User:Colipon/Falun Gong

Disclaimer: This page reflects my personal opinion, and nothing else.

My experiences with editing Falun Gong-related articles on Wikipedia

Falun Gong activism on this encyclopedia has a long history - dating back to around 2004. Back then, the articles were a battleground between pro- and anti-Falun Gong editors, both with an axe to grind against the other. After months of back-and-forth destruction, two blatantly anti-Falun Gong editors were banned indefinitely, and all Falun Gong articles were put on probation. After the anti-Falun Gong'ers got banned, the articles were inevitably taken over by a group of four practitioner-editors, who seized the opportunity to turn the articles into a series of Falun Gong promotional pamphlets. These editors are not hard to identify - just look at the discussion archives. Attempts at making these articles more neutral were few and far in between, and the Falun Gong cabal worked together against anyone who tries to change the POV balance of any Falun Gong subject matter - stretching from Falun Gong's teachings to its master Li Hongzhi, to its various media companies. I had my own attempt at neutralizing these articles back in 2007, but that ended in failure because I was alone (and therefore badly outnumbered) and subject to an onslaught of abuse. I was called a Communist propagandist, communist apologist, and once it was clear that I am not too fond of the CCP either, I was simply called a heartless human being, someone who incites ideological struggle etc. Ultimately, I just got tired of the abuse and stopped editing these articles entirely in July 2007. Many other editors report the same experiences.

For those who have noticed, from the summer of 2007 to July 2009, all Falun Gong-related articles were used as a direct channel of advocacy for the movement. Single-purpose accounts patrolled the pages to remove critical content and make the articles' POV to be as favourable towards Falun Gong as possible. These users are Falun Gong practitioners who have no interest anywhere else on the encyclopedia, and are required to 'defend the Fa' as part of their belief system. This has all taken place away from the spotlight from admins, and through this process the Falun Gong group of editors grew increasingly sophisticated at gaming the system. Finally, some editors stepped up to do something about it in July 2009. Administrators began paying attention, and the Falun Gong editors were banned or restricted one after another. With help from a variety of outside editors, this version of the page materialized, and remained stable until February 2010. Subsequently, a series of bans were levied against Falun Gong editors, as well as one editor critical of Falun Gong. The Falun Gong SPAs then 'retired' and left Wikipedia altogether, proving that they were not on Wikipedia to improve it, but rather as a venue of activism.

Soon after, in mid-2010, another group of Falun Gong editors surfaced. This 'regeneration' of Falun Gong-focused accounts has begun to use sophisticated gaming-the-system tactics to avoid sanctions, but their modus operandi has not changed. For instance, they took their PR war against the Communist Party of China to articles related to the governance of the Chinese state - particularly the articles that have immediate implications to Falun Gong, such as Propaganda in the People's Republic of China, or that of Chinese politicians. These pages were now also "tainted" by Falun Gong advocacy. Similar struggles were also happening on the articles for Falun Gong-affiliated organizations (such as Epoch Times, Shen Yun Performing Arts, New Tang Dynasty Television etc.).

I am sick and tired of editing Falun Gong articles, and have by and large stayed away from them since early 2010. I only wish for two things - for a full third-party review of the articles to comb through all sorts of propaganda that have filled the pages over the years, and for all the Falun Gong activists to be banned from the site entirely. Until that is achieved, these articles will remain an embarrassment to Wikipedia.

David Ownby

THE CHARISMA OF MARTYRDOM

I stopped doing systematic fieldwork among Falun Gong practitioners in late 2002, in large measure because of the increasing pressure placed on me by practitioners to play a role in their struggle against the Chinese state. As Falun Gong multiplied its websites and media outlets— New Tang Dynasty Television and The Epoch Times newspaper being the most important—it was to be expected that they seek out the opinions of academic authorities to try to make their case. At the same time, despite my sympathy for the plight of Falun Gong practitioners, it became impossible to deliver any sort of nuanced message through Falun Gong media, or even to have meaningful conversations with many Falun Gong practitioners whose worldview had become increasingly dualistic. Many practitioners also became insistent and almost paranoid, adopting an “us against them” mentality which makes interaction with them unpleasant and unproductive, and which, unfortunately, confirms the suspicions of those who all along saw them as a cult. This was rarely the case when I was doing fieldwork between 1999 and 2002. Unwilling to become the Falun Gong pet expert, or to joust with practitioners as adversaries, as do most journalists, I simply decided to distance myself from them.

