Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John Wallace Diesel


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   no consensus. This is a close call, and I see no clear consensus either way for the John Wallace Diesel article. If desired, this can be renominated after a few months. However, there is a consensus to delete the family member redirects. — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 05:21, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

John Wallace Diesel

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Not notable; BLP of relatively unknown, non-public figure. Article was created by same user that contributed the bulk of the information in the puff piece on Eric Diesel. Aside from one short obit, no reliable secondary sources used. Bromley86 (talk) 11:34, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

I am also nominating the following related pages because they're just redirects for his family members:

BTW, if someone could tell me if this particular step was necessary, or whether a bot would have deleted the pages if JWD's page was deleted, I'd appreciate that. Bromley86 (talk) 12:11, 21 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete all per nom. Fails WP:GNG. Clarityfiend (talk) 21:42, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:02, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Aviation-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:03, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:03, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Technology-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:03, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:04, 22 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Comment. To answer the nominator's question: yes, there is a bot that finds and deletes orphaned redirects. They can also be speedied per WP:CSD if the target page is deleted. • Gene93k (talk) 01:09, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Weak Keep but delete family members. I know that patents themselves do not confer notability, but it looks to me that his patents, mostly on GPS use in aerospace and navigation, did have an impact. I found articles by him in IEEE publications. "Diesel, John W., "Integration of GPS/INS for Maximum Velocity Accuracy," Proceedings of the 1987 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, Anaheim, CA, January 1987, pp. 58-65." "GPS/INS integration for civil aviation. Telesystems Conference, 1991. Proceedings. Vol.1. IEEE. DOI:10.1109/NTC.1991.148022" He is cited in this work: "Understanding the Navstar: GPS, GIS, IVHS By Tom Logsdon". He also published at least three articles in the journal GPS World. His work is cited in: "National Airspace System : persistent problems in FAA's new navigation system highlight need for periodic reevaluation : report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on Transportation, Committee on Appropriations, U.S. Senate DIANE Publishing" . And in: "Principles of GNSS, Inertial, and Multisensor Integrated Navigation Systems, Second Edition" by Paul D. Groves, Artech House, Apr 1, 2013, ISBN 9781608070053. That's all I can come up with -- a bunch of small mentions, but which I hope add up to notability. LaMona (talk) 03:22, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Neutral on main subject, delete family members I can't decide about John Wallace Diesel's notability, but his family members are definitely not notable.131.118.229.17 (talk) 20:30, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete all. In response to some of the above opinions, WP:PROF explicitly does not allow the mere fact of publication to count for notability — the publications have to make an actual impact. And the citation counts that I can see in Google scholar are too low to pass the threshold of WP:PROF. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:11, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep Yes, the publications do not in and of themselves establish notability; but it seems to me that the article establishes their impact, to the point where the scientist himself is notable. By this token, the redirects that are variations of his name should be kept. Notability is not inherited, so the redirects for his families names should be deleted. Vanamonde93 (talk) 10:52, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sam Walton (talk) 11:33, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  00:07, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete All not notable due to no significant coverage. Possible attempt to generate notability through self-publicity and family members are definitely not notable--Mevagiss (talk) 13:11, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * keep on the basis of ref. 1. It's very hard to tell with scientists in industry, but I think the overall career does show importance. The redirects are absurd and should be deleted. FWIW, if the article is deleted, the redirects are removed as a matter of course. If it is not, the usual course is to take them to RfD, but we are not a bureaucracy.  DGG ( talk ) 04:32, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep judging entirely by that obit. I know it's the only obit on the page - but, wow!  If accomplishment on this level is not notable, I don't know what would be.ShulMaven (talk) 02:24, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment Is that obit on a reliable source? When I opened this, I'd assumed that Navworld was part of the Institute of Navigation (because of the badge).  Having looked at it, it's a personal website, albeit one maintained by a former president of the IoN.  On the plus side, I have found an obit (p. 11) over on the IoN, which is reliable.  It's the only hit on their site for "John Diesel" (no hits for "John Wallace Diesel").  Bromley86 (talk) 10:24, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Puzzled. Bromley86, your link leads directly to the newsletter and obit that I read (my usual practice with AfDs is to glance at the.   page, then google the name - often a couple of iterations of name and keyword - to get a sense of what's out there about a person)After reading you, I followed the link on the page.  Not sure what it is about.  I had assumed form this AfD that I was reading the same obit everyone else was.   It does not change my opinion of notability.  But the ION Newsletter obit belongs on the page, with it's list of his awards and, especially, the GPS patent/s. It is hard to determine the impact of engineers/scientists working in private industry.  But we should be open to examining with the hope of salvaging even very amateur memorial articles about researchers in industry, because their work is often as notable as that of academics.  Just harder to document.ShulMaven (talk) 11:49, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * By "plus side", I meant in favour of keeping the article (as a counter to my calling the other obit's reliability into question, although even that one may be suitable because of WP:SPS). Bromley86 (talk) 12:39, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes. Especially if it's a specialist blog by someone with credentials.ShulMaven (talk) 13:46, 9 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep. I wonder what standard user:David Eppstein is holding up when he says the subject's citation count "does not pass the threshold of WP:PROF".  WP:PROF does not actually state any objective thresholds.  I wish it would, because then these marginal cases would be a lot easier to decide.  What is actually in gscholar is dozens of papers and patents by the subject.  The highest citation count for a patent is 45 and the highest citation count for a peer reviewed scholarly paper is 30.  Altogether, there are hundreds of citations to his body of work.  Not a Richard Feynmann or even William Shockley to be sure, but a decent amount of notice has been taken of his work.  It has already been pointed out that he was not actually an academic, he worked in industry, so we should not expect the level of publication (and citation) that we would from a pure academic researcher.  That, together with the fact that his work has clearly been of some importance in the development of GPS gives this one a pass to my mind.  On the question of the reliability of his obit, it is writtten by Joseph Portney, a former president of the Institute of Navigation, so should be accepted as reliable self-published material per WP:UGC.  On the redirects delete non-notable family members. SpinningSpark 15:54, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete Searching for "Diesel JW" on both GS and Web of Science gives me three hits with zero (GS) and 8 (WoS) citations. Fails ACADEMIC by a light-year. --Randykitty (talk) 23:28, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
 * There is something very wrong with how you are searching. Using you own search term of "Diesel JW", even ignoring citations to patents, finds for me
 * A new approach to gravitational gradient determination of the vertical (14 cites)
 * GPS/INS integration for civil aviation (13 cites)
 * Integration of GPS/INS for maximum velocity accuracy (13 cites)
 * just on the first page of results. The rest on that first page are patents, and while we treat the reliability of claims in patents with caution, citations to patents surely add to notability also.  Besides which, your search term misses a lot of results because the middle initial is not always used.  I searched instead for "John Diesel" which finds in addition


 * GPS/IRS AIME: Calculation of Thresholds and Protection Radius Using Chi-Square Methods (30 cites)
 * GPS/IRS AIME: Certification for Sole Means and Solution to RF Interference (17 cites)
 * I stress, that is just from the first page of results I am seeing, there are a lot more. Spinning<b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 00:43, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.