Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Emperors of the Han Dynasty/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was promoted by Scorpion0422 20:38, 9 June 2009.

List of Emperors of the Han Dynasty

 * Nominator(s): Pericles of Athens  Talk 21:09, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured list status because I believe it meets all the FL criteria and it is the final piece to the puzzle in passing my Han Dynasty featured topic! Pericles of Athens Talk 21:09, 23 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Comments leanning for support but:
 * the intro should contain some mention of the more notable emperors (longest reign? founders? etc)
 * it would be nice if there was some sort of a link to help readers with the Chinese characters (something like the pronounciation column in this list).
 * try using more noticeable colors for the breaks in the table (darker grey?)
 * most of the current monarch lists have some columns with some small pictures. I know that most of the current entries don't have any pictures at all, but try adding some for the ones that do have.

Nergaal (talk) 21:38, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi Nergaal. I like your first suggestion very much, so I added a new paragraph to the intro. This should be sufficient. As for helping readers with pronunciation, I am no linguist, so I don't even know where to begin. Wouldn't I need proper citations for that sort of thing, too? It could be considered original research if I don't provide a source which outlines the proper way to pronounce, although it may be common sense given that the Hanyu Pinyin tones are available in the Latin-based translations. As for the colors for breaks, I am no expert with tables. Could you show me how to choose a better grey and where I should put it? Also, there are no pictures of Han emperors. I repeat: none. Han artists did not make any artistic renditions of Han emperors that I am aware of. Professional portrait painting did not exist in China until the 6th century; painted artwork of tomb murals that have survived from Han usually just show people riding in chariots, eating at banquets, hunting and performing archery, and other general scenes. It is rare to ever confirm who the paintings actually portray. Three-dimensional art of statues and the like were also never used to portray Han emperors; they almost always portray nameless servants, soldiers, officials, commoners, mythical animals and beasts. Sometimes devotional statues were made to honor sages and philosophers of the past, but these statues were often carved hundreds of years after said persons lived. There's no point in adding any more pictures.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 22:09, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I made the break more noticeable.— Chris!  c t 22:26, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks!-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 22:44, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I find it a bit overzealous to have references like "

Bo Yang (1977), 467–468. ^ Bo Yang (1977), 468. ^ Bo Yang (1977), 468–470. ^ Bo Yang (1977), 470–471." Is it really necessary to get 100+ notes by doing this? Other users might think differently, but wouldn't it be enough to merge all the notes by say chapters? Nergaal (talk) 19:28, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't own the book and I did not use it either. I asked User:Nlu for help on this, since he has access to Bo Yang's book. I can't single out the book chapters which have said page ranges. I could ask him to include the book chapters used instead of page numbers, but personally I think it is better to be precise. You don't want people bugging you later about which exact pages were used, and then tagging the article with a bunch of "page # needed" tags. I've seen this dozens of times on Wiki and it is not pretty.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 19:34, 24 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Support - It looks good for a FL. Nergaal (talk) 16:52, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Excellent! Thanks for reviewing the List article.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 17:52, 27 May 2009 (UTC)


 * CORRECTION: I have a correction to make (reading into several sources). Although portrait painting as an art did not flourish until the 6th century in China, portrait paintings of emperors did exist during Han, although the originals are lost. For example, Anthony Barbieri-Low, in his book Artisans in Early Imperial China (2007), says that the Han scholar Cai Yong provided eulogies and painted portraits for five generations of the Yang clan, which produced many prominent military officers and civilian officials. Before Cai Yong's combination of writing the eulogy and painting the portraits himself, it was always the lowly artisans who painted the portraits (no wonder their work does not survive!), while the distinguished scholar-officials wrote the poetic eulogies. According to Rafe de Crespigny in his Biographical Dictionary of Eastern Han (2007), there was also a 'Cloud Terrace' built in the capital Luoyang which housed portraits of the emperors and their assistants.