--David Ownby, 2008

Call for Wiki administration to act

Wikipedia administration: please settle this matter once and for all. The four aforementioned users have been using these Falun Gong articles as a battleground for years on end and apparently no one here gives enough of a damn to ban them all from the site. The evidence has been crystal clear and given no short of 20 times by various users and on various wikipedia dispute resolution venues. Scour through their contributions and it is immediately clear that their mission here is not to create an encyclopedia but to advocate for a cause - and be destructive while doing it.

I was once 'an outsider' to the Falun Gong articles. I hate the subject, I hate editing it, and I hate arguing about it. I now regret clicking that edit button when I saw the article was basically being used as a piece of Falun Gong promotional material. Falun Gong has been, without doubt, the worst experience I have ever had on this encyclopedia. At numerous points I have contemplated quitting Wikipedia altogether because of these articles on Falun Gong. They not only highlight the ineffectiveness of dispute resolution, but severely undermines the integrity and credibility of Wikipedia.

Scientology has already set a precedent that this encyclopedia should have a zero-tolerance policy on new religious movements trying to paint themselves favorably, and Falun Gong articles are not any different. Anyone who edits Falun Gong to push for a point of view, and edits exclusively Falun Gong should be banned from the site for good - not some 6-month topic ban with the naive assumption that somehow this behavior would 'change' at the expiration of the ban. As we've seen, and as OhConfucius has pointed out - these SPA's editing now stretches to the 'second stage' of Falun Gong advocacy; i.e. when they are banned from Falun Gong, they edit against anything to do with the Communist Party of China. These are not edits in good faith and all of these edits should be stopped by imposing an indefinite site ban akin to those on Scientology. This is within the spirit of the arbcom decision and in line with Wikipedia's general principles. Administrators, this cannot go on. Do something about it. Colipon+(Talk) 15:49, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

From AE request of User:PCPP

I could not help it but revisit this and give you administrators some suggestions. I was involved with the article sometime in 2007 and again in 2009-10. I stopped editing all Falun Gong related articles in early 2010, much like user OhConfucius, because I could no longer stand the SPAs, edit wars, personal attacks, and lengthy sessions of ideological battles veiled as "policy" or "content" discussions. Many other editors report the same experiences.

I could not care less if you sanction user PCPP. He has edit warred. He has broken WP rules. He has exchanged personal attacks with Falun Gong supporters. He is not always civil. What have you. Ban him from the site. Or from China-related articles. In fact, ban User OhConfucius too, from editing the Falun Gong family of articles. He would probably be thankful. Hell, ban me from editing these godforsaken articles.

Let me put it out there for you that this is not a battle of Pro-Falun Gong and Anti-Falun Gong. It is merely an article that badly needs work and revisions from committed third parties who are totally uninvolved in its history, who have no emotional attachment to its content. I have been trying to put forth this suggestion since 2007, and Wiki adminstration and bureaucracy has been woefully ineffective in taking action. We've visited noticeboards, put up arbitration requests, sanctioned a slew of users, put up ANIs, and pulled all parts of wiki-bureaucracy into the storm. But nothing has been done. Why? I attribute this to the fact that most Wiki administrators know little about Falun Gong, whereas a similar case involving Scientology years earlier proved decisive because of its cultural proximity to Wikipedia's home base.

That the committed Falun Gong team of editors has come to portray this as a war of "pro" and "anti" Falun Gong is a victory for them in and of itself. Please do not be fooled. The problems on this article will not be solved until you ban all the problematic users for good, and I am even offering myself up to the chopping block just so Wikipedia can achieve NPOV on this sensitive topic. For those who say that I am an "anti-Falun Gong" editor, I hope the message is clear. I have enough faith that third-party editing to the article will achieve the same degree of neutrality that I myself have tried to achieve during my involvement there, that I am able to opt out of such an editing process altogether. Can any "pro-Falun Gong" editors say the same? I dare you to say yes so you can prove yourselves to be "neutral" parties. I hope after reading this you will get some sense of who is "right" and "wrong" in this case, and act boldly to fix this problem once and for all. Colipon+(Talk) 00:36, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Restrictions?

