Talk:List of emperors of the Han dynasty

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List of emperors of the Han dynasty is a featured list, which means it has been identified as one of the best lists produced by the Wikipedia community. If you can update or improve it, please do so.

List of emperors of the Han dynasty is part of the Han Dynasty series, a featured topic. This is identified as among the best series of articles produced by the Wikipedia community. If you can update or improve it, please do so.

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured list on January 2, 2015.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
June 9, 2009	Featured list candidate	Promoted
June 11, 2009	Featured topic candidate	Promoted

Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on August 5, 2013, August 5, 2016, August 5, 2019, August 5, 2022, and August 5, 2023.

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Featured list

Woohoo! Celebration time! Thanks to all who helped me lift this list article to featured status.--Pericles of Athens^Talk 01:39, 10 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Portraits

I get the impression that some portraits in this list (they may be used on other articles/Wikipedias too like Emperor Zhi of Han) may be selfpublished/usergenerated works by netizens, without any historical significance, and such pics should not be used on en-WP. See for example File:Emperor Chong of Han.jpg and File:汉质帝.jpg. Do we need to do some sort of purge? Ping @Surtsicna if you're interested. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:23, 19 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes these are all from this user-generated source, with the site's watermark cropped out. We should not have these in articles, or the File: namespace, or commons. Folly Mox (talk) 12:50, 19 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed with both. Obscure illustrations not used in modern scholarly sources (or what we would call reliable, quality sources) should not be used in Wikipedia articles either. Surtsicna (talk) 16:17, 19 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed the user generated images from this article. Haven't checked for other uses yet. Folly Mox (talk) 17:51, 19 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Some at Emperor of China. Possibly we should look at wikidata too. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:56, 19 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm fairly convinced that most of the images are not common enough representations to warrant inclusion. The only exceptions might be Gaozu, Wu and the two from the Thirteen Emperors Scroll (Zhao and Guangwu)—but with four exceptions, it makes more sense to include none than just four.

Obviously, all are imaginary portraits many centuries after the period, but the Sancai Tuhui ones (Jing, Xuan, Zhang, Ming etc.) I have never seen reproduced anywhere else. I would be very hesitent to liken the Sancai Tuhui to something like the Mutinensis gr. 122.

Also, its worth noting all of these portraits were added just a few weeks ago en masse from a specific user, who came here after being turned away from the List of Chinese monarchs list. Aza24 (talk) 19:54, 19 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Michael Nylan devoted several pages of her 2007 paper ""Empire" in the age of Classical China" to how the Han dynasty, unlike Rome and other Western empires, had not only no tradition of artistic representation of the rulers, but a tradition of not depicting them at all. She presumes this is because, especially for the Later Han, all the emperors (except like two?) were children or babies, while the authority they nominally had was exercised in actuality by their mother and her brothers and uncles.

Nylan, Michael (2007). ""Empire" in the Classical Era in China (304 BC–AD 316)". Oriens Extremus. 46. Harrassowitz Verlag: 48–83. JSTOR 24047664. pp 75–78; TWL link.

Of course, now we have another user adding late (c. 1900 CE) artistic representations of various monarchs to articles like these (see Yu the Great, King Wen of Zhou, Liu Qi (Liu Biao's son) for the ones that hit my watchlist), but at least the images are sourced to an actual book in a museum collection instead of just internet garbage. Folly Mox (talk) 13:09, 20 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've reverted the additions, on the grounds of the above oppositions and simply that they are unexplained changes to a stable featured list. Aza24 (talk) 01:06, 23 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Fine with me. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:47, 23 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I don't have a problem with that. Also I low key dig how now the column with the emperors' Chinese names is squished down to the width of a single character on my device now, so they can be read vertically. I know it's a dumb technical thing about table formatting on narrow screens but it feels intentionally refreshing. Folly Mox (talk) 12:10, 23 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]