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 18:41, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment - some more images would be good, but as so few Emperors have images of them I think that to add them to the table would be disruptive, maybe add some higher up in the text? rst20xx (talk) 23:26, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * No, dude, there are no contemporary images of these emperors. There are some paintings of them done several hundreds of years later, as well as some woodblock print illustrations of them in books of the Ming Dynasty. But no, there are no Han-era depictions of these emperors. We have no way of knowing how they truly looked, and I find much later depictions of them kind of irrelevant, since the artist couldn't possibly know how they looked either. However, since both of you are now instisting that a picture should be placed somewhere, I added a much later portrait painting of Emperor Guangwu by the Tang artist Yan Liben (lived 600–673 AD).-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 23:30, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I realise that the portraits are from later on but still think it's a good idea to include a few - rst20xx (talk) 15:54, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I added another picture. However, the article's prose size isn't very large; wouldn't adding a bunch of pictures push the images down far enough to mess with and overlap with the table below?-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 18:16, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * User:Jappalang over at Wikimedia Commons has identified a major problem with File:HanZhaoDiLiuFuling.jpg, which I have removed from this article until the issue can be resolved. According to one scholar, Chen Baozhen, the painting supposedly represents Emperor Zhao of Han. However, since the caption provided is possibly an interpolation by later scholars after Yan Liben died and the painting itself is of a middle aged man, not a twenty-some year old like Emperor Zhao (who died as a young man), it could even be Wang Mang! Paludan notes that it is Emperor Guangwu, but her book, published by a commercial publisher and not a credible university press, is peppered with factual errors which throws much of her material and assertions into question. Therefore I am keeping one image which Paludan most likely mistakenly captions as Emperor Wen, when in reality it is Emperor Guangwu. Unfortunately, the website for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where the scroll is physically located, is not of much help as they do not provide adequate descriptions for the emperors in the scroll (at least on their website).-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 19:31, 25 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Support - I think this is an excellent list, and extraordinarily well-referenced. My two cents on the images discussion - if it would be historically misleading to show images of emperors by later artists who have no idea what the emperor looked like, and I think it would, then I would focus the images on things related to the emperors, for example palaces, capitol cities, any existing works of art that may have been associated with the emperors or their reigns (I know this is later than the Shang, but an example from that time period that comes to mind would be oracles bones). Geraldk (talk) 00:02, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Funny enough, the Han court still used oracle bones, but even then plastromancy was considered an archaic practice. Michael Loewe (1994) says that oracle bones dated to the Han are very, very rare, since the use of oracle bones during Han was very, very rare. Nevertheless, I'll try to find another picture that is suitable to the topic of Han-era emperors of China.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 02:51, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I have found a suitable replacement indeed. Have a look!-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 03:18, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks great! And you've taught a number of new things about the Han. Gotta love wikipedia. Geraldk (talk) 00:02, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Excellent. I'm glad you're satisfied with the picture and caption.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 00:20, 27 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment - I read the article and the prose seems very good. One final ask: Is it possible to list the regents somewhere? I realise this may be difficult to do, in that it may often be unknown/ambiguous as to who the regent was at any particular time, if there even was one, but as they were the de facto rulers they are very important, and with this list at only 30k there's plenty of room to add them in - rst20xx (talk) 12:36, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm...wouldn't that alter the original purpose of this article? In other words, wouldn't this article's title have to be changed to something wordy like "List of Emperors and Regents of the Han Dynasty" in order to include regents?