In any other articles I would have supported less stringent restrictions. But Falun Gong, this is just naive. Nothing good will come out of it. That article has been the battleground between Falun Gong and PRC supporters for years. But it's clear that the Communist Party has lost that war long, long ago, and they have never been taken that seriously anyway. The anti-Falun Gong users who have been banned as a result of the arbitration, interestingly, were not actually Communist Party supporters. Merely a few people who, in my view, felt that Falun Gong was promoting hatred of homosexuals and whose had very negative personal experiences with Falun Gong. Of course, I support their indefinite ban - because they have become too emotionally invested in the subject to edit or discuss objectively. After the ban of all "Anti-Falun Gong" editors, what resulted is a group of strengthened Falun Gong advocates who seize on the situation to turn those articles into Falun Gong propaganda pamphlets, not the least by arousing sympathy from the plight of Falun Gong within China. These editors have grew extremely sophisticated with their editing tactics over the years and now cite wikipolicies whenever possible while skirting the real pillars of Wikipedia - most notably WP:NPOV. These articles were essentially destroyed until July 2009, when Olaf Stephanos was banned. Since then the article has seen marked improvements - and in January 2010, two other SPAs, HappyInGeneral and Asdfg12345, have also been topic banned. Dilip Rajeev is the last SPA who have not been sanctioned with the topic ban, and it's safe to say that he is the worst of the four, which makes this situation rather humorous. I guess it really highlights the sophistication of Dilip's gaming-the-system tactics and his deep understanding on how to use wikipedia's policies to justify his advocacy. For that, kudos to him. I will be happy to engage in discussion with users who are not emotionally invested in this issue. But I refuse to do it with Falun Gong SPAs because I know their primary interest is to promote Falun Gong, not edit an encyclopedia. My past discussions with these users have all been consistently fruitless, and as new users enter Falun Gong wikispace they often feel so intimidated by the poisoned environment that they leave within a month. I hope the administrators truly understand the magnitude of the abuse this encyclopedia has suffered at the hands of Falun Gong advocates, and do something substantial to stop it once and for all. Colipon+(Talk) 15:39, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Reflections in June 2014

After staying away for some two years from anything Falun Gong related, including discussions or even editing this userpage, I wrote this in response to a thread regarding an arbitration request against User Ohconfucius in June 2014.

There is not a shred of doubt in my mind that the accuser is a Falun Gong SPA whose primary purpose on Wikipedia is to advance the interests of the movement. Unfortunately this only becomes apparent after prolonged interactions with the user. To 'prove' his conduct to be worthy of a site ban, I need to go through lengthy litigation and 'evidence-gathering'; having been through the arbitration itself, I am in no mood for another such futile exercise. I only urge Arbs to see this account for what it truly is.

The crux of the problem is, Falun Gong seems to be TSTF's only major interest on Wikipedia, and Falun Gong is of very little relevance to me or, say, a user like Ohconfucius. Frankly, Ohconfucius and I are just naive suckers who spoke up the most loudly in defense of our policies. We truly underestimated the extent to which Falun Gong is willing to go to tell the story in their preferred way; in retrospect it seems like my involvement here didn't do any good despite the best of intentions. Staying away from these articles would have been the smart thing to do from the beginning.

On balance and over time, it is only inevitable that the 'side' with much heavier personal investment in the subject area would prevail in crafting the articles to the way they want it to be. I have learned to become more at ease with this reality now; fortunately, editing Wikipedia is still a thoroughly enjoyable experience, as long as I stay away from Falun Gong. Last week, I took some time to read the Falun Gong articles to see how they have turned out since Falun Gong 2. It is sad that the articles have become even more strongly reflective of the Falun Gong worldview. They essentially read like glossy pamphlets for the practice much like those you get from walking down the streets of New York; they are totally sanitized ('censored', you could say) of criticism, controversy, or anything that could be seen or even remotely perceived to be prejudicial to the movement in any way, shape, or form.

In essence, the Falun Gong activists have 'won'. They have succeeded in driving away and frustrating all the users who are 'in their way.'

At this stage, I am so disillusioned that I think even a ban on the existing Falun Gong SPAs and their future incarnations will not do much, so long as 1. Arbcom cannot adjudicate on content disputes; 2. the editing of 'controversial' articles remain open to all users.

In reviewing all cases Arbcom have presided over in the encyclopedia's existence, Falun Gong seems to represent a cross-section of 'typical' topics that are subject to arbitration - namely:

It is a new religious movement
It promotes elements that can be characterized as pseudoscience
It has often marketed itself as a form of alternative medicine, self-help, and self-healing regime
It is controversial and often involved in 'real-world' litigation (suing others and being sued, much like Scientology); some of its controversies deal with racial and sexual-orientation themes
It has a very well publicized and self-declared political agenda to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party

It is not difficult to see why this is a minefield that any sane Wikipedia editor would do best to avoid! In my view, after reading the articles on such topics as Chiropractic, Scientology, "Race and Intelligence", and even "Israel-Palestine", I have to say Falun Gong articles are probably in the worst shape, relatively speaking, out of the arbcom-related articles on Wikipedia. It remains a deeply neglected topic area and a stain on this encyclopedia, it is an untenable situation, but I have run out of ideas on how to fix it.

