Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jean-Daniel Nicoud

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, leaning keep but the sourcing of the article needs to be improved. ~ trialsanderrors (talk) 14:10, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jean-Daniel Nicoud

Jean-Daniel Nicoud (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Apparently non-notable scientist; fails WP:PROF/WP:BIO due to a lack of substantial coverage in reliable third-party sources. See also the related Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Non-notable EPFL robots. Sandstein (talk) 00:06, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

• Delete: Cannot find anything here to help with notability. - Rjd0060 (talk) 00:15, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletions. -- Pete.Hurd (talk) 05:12, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
• Weak delete. Has a surprisingly weak publication record in Google scholar for someone who's been active so long. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:47, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
• Weak delete. His record is equally weak in Web of Science. 15 publications, that have been cited a maximum of 7 times. This is weird, though, because he was director of a lab at the EPFL. Note that in Europe "lab" often has a very different meaning than in the US. In the US, almost every researcher at a university has an independent lab. In Europe, "lab" more often referes to something that in the US would be called "institute" or something like that and is a large lab with several (sometimes many) semi-independent researchers in it. I am surprised that a lab that supposedly was involved in important technological developments would put a researcher with such a weak record at its head. However, this is not unheard of, so even while recognizing the possibility that we may be missing something, I vote delete. --Crusio (talk) 07:41, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. Inventor of the Smaky and on the modern computer mouse, no less. Rama (talk) 12:58, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

  Question: is there a reference somewhere that this is the actual person who developed the computer mouse? --Crusio (talk) 15:03, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

  Oh for Goodness' sake, can't you do a simple Google search ? [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], ... Rama (talk) 15:20, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

  Oh for Goodness sake, so he's not "the" inventor of "the" computer mouse. Nevertheless, his involvement with the Logitech mouse seems to indicate enough notability. The article should be clarified and sourced, though. Oh, and Keep. --Crusio (talk) 15:55, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

  I said modern computer mouse. I know what I'm writing. Nicoud invended the opto-electronic system which allows using the mouse without having to recalibrate the device when you've gone too far in one direction (yes it's been some time).

  In any case, sorry for the display of impatience, and thanks for being gracious about this. Cheers ! Rama (talk) 16:00, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

  No problem, we all become impatient at times :-) --Crusio (talk) 16:04, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

  PS: though one could reasonably argue that modern mice are not ball mice but optical mice, touchpads and clitopads. Rama (talk) 16:02, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

  Whups, just wasted 1.5 minutes on planet earth trying to find out what the tanalisingly named "clitopad" is all about. Pete.Hurd (talk) 03:07, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

  That would be the tiny joystick-like thing that you find on laptop keyboards. It's a slangish term that stems in a somewhat logical way from "joystick" and "touchpad", if you come to think of it in a particular way. Rama (talk) 08:51, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. Jean-Daniel Nicoud, compared to recent scientific criterion, was perhaps more technics than science oriented. Yet Google scholar returns 126 publications. Beside scientific publications, JD Nicoud had an impact both at the level of the local engineering landscape, by developing the Smaky computer, and at the level of the history of computing, by developing a prototype mouse that would later be commercialised by Logitech (which led to the success we know). Furthermore, as a lab director, he managed successful scientific projects, one of them which led to Nature publications [7]. Albeit retired, he recently developed a micro airplane which led to a best publication award at IROS2007, of which he is co-author [8]. --nct (talk) 13:06, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment as stated above, none of these publications have actually been cited much. Publishing is what scientists do, its part of their work, so that does not necessarily imply notability. And while Nature is a notable journal, many articles it publishes are never cited, so just the fact of having a Nature publication does not confer notability either. Is there any independent verifiable reference about him having developed the Smaky? --Crusio (talk) 15:03, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes [9], [10]. One of the reasons for the low number of citations is Nicoud published several books in french; I'm not sure that french citations are counted in bibliometry information available on the Internet. --nct (talk) 15:33, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

WoS and GS include citations to French (or other language) publications and both cover French languaged sources. --Crusio (talk) 15:55, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

• Comment --according to the references cited in Web of Science, it has a long-acknowledged major deficiency for non-english material. according to the refs. in the article on Google Scholar, its coverage is unknown altogether--they have never released any data at all for what gets included or why. DGG (talk) 04:31, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

• True. For the simple reason, I guess, that journals not published in English will get much fewer citations than those published in English (this is one of the ISI criteria for inclusion that I know off). So they cover some French-languaged journals, but their coverage is much less complete than for journals in English. Still, something published in French will get counted if it is cited in an English language journal, even if it is a book, for example. An item published in French and heavily-cited only in French journals would fare badly in WoS, but I would expect that to happen mostly in humanities, for example, not in a heavily international field like we are concerned with here. --Crusio (talk) 08:25, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I have known people who worked with Nicoud (I personally never did), and it seems that he was very focused on "hard result" (probably what nct is alluding to with his "perhaps more technics than science oriented". Nicoud would "publish" his results in the form of computers, robots, peripherals rather than publish articles.

In this respect, his record is indeed notable (though on a specialised topic of course):

• the Smaky, a whole line of computers with home-made system (and a darn good one at that, with pseudo-windows at a time when everything was command-line)
• cube-shaped robots which have become the baseline for robots education and experiments
• the opto-electronic system found in ball computer mice. This made the mouse a common computer peripheral and was the product that basically launched Logitec. Rama (talk) 09:01, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

• weak keep per Crusio. Pete.Hurd (talk) 03:07, 5 December 2007 (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.