Talk:List of French people

message: Can someone explain on the "article page" what means o.p. and s.j. or remove them? These abbreviations are used in the section theologians, at least. Thanks. --Eleassar777 09:34, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Abbreviations

message: This is a disgrace, it should be named "List of famous French people," or something of that sort, not just List of French people, unless you want to add everyone in France to the list. It seems this title only remains as a curiosity.I--Zxcvbnm 00:42, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why is this title so vague? 

message: I don't like the bit "persons of French ethnic origins" in the intro. There are quite a few people in the list who are or were not "ethnic French", unless you define ethnicity so broadly that it becomes meaningless. I'd rather use a citizenship or birth criterion than this vague and controversial notion of ethnicity. Karl Stas 21:41, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: French ethnic origins?

message: * Claude Helffer
* see also Talk:List of French Jews
: --Sheynhertzגעשׁ״ך 04:03, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  In the List? 

message: First, somebody put Stephen Colbert down as a French philosopher. It can be presumed that, once they learn that I deleted him from the list, they will put him back up, so be on the lookout. (By the way, Stephen Colbert is of Irish descent according to his page, so he doesn't qualify for this page anyways.) Second, I wanted to put Louis Claude de Saint-Martin on the list, but wasn't sure whether he would be alphabetized under "Saint" or "Martin." In addition to putting him on the list in the appropriate place, somebody should probably organize this talk page so that new readers (such as myself) can look through it efficiently to determine whether one of our questions has been asked before. Feo takahari 23:30, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Two completely different things

message: Hi, I can't contribute much, but as someone who came across the page, I thought I'd let you know how it might help me, and that might help with some of the above debates. I'm an English mathematician, and I came here looking for famous French 20th century mathematicians, of which there are surprisingly few (I'd always thought that if you went to Paris and through a stick in the air, then you'd probably hit a famous mathematician with it, if you didn't hit a famous artist first). I can't think of that many off the top of my head (although Henri Cartan springs to mind, and he's been missed out, and he's already got a wikipedia entry), that's why I came here, so time frame is of interest to me. Also I can imagine someone wanting to get a feel for what, say, 17th century French intellectual life was like, and so knowing dates would be useful. Perhaps if you don't want to list people in chronological order then at least try to put their birth/death dates after the names. 
I also think that 'famous within their field' should be included, how many non-mathematicians have heard of Rene Thom or even the mighty Poincarre? but both of these should definitely be (and in fact are) on the list. 
By the way, to the person above, who'd never heard of Marcel DuChamp, I'm frankly quite amazed. I don't know that much about art, but I've heard of him. He put a urinal on display in an art gallery, and painted "nude descending a staircase" amongst other things. I believe he was trying to show something from many different perspectives at once, but I don't really understand. Certainly I'd always thought of him as a 'famous artist'. 
Hope this helps,
Stevie H  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.74.217.195 (talk) 14:59, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for commenting here. I think listing things chronologically would be useful for certain fields - someone looking for a 1990s actor wouldn't be interested in a 1920s one and vice versa. This article gets a lot of vandalism and well-meaning but unhelpful edits, so maintaining it has been a challenge sometimes, let alone improving it. There is a category for French people and one for French mathematicians, but none of these appear to be sorted chronologically. There is a tool, Cat Scan which finds intersections between categories. Here is a query for 20th century births and French mathematicians, as an example. It's loading as I speak ... Graham87 15:37, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Feedback from a random user. 

message: I noticed a prod was placed on List of French people.  Lists comprise one of Wikipedia's parallel navigation systems.  The redundancy and co-existence of our nav systems is explained and encouraged in Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates, and they are all part of Wikipedia's overall contents system.  
The Lists of people make up a huge branch of Wikipedia's list system.  List of French people belongs to that set.  Please don't delete it.
The Transhumanist  21:44, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please do not delete navigation lists 

message: I think Yann Tiersen should be added to the musician list. He's very notable, at least as a soundtrack composer if nothing else.
-----  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.41.43.82 (talk) 22:20, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. Thanks for the suggestion. Graham87 00:49, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Yann Tiersen

message: I'm wondering if this list is actually helpful. The title seems too vague to be of any real use to anyone. All these people should be in their relevant categories - I'm not convinced that we need an article listing every French person on Wikipedia. I would normally suggest the improvement of an article, but this seem to vague to be improved. I'd be interested to hear feedback. ItsZippy (talk • contributions) 20:04, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I basically agree with you; the list isn't really that useful. I only became interested in this page because of a rather strange technical issue that I found with it in December 2007, and have had it on my watchlist ever since. But it was created long before categories were implemented in Wikipedia, and there are plenty of other lists like it. Graham87 02:37, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, thanks for letting me know. There do seem to be a lot of similar pages, very few of which I think are helpful. I was going to nominate this for AfD; however, as there are so many, it might be worth seeing if there is consensus to take collective action. I'll start a discussion on the category talk page. ItsZippy (talk • contributions) 10:57, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

text: I've started an RfC discussion at the category talk page. ItsZippy (talk • contributions) 11:04, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is this list actually helpful? 

message: An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Notable French. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so.  signed, Rosguill talk 19:02, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Notable French" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]]