Talk:List of emperors of the Qing dynasty

Name of article?

Maybe I'm missing something, but why is this a "List"? It is an excellent article, so why not move it to something like "Emperors of the Qing Dynasty"?

There is already a List of rulers of China which includes a List of Qing dynasty rulers. ch (talk) 19:30, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi CH, and thank you for your comments! When I started working on the already-existing "List of emperors of the Qing dynasty" a few days ago, it looked very basic. I modified the format of the table and started adding content, with the ultimate goal of bringing this page to "featured list" status just like List of emperors of the Han Dynasty and List of emperors of the Song Dynasty. But I guess I added more content than planned. :) One of my questions in the peer review request is whether the page is now too long for a list. I hadn't thought that the answer "yes" could lead to the creation of a new page altogether! This could be a good idea, actually, but I'm not sure how to proceed. First, I'm afraid other editors wouldn't agree to letting the Qing become the only dynasty lacking a list of emperors. Renaming this page "Emperors of the Qing dynasty" and creating a redirect from "List of emperors of the Qing dynasty" to the relevant section of List of rulers of China would deprive the current page of the 100-some hits it gets every day. It would also be difficult to implement a similar policy (of creating redirects) for each "List of emperors of the XXX dynasty", because some of them have rich content that doesn't appear in the more general list of Chinese rulers. Not quite sure what to do about this... Maybe we could start by creating a redirect to this page from Emperors of the Qing Dynasty? Cheers, Madalibi (talk) 02:18, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

A good answer -- boils down to "you have to understand the history," which to me is highly reasonable! I didn't understand that a "list" could be something more than a list. But I do think it would be good to create redirects such as "Emperors of the X Dynasty," since it would not occur to many readers (like me!) that an article titled "List" would have such rich and useful information. Maybe a note in addition to the "Main article" link on "List of Rulers of China" sections saying something like "for more information on the role and development of the emperorship see..." That's not quite right either. I'll get back to you if I get any more bright ideas, but meanwhile just keep up the good work. ch (talk) 04:06, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! I went ahead and created redirects from Qing emperor and Emperors of the Qing dynasty. Madalibi (talk) 04:29, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

kochira koso! I looked at MOS for Lists and was enlightened. ch (talk) 04:32, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Glancing quickly at this article, I think it could be split. Most of the upper section could go on an article Emperors of the Qing Dynasty or Qing Dynasty Emperors and a neat four paragraph lead could be placed at the top of this article giving us both the list and the details in two good articles. Rincewind42 (talk) 15:27, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

In the middle of my activities I somehow missed your comment from a few days ago, Rincewind42, sorry about that. Yes, splitting is probably an option, though it would also split into two the hits that this list gets. Have you looked at the lists of Han and Song emperors (List of emperors of the Han Dynasty and List of emperors of the Song Dynasty)? They also have a considerable amount of text before turning to the list itself. But now that I've had time to think about this, if other editors insist that the text that leads to the list is too long, I will summarize the current content and move the more detailed information to Emperors of the Qing dynasty as you suggest! Madalibi (talk) 08:39, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

There are differences between the Han/Song lists and the Qing list. The section "Succession" has been added here and the "Regents and empresses dowager" section is significantly longer and the intro to the list under "Emperors" goes over posthumous names again (can that be moved up the page). The lead here is nearly double that of the other two articles. Rincewind42 (talk) 14:51, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Friends;

This is an educational discussion on a topic I had not paid enough attention to. Thank you for enlightening us and motivating me to do some digging.

Advantages of keeping this article whole: 1) a reader can find the background and the list in the same place, 2) there don't seem to be parallel split articles on the emperorship for the other dynasties.

Advantages to splitting are that it leaves the List Article cleaner and creates a good new article.

A third option would be, rather than creating a new article, to add a paragraph (or two short ones) of this material to the Government section of the Qing dynasty article, which could well be expanded as it now has nothing on the emperorship as a political institution.

A random sample of the other Featured Lists leans toward allowing keeping this article whole.

• List of sultans of the Ottoman Empire has the least text of the ones I looked at.
• List of sieges of Gibraltar, which is not to my parochial mind a major topic, has extensive text, with a long lede + Background.
• List of chronometers on HMS Beagle. Ain't Wikipedia great?

These are only examples, not decisive precedents, but seem to show enough latitude in length of the lede that this list could either split or not.

On balance the present structure is preferable.

ch (talk) 21:28, 8 January 2014 (UTC)