-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 14:23, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't know, I guess it depends on how many regents there, which I have no idea about; if there aren't that many at all then probably not but if there are quite a lot then you're right. My thought process was more along the lines of that that information deserves to be listed somewhere and that this is probably the best place for it given the current article structure. I'm not going to oppose over it or anything so don't worry about it too much but if there's something you can do then that would be great - rst20xx (talk) 10:08, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, we know which empresses dowager and their relatives held power over very young emperors, but there wasn't always a very young emperor on the throne. In the prose text, I could mention the most prominent case of an empress dowager's male relative regent, Huo Guang, who unofficially reigned in a brief triumvirate with Jin Midi and Shangguan Jie before assuming total power as the sole regent. For all the empresses dowager that were regents, I will simply include two more links in the "further information" template at the top of that section on regents. Plus, the History of the Han Dynasty article linked there already explains who the regents were. This allows readers to search elsewhere in more relevant articles about regents.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 18:17, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * OK that's good enough for me, thanks - rst20xx (talk) 21:10, 27 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Support - I feel my concerns have been addressed sufficiently, and hence am now happy to endorse, very well done - rst20xx (talk) 21:10, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Great! Thanks for taking the time to review the article. I'm glad that I have addressed all of your concerns. Regards.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 21:12, 27 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Support - I made some minor fixes, but it is a really nice list, good work.— Chris!  c t 22:42, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for reviewing the article! And for fixing a few things in the process. Regards.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 22:48, 27 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Comments Support
 * I think it would be worth noting somewhere that the years indicated in the table do not correspond exactly to those of the Western calendar. For example, the first year of the Jianwuzhongyuan era of Guangwu went from May 4, 56 to February 22, 57 AD (see this date conversion site). I don't mean we should give the exact dates all the time: just make clear at the beginning of the table that these are approximate dates.
 * The Yuanshi era of Pingdi is currently said to start on 1 BC. I think it should be 1 AD. Zhongguo lidai nianhao kao 中国历代年号考 (a work on era names) supports this (the date converter I just cited also agrees). Could someone check out Bo Yang's book? If Bo Yang is already saying 1 AD, all we need is to correct the table, not the footnote.
 * Because most sovereigns started a reign period at the beginning of a new lunar year, we have dates like 28-25 followed by 24-21 and 20-17 without overlap. But I also notice that some years do overlap. For example the year 61 BC was part of both the Yuankang reign and the following Shenjue period. Can this issue be clarified? If necessary, I will provide the necessary info from Zhongguo lidai nianhao kao 中国历代年号考, which indicates the (lunar) months in which some reign periods were changed in the course of a year. If we don't want to burden the table, we can explain at the beginning of the table that a few era names were adopted without waiting for the first month of the following year. A general indication at the beginning of the table would also take care of the following problem.
 * The only place where months are mentioned right now is in the very last reigns of the Western Han, where they are mistakenly indicated as "October," "November," and "December" of AD 8. They should actually be 10th month of Jushe and 11th and 12th months of Chushi: these months do NOT correspond to Oct.-Dec. of AD 8. For example, the 11th month of Chushi went from December 17, AD 8 to January 14, AD 9. The date we give for the reign of Ruzi (6-9 AD) actually takes this into account already. Now if we don't correct these months, we'll have inaccuracies ("Oct.-Dec."), but if we do we'll have misleading and cumbersome entries like "Chushi: Dec. 17, AD 8 - Jan. 14, AD 9" that break with the style of the rest of the table, where specific months are not mentioned anyway.
 * So my suggestions to take care of these minor problems are: 1. indicate (just before the beginning of the table) that the years of the Chinese calendar are lunar-solar years that do not correspond exactly to the years given in the table; 2. also at the beginning, explain that some years (e.g.: AD 143, 74, 61, etc.) are counted in two reign periods because some new era names were adopted in the course of those years instead of waiting for the beginning of the following year as was customary; 3. remove mentions of "Oct.-Dec." in Ruzi's reign because explanation 2 would already take care of it; if necessary, mention in a footnote that Wang Mang took over in the 12th month of Chushi, sometime in January or February of AD 9.
