Editing Talk:Falun Gong (section)

== Porter Masters Thesis ==

@[[User:TheIntrospectorsfacts|TheIntrospectorsfacts]] you recently added significant material cited to Noah Porter from 2003. This is from his master's thesis. We don't generally treat masters' theses as being reliable sources; generally the cutoff is doctoral theses. Now Porter does have peer-reviewed work on the FLG subsequent to the thesis, which is absolutely reliable, which is why I'm starting this conversation rather than just deleting it all as unreliable. But I'm concerned you are giving undue weight to a document that is technically unreliable. [[User:Simonm223|Simonm223]] ([[User talk:Simonm223|talk]]) 14:37, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

:Thanks for the review and comments.  Indeed care should be exercised when citing dissertations, esp. if they have not been vetted and published. According to  [[Wikipedia:Reliable sources#Scholarship|[WP:SCHOLARSHIP]]], a master dissertation is considered a reliable source if shown significant scholarly influence. In this regard, Porter’s 2003 thesis has been cited 48 times in a [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C21&q=Falun+Gong+in+the+United+States%3A+An+Ethnographic+Study&btnG= Google Scholar search]. As for academic peer reviewing, Junker 2019 called Porter’s work an "inﬂuential MA thesis published on the topic" (p.8), and Ownby 2008 referred to it as an “excellent” ethnographic study (p.21). [[User:TheIntrospectorsfacts|TheIntrospectorsfacts]] ([[User talk:TheIntrospectorsfacts|talk]]) 21:14, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
::Ok I'll leave it in but let's try to keep inclusion to due levels since we do have better sources even from this author. [[User:Simonm223|Simonm223]] ([[User talk:Simonm223|talk]]) 21:30, 30 May 2025 (UTC)
:::I forgot I tolerated this entry a year previously when I recently removed it. I still don't really like relying on masters theses when better sources are available. [[User:Simonm223|Simonm223]] ([[User talk:Simonm223|talk]]) 20:32, 25 February 2026 (UTC)