Category talk:Lists of people by nationality

Unhealthy

Jews are not a nationality. They are a religion. Do you see any other religions on this list? Why are Jews considered a nation when no other religion is given that status? --Islamist 15:01, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Read the article Jew. Jayjg ^(talk) 22:54, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That some Jews think they are a nationality does not make it true. Judaism is a religion, not a nationality. Israelis are a nationality. Palestinians are a nationality. Muslims are not a nationality just as Jews are not a nationality. It isn't that hard to comprehend. Religions are not nationalities. Nationalities are not religions. List of Jews does not belong under the category List of nationalities. It is plain as day. --Islamist 15:39, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Jews share a common history and heritages, making them a nationality, in the same way that Kurds and Armenians are. The fact that "the Jewish people" gets 847,000 Google hits should tell you something. Jayjg ^(talk) 19:17, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Jews in English is used both in an ethnic and in a religious sense (other languages distinguish the two: Qur'anic Arabic, for instance, would have banu Isra'il and yahud respectively.) Hence one can refer to people like Karl Marx or Noam Chomsky as atheist Jews (for example) without it being an oxymoron. - Mustafaa 05:01, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Jews DO NOT share a common history and heritage, thats a misconception. Different Jewish groups around the world have a different ethnic root, different cultural practices, and until recent times have been separated from each other for at least a thousand years. There is no such thing as "the jewish people" read the document located at http://njatheist.org/atheismandreligiondontmix.html

- anonymous

All acknowledge Jews to be members of a religion. But there are at least two reasons to consider Jews as also comprising a nation. First, Jews themselves consider themselves to constitute a nation. Self-determination is an important factor in identity. Secondly, the Bible, on which Western cultured is based, repeatedly refers to Jews as a nation. They are referred to as a people, as God's people - this can be construed as nationality. In the Old Testament, they are decided into two cities and accorded a series of kings beginning with Saul and ending with Hosea and Zedekiah. Those who want to invalidate the Jewish nation based on modern political struggles should put these struggles into historical perspective. We all lose if modern politics are permitted to erase the historical past. There may be confusion because the idea of a Jewish nation as theocratic and theocentric as opposed to other more common and modern validations for existence. Lastly, this sub-topic is not really appropriate for this forum which should determine whether lists of nationalities are valid or not. Not, who is worthy or not of this distinction.VaniNY (talk) 13:33, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Creating these lists of nationalities without some sort of qualifying factor could set unhealthy precedents for Wikipedia which is already quite compromised. Inclusion in or exclusion from these lists could then degenerate into competition, with competition and jostling for position already playing a rather destructive role on this webspace. Does Wikipedia have the manpower or the moral coherence to arbitrate such competitions? Frankly, it is beyond the scope of this wiki project imho. I do feel, however, that for ethnicities and tribes which are quite small, endangered or little known, such lists may be very useful towards increasing understanding and familiarity. Using list of people according to nationality also implicates Wikipedia in the foils and foibles of powerful nations and may indict her for the crimes committed against humanity in the name of nationalism and imperialism.

--VaniNY (talk) 13:04, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Rename them all...

...and let God sort them out! No seriously, these are senseless unless you add "famous" or some other adjective. A List of Japense People could, by definition, include 120 million people.It will take a lot of work to get them all re-named as you may get into individual conversations on pages but this simply doesn't make sense as it stands. Marskell 12:39, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Naming_conventions#Lists which says just use "List of Xs". Kappa 13:30, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

A poor rule and a systemic error. Marskell 15:10, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

list of notable X would be far better. Otherwise, AfD them all. --Midnighttonight 04:30, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Afd

The article List of Belgians has been nominated for deletion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Belgians. Some contributors feel that the debate should not be solely focused on this article, but should rather be generalized to all "lists of people by nationality". IMHO, it would be more "logical" to do so. Please come to feed the debate. Cheers. --Edcolins 19:17, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Are most of these helpful?

I'm wondering if most of these list articles are actually unhelpful. I started a discussion at the List of French people talk page and was directed here. As I said there, the titles for most of these pages seem too vague to be of any real use to anyone - I'm not convinced that an article listing every French/Dutch/Belgian/Malaysian/whatever person is actually helpful. In any case, we already have adequate categories to cover this, making these lists superfluous. I would propose that all the 'List of (nationality) people' articles are deleted. What are people's opinions? ItsZippy ^{(talk • contributions)} 11:01, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree these lists could become huge, and would suggest where the pages are gettign large, splitting off the sublists into their own list articles, and moving the pages to, for example "Lists of French people" whic hwould merely list the lists (of French sculptors, French soldiers, etc... ). Rich Farmbrough, 01:31, 20 October 2011 (UTC).

Even if these lists were to be split, do our categories not serve this purpose anyway? ItsZippy ^{(talk • contributions)} 20:34, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

• The guideline suggests that simply because categories exist for a list, it is not a reason to delete the list. Not to say that some, maybe even many of the lists need to go to AfD. However, Category:Lists of people by university in the United States for example seems like it could be extremely useful (and verifiable) and the organizational structure of say List of Johns Hopkins University people provides detail in a way that would be considered over-categorization if it were in the category namespace.Crazynas ^t 17:55, 26 October 2011 (UTC)