 * If these minor concerns are addressed, I will gladly support the current nomination. Good job, PoA! Madalibi (talk) 01:28, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I have followed your suggestions except for one: instead of making a note in the table, I have created a new "note" link in a relevant spot located in the introduction of the article, which redirects readers to a "notes" section just above "footnotes". User:Nlu used Bo Yang's source to cite the date ranges for era names, but I can check back with him to verify the exact date ranges if necessary. Also, feel free to cite Zhongguo lidai nianhao kao (中国历代年号考) in the article where necessary.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 03:51, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * User:Nlu responded on his talk page yesterday to my request, but he said to wait until tonight for any help. He must have been busy. In the meantime, feel free to cite Zhongguo lidai nianhao kao (中国历代年号考).-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 02:38, 29 May 2009 (UTC)


 * The new note sounds useful. Thank you! Now I don't know how readers will approach this List, but I assume that many will skip the intro and jump straight to the table itself. This is why readers will be more likely to notice the new note if it's located near the beginning of the table than if it's in the lead paragraph. (More below at the end of the next point.)
 * To turn to the content of the note itself, I have a problem with the first sentence: "The naming convention that should be used for the table is "Han" + posthumous name, excepting Liu Gong, Liu Hong, Ruzi Ying, the Prince of Changyi, the Marquess of Beixiang, and the Prince of Hongnong." I can figure out what this means because I know some Han history and I know that these guys, for various historical reasons, didn't have a posthumous imperial title, but I doubt non-initiated readers will understand all this just by reading that sentence. Also, saying "the naming convention that should be used" sounds like you're finding fault with the current table. Readers may just ask: if this is the form that "should be used," why not just use it? You could say something like this instead: "the conventional way of referring to these rulers in Chinese is "Han + posthumous name" (for instance "Han Wudi," "Han Jingdi")." The examples and the mention of Chinese conventions would make the sentence much clearer. You could then explain why some rulers included in the list reigned as emperors, yet did not have such a title because they were overthrown by usurpers, died young, etc. The note would become longer and should probably be split. I think the part on the conventional way of referring to emperors could be included on top of the column on "posthumous names" in the Table itself. The explanations on the lunisolar calendar and the overlap of some years over two reign eras should appear next to "Range of years" in the table too. This is where they will be most relevant and most likely to be noticed.
 * And one more thing: what about adding a brief explanation of the functions of the Han emperor, as in the List of American presidents, which explains the presidency in some detail? You already have an explanation of naming conventions (including the term "huangdi" itself), but very little about what emperors did, how they were selected, how many of them there were, etc. The lead paragraph would look more substantial (and arguably more interesting) if you borrowed some content from Government of the Han Dynasty to flesh it out. What do you think?
 * Madalibi (talk) 02:44, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm game; I like your suggestions. When I made that note last night I was really tired, about to go to bed, and very congested (I have a really bad cold right now), so I didn't put too much thought into the note. Let me see what I can do now.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 02:48, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * It's done. I moved the info about "Han + posthumous name" into the table where it can be seen at the top. As for the discrepancy about date ranges for era names, I moved that note from the intro to the right of the label "era names" at the top of the table. As for expanding the prose text info on the emperor, I will get right on it.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 03:02, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * The paragraph on the emperor's various functions as a supreme head of government is finished and moved to the introduction of the article. Everything good?-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 03:54, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, everything is now clear and good! I have changed my assessment to "Support" accordingly. Good job! Madalibi (talk) 05:13, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Awesome! Thanks for reviewing the article.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 06:18, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Support, all issues resolved. Dabomb87 (talk) 18:36, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Sources look good. Dabomb87 (talk) 20:15, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Great! Thanks for reviewing the article and pointing out these mistakes. Regards.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 18:40, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Support A little late, but I think this list looks great! Good work, especially with organizing those cites. --haha169 (talk) 04:17, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Sweet! Thanks for reviewing my list. And I love your user page! It's gnarly. Cheers.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 04:48, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Support Another brilliant article Pericles! Keep them coming....Zeus1234 (talk) 08:13, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I try my best. I'm glad you took the time to review the article. Regards.