Talk:Taoism

GA Reassessment

Taoism

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • GAN review not found

Result: Delisted. Real4jyy (talk) 13:04, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

This article has been expanded a lot in the past year with a lot of useful information, but also a lot of fancruft, a lot of messy inconsistent style usage, and ultimately all this information in presented in subpar prose that does very little to actually inform the average reader. tens of hours would likely be required to get this back to a GA status. I might even start with a revert to a previous version of the article and readd information as justified, but I don't have the time for that right now. Remsense留 15:18, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

• Delist A few notes: The "Scriptures" section has been vastly expanded into the current "Texts" section. A lot of this expansion is written in a way that does not provide a clear understanding of the significance or relationship between the texts mentioned. Some of them seem irrelevant just based on the article's own writing. The "Chinese classics" subsection begins "Taoism draws on numerous Chinese classics that are not themselves "Taoist" texts but that remain important sources for Taoists." and ends with an embedded list of seemingly non-Taoist writing.

A brief note from old GA version about pronunciation (The character Tao 道 (or Dao, depending on the romanisation scheme)) has been expanded into an entire section that is not clear and seems to indicate the pronunciation provided on the first line of the article is incorrect.

I started looking at the "Classification" section initially because of prose issues. The two bullets about translation would be so much clearer if they began with the words "dàojiào" and "dàojiā", rather than phrasing like "Firstly, a term encompassing a family of". I checked the first source online and I don't see those quotes ("religion proper", "the teachings of the Tao") within the cited text. Also, that first cited text really deemphasizes the division noted in the Wikipedia article (The same quandary surrounds the related issue of daojia versus daojiao, the two terms to which the first entries in this book are devoted. Even though the origins of these terms may lie in mere bibliographic categories, Taoists have sometimes used them interchangeably to denote what we call “Taoism,” and sometimes separately to distinguish the teachings of the Daode jing (and a few other works including the Zhuangzi) from “all the rest.” While these terms do not seem to have raised major issues at any time in the history of Taoism, the questions that they have generated in the scholarly realm are largely products of their early flawed translation, or rather interpretation, as “philosophical Taoism” and “religious Taoism,” respectively. Based on the way of seeing outlined above, Taoism is not exactly either a philosophy or a religion, but rather a set of consistent doctrinal notions that have taken many forms and given rise to a large variety of individual and collective practices throughout the history of the tradition.) That division is highlighted again in the next prose section, "The distinction between Taoist philosophy and Taoist religion is an ancient, deeply-rooted one." and again cited to a source that does not seem to put weight on it (‘Taoism’ encompasses thought and practice as a ‘philosophy’, ‘religion’, or a combination of both.). Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 13:23, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Do you think it may be viable to revert the article to an early 2023 revision? Remsense留 06:33, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

I pulled up the first version from 2023 and checked to see how the issues I noted looked a year ago:

• Chinese classics: This is just the I Ching at this point and the connection to Taoism is more clear.
• Classification/Categorization: More of an issue than the prose, is that the dichotomy expressed in the article wasn't backed up by the sources. I think that religion v. philosophy view is even more present here.

I wouldn't say that a revert to this version would fix all the issues, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 01:12, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Rjjiii, would it be a good start, in your mind? One that would turn this from probably just delisting, to a project that one or two people (including me, likely) could tackle to keep that from happening? Remsense留 06:19, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

It'll depend on the section. Reverting Chinese classics back to I Ching resolves the "fancruft" issue there. The classification section had problems with writing against its cited sources earlier than 2023. Good luck with the article, and if you ping me as you make progress, I'll strike my notes above, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 07:00, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

@Rjjiii and Remsense: so what is the best course of action: delisting, restoring an earlier version, or both? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:09, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Remsense, is there a specific version that you find still meets the criteria? If you link to one, I'll take a look and respond back here. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 03:17, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

AirshipJungleman29, Rjjiii, I won't be able to look at this until Thursday, my apologies for starting something and not being able to finish it promptly. If someone else wants to take action in that time, it's within their right to do so. — Remsense诉 02:49, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

No worries, take your time. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 03:41, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

AirshipJungleman29, I am back—apologies. I will provide a substantive assessment shortly. — Remsense诉 00:29, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Okay! I think I have a plan.

1. Splitting. Taoist ethics, and maybe Taoist schools and Taoist texts should be their own articles, which should be related summary-style in this article. §History is far too in-depth—shuffle to History of Taoism, and summary-style further. I think if any glossary page on the site is justified, we should have a Glossary of Taoism.
2. Partial reversion (反) – with the early 2023 revision as a baseline, this can now be done section-by-section.
3. At that point, we can start to tackle some of the (I would say perennial) issues with clarity and definitions brought up by @Rjjiii.

— Remsense诉 23:57, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

• Delist - there are too many problems with this article in its current state; it's too long, devotes too much attention to certain areas at the expense of others, has inconsistent referencing styles, includes un-cited material etc. It isn't Good Article quality. Midnightblueowl (talk) 09:31, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Wiki Education assignment: Honors World Religions

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 August 2025 and 12 December 2025. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): SACastaneda (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Yesenyya.

— Assignment last updated by Yesenyya (talk) 06:02, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Infobox

The infobox recently added to this article poorly summarized key facts at a glance as required by WP:IBP—and crucially flat-out contradicted the actual article, citing different sources for e.g. adherent count, and seemingly ignoring all the discussion in-article about how counting adherents is less than a straightforward or even coherent exercise, even by the standards of religious demographics. Remsense 🌈 论 14:52, 25 December 2025 (UTC)