Appealing the "Finding of Fact" against me

I took part in this discussion because, recently, in reflecting on the Tiananmen Square massacre and editing the corresponding article on Wikipedia, I have become more strongly critical of the Chinese Communist Party than I have ever been. That a 'finding of fact' dangles over my head that I am somehow "pro-CCP" or "pro-regime" is deeply insulting and brings out a visceral emotional reaction I have never felt. While Falun Gong 2 discussion is being renewed, may I appeal to the arbitration committee that the finding of fact be rescinded, or at least modified to the effect that it only concerns "edits which have the appearance of being anti-Falun Gong" and strike out the portion that mentions anything pro-CCP.

This request is on the basis that "pro-CCP" bias is not shown in evidence presented -- several Arbs pointed this out themselves during the proceedings -- and that in any case, saying that something anti-Falun Gong is also pro-CCP only makes sense in the context of the Falun Gong's own dogmatic worldview. This finding of fact seems to suggest that Wikipedia 'buys' Falun Gong's explanation that this is a zero-sum game between itself and the CCP, which it is not. Colipon+(Talk) 15:56, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Persecution and "Allegations"

Some of the abuses that Falun Gong practitioners have been subject to in Mainland China are widely documented by third-party groups, especially human rights organizations. These should be presented in the article and given its due weight. I am curious to know, however, that since the initial crackdown of Falun Gong, how much more of this "persecution" is actually directed against Falun Gong in specific, and how much of it is directed against all qigong groups, all the groups that are considered 'heretical sects', or all the groups that oppose the Chinese gov't in general. Organ Harvesting is a case in point. You had two clueless Canadian politicians commissioned by Falun Gong going to "investigate" the allegations, and then Falun Gong jumping on it as a "third party corroboration" that the organ harvesting is occurring on a grand scale, and targeted specifically to Falun Gong. If this is not an "allegation", I don't know what is. Even Harry Wu, an expert on organ harvesting, and the first one to bring light to the issue and lambaste the Chinese government, severely criticized the Kilgour-Matas Reports.

Heather Kavan has a good piece detailing Falun Gong's deception tactics in its media outlets - outlining how it has managed its public relations war against the Chinese government. One of Kavan's points, which is echoed by Human Rights Watch, is that there is no doubt Falun Gong practitioners are being treated badly by the Chinese government, and subject to a wide range of abuses. But the scale and the magnitude of these abuses have been vastly exaggerated or twisted by Falun Gong to earn itself legitimacy amongst Western governments and people. Another reason for the Falun Gong 'counter-propaganda' is because the group has been slandered badly by the Chinese government, and, because it belongs to a similar culture of discourse, attacks the Chinese government back with even more slander. Both Kavan and HRW are careful in saying that they endorse neither Falun Gong nor the Chinese government's story, but conclude that regardless of what kind of deceptive products have come out of these media wars, people should not be persecuted just because they have a different belief system. These views of Kavan and Human Rights Watch sum up my position as well. Colipon+(Talk) 14:42, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Falun Gong behaviors on Wikipedia consistent with their 'real-world' style of discourse

I found the following from Zhao Yuezhi, Canada Research Chair in the Political Economy of Global Communication & Associate Professor of Communication at Simon Fraser University, particularly illuminating. The source, a paper called "Falun Gong, Identity, and the Struggle over Meaning Inside and Outside China".

Just as the Party does not allow negative critiques of its doctrines and is averse to ideological pluralism, Falun Gong does not abide any refutation of its claims and negative comments. Thus, although the Party and Falun Gong oppose each other, they have in common their “unitary value orientation”

Falun Gong demanded more than the right to reply to media criticism: It demanded the censorship of opponents’ views in the first place[...] Indeed, the movement actually urged the Chinese government to use its powers of censorship to muzzle the opponents of Falun Gong.

Although Falun Gong is unquestionably symptomatic of the malaise of Chinese modernity, and though it won the hearts and minds of many followers, its ideological closure and single-mindedness are fundamentally incompatible with any notion of democratic discourse.

Indeed, as Wikipedia has emerged as a prominent source of knowledge and perceived "truth", it is a perfect target of infiltration for Falun Gong activists who seek to define "the truth" according to their narrow, dogmatic worldviews.

Behaviors of Falun Gong users on Wikipedia are very consistent with what professor Zhao had written about in her paper, and are fundamentally add odds with the very principles that make this encyclopedia great. Colipon+(Talk) 14:42, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Arbitration-related