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 09:02, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Well then, it's been twelve days since I nominated this list. If this thing has enough supports now, can we get this show on the road? I hate to hold up the nomination for the Han Dynasty featured topic any longer.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 04:25, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Because of the bot processing schedule, FLCs are only promoted or archived around 0:00 (UTC) on Sunday and Wednesday. Dabomb87 (talk) 12:55, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh. Well that's kind of lame. Thanks for telling me, though. I hate being at the edge of my seat waiting for things to pass.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 16:36, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Which really means the article needs to be ready on Saturday/Tuesday, not Sunday/Wednesday.--- I'm Spartacus!  NO! I'm Spartacus! 20:49, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Oppose Neutral for now I'll look this over a little closer right now, but that table is extremely hard on the eyes. I really did not like it. I noticed that the first four or five columns always use the same exact source accross the record. Rather than citing each and every cell, try putting the reference in a new field called reference. Take a look at how I did it on List_of_World_Series_of_Poker_Main_Event_Champions. Makes it much easier to read, as is, I would not consider this one of our best pieces---too many unnecessary references. Also, could you standardize the size of the pictures. The lead one can be larger, but the subsequent ones would look better if they were the same size or put into a gallery.--- I'm Spartacus!  NO! I'm Spartacus! 20:49, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi. Nice work on List of World Series of Poker Main Event champions. About the citations: yes, there are several rows which utilize the same inline citation, but not all of them. I would like to be concise and allow the reader to know where each bit of information came from. In regards to rows that do not use the same citation for each cell, how would a reference column accommodate them? I'm not sure how that would work. Also, the table already has eight columns; wouldn't adding a 9th column bunch everything together even more? In regards to the pictures, you will notice that only the lead picture has forced image sizing. According to Manual of style, no other picture in the article should have forced sizing. Even though it looks as if this is the case in this article, it is actually not. They use the "upright" option, which is totally acceptable. The text looks like this for the first image in this case: Han Guangwu Di.jpg (r. 25–57 AD), as depicted by the Tang artist Yan Liben (600–673 AD)]] I originally did not include the "upright" option, but one of the reviewers here insisted since his monitor was very wide and the images were forcing down the table as he viewed it. I did not want to get rid of any images either, since other reviewers showed concern for having too few images in the article and wanted as much as possible. I also don't think a gallery is the best option, either, since galleries are rather discouraged at Wikipedia, with a few exceptions. I hope you understand that I must accommodate and show thought for every reviewer's concerns. Regards.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 21:54, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * How about consolodating references for each row. EG you have a cell with a reference, and in the reference you indicate that the name came from source 1, the chinese spelling came from source 2, and so on.  Visually, I find the references overwhelming the content of the table.--- I'm Spartacus!  NO! I'm Spartacus! 20:11, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm. That could work. Let me see what I can do. Hold on...-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 21:56, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Huh. Who would've thunk it? The table actually looks a lot better without all those citations. I hope that, with their removal, you will now consider supporting the article.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 23:39, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Obviously, I woulda thunk it ;-) It is vastly improved... but there is still something visually that I don't like. I can't put my finger on it right now, so I'm going to go Neutral on this for now.  I'll take a look at this tonight and see if I can figure out what I don't like and if it can be solved.--- I'm Spartacus!  NO! I'm Spartacus! 15:59, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * ...Ok? I guess it's better than a stick in the eye. Is it perhaps the lack of pictures in the table itself? Aside from the reference column, I'm trying to think how the table in this article is really any different from any of the tables you utilize in your featured list articles. So far I can't find the difference.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 16:50, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Maybe it's the little boxes with the random numbers (e.g 高帝). ;) Dabomb87 (talk) 17:05, 8 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Support: Great list, I particularly liked the Naming Convention section. I saw the comment above me, but I believe the current format of the table is fine. I was considering asking if a color code for Emperor's who were infants and couldn't act as Emperor, and for other circumstances, but I suppose that would make it too complicated. Hello32020 (talk) 12:11, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, others might complain if that was the case; there's already appropriate color breaks in the table with headers and normal cells. Thanks for supporting the article!-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 13:48, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.