Wall Street Journal reported...” Link/italicize again
  • “could result in a denial of visa for fieldwork” : denial of visas, plural?
  • The views of Ethan Gutman dominate the last two paragraphs. Consider condensing his views a little bit, if you think it can be done without losing the meaning. As for the very last paragraph, it is a perfectly adequate summary, even though it ends on a bit of a down note. But it is also very American-centric. From one perspective I can understand this, since the most media coverage probably comes from the United States, but if you can think of something that encapsulates the world more, I encourage you to try it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Keihatsu (talk • contribs) 00:44, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Great, the improvement look good to me. I noticed you hadn't fixed all the incomplete references, though, so I just filled those in. It looks like the references combine various citation styles, which is fine with me, but for the future you might try to make them uniform. There are also still some areas that could potentially benefit from some expansion, so I hope you'll continue working to improve the article after this review. Other than that, I'm satisfied. Well done! Keihatsu talk 12:08, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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