Talk:Max Ritvo

COI

Seems that subject's mother Ariritvo (see contribs) has made edits to the page; surely in good faith but a violation of COI policy. (Grand'mere Eugene has been maintaining the page and should resolve as they see fit.)

Riva Golan Ritvo

(copied from talk page of User:Grand'mere Eugene to keep discussion with article) You recently reverted an edit on Max Ritvo, asking for a source that his mother went by "Riva Golan Ritvo" at the time of his birth. As there are no birth records for Max Ritvo publicly available (to my knowledge), this cannot be verified. However, "Ariella" is a pseudonym—it does not appear in any government documents—and there is no record of Riva Ritvo using it before she was exposed for providing false educational credentials to the New York Times. There is good reason to be skeptical regarding the information this person has published about herself and precise about the nature of her credentials. Thank you for your work on the page.

Tarmaccaptain (talk) 04:59, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

@Tarmaccaptain:Regardless of any controversy over information provided in the wedding announcement about her educational credentials, the NYT article seems to be the only reliable source using the name "Riva Golan Ritvo". The MOS policy you refer to also says "However, see MOS:IDENTITY", which states, "When there is a discrepancy between the term most commonly used by reliable sources for a person or group and the term that person or group uses for themselves, use the term that is most commonly used by reliable sources [emphasis mine]. If it isn't clear which is most used, use the term that the person or group uses." In this instance, the most commonly used name in reliable sources is "Riva Ariella Ritvo". Further, under Wikipedia's content policy on verifiability, "Self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, usually in articles about themselves or their activities, without the self-published source requirement that they be published experts in the field, so long as:

1. the material is neither unduly self-serving nor an exceptional claim;
2. it does not involve claims about third parties;
3. it does not involve claims about events not directly related to the source;
4. there is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity;
5. the article is not based primarily on such sources."

Because the bio in question is published on the Yale faculty site, it is not the equivalent of a Facebook self-published source, though clearly faculty provide the information that institutions publish. It meets the five criteria outlined in the verifiability content policy.

Finally, we need to use care when adding material about any living person to any article, in compliance with WP:ALIVE:

Biographies of living persons ("BLPs") must be written conservatively and with regard for the subject's privacy. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid: it is not Wikipedia's job to be sensationalist, or to be the primary vehicle for the spread of titillating claims about people's lives; the possibility of harm to living subjects must always be considered when exercising editorial judgment. This policy applies to any living person mentioned in a BLP, whether or not that person is the subject of the article, and to material about living persons in other articles and on other pages, including talk pages.

Cheers! —Grand'mere Eugene (talk) 10:50, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

@Grand'mere Eugene: Thank you very much for the thorough explanation. You're correct that the New York Times article is the only source that uses "Riva Golan Ritvo," but you'll see that "Riva Ritvo" was the name most commonly used when Max Ritvo was born. (Golan appears to just be her maiden name: https://www.californiabirthindex.org/birth/max_joseph_ritvo_born_1990_20205847.) "Riva Ritvo" is the name used on the Wikipedia page for Alan B. Slifka (in the list of spouses), and in Riva Ritvo's academic work before the 2000s, according to the CV linked in the Yale bio. I will leave it to you to adjudicate and make whatever change seems appropriate.

I am not sure how the conservatism/privacy policy applies to this particular discussion; this is just a debate about the credibility and recency of external sources in determining a person's name at the time of her son's birth. The New York Times article is indeed weird, but it does not infringe on a person's privacy to cite a New York Times article about them in a Wikipedia article.

Tarmaccaptain (talk) 15:59, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

@Tarmaccaptain: Thanks for your response. I've found only one source on Ancestry.com that lists her as "Riva G. Ritvo" in a City Directory, but every reliable source since 2010 that I have seen lists her as Riva Ariella Ritvo or Riva Ariella Ritvo-Slifka. Here are some sources that all use either Riva Ariella Ritvo or Ritvo-Slifka:

• Max Ritvo, Poet Who Chronicled His Cancer Fight, Dies at 25
• Inaugural Max Ritvo Poetry Series Celebrates Beloved Poet, Alum
• The Ritvo Autism Asperger Diagnostic Scale-Revised (RAADS-R): A Scale to Assist the Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder in Adults: An International Validation Study- and most of her other pubs list her as R.A. Ritvo, so if I had to guess, I would venture "Ariella" is her middle name, rather than a pseudonym.
• Fighting the fallout of childhood cancer

I included the WP BLP content policy on privacy for living people because you had stated "there is no record of Riva Ritvo using it before she was exposed", and frankly because that information is irrelevant to the biography of Max Ritvo. The article is about her son, and we have quite a few other reliable sources that give her name as "Riva Ariella Ritvo". Using the NYT wedding announcement and/or the correction is therefore unnecessary. Having good attorneys, the Wikimedia foundation takes very seriously any potentially defamatory references to living people, so your noting she had been "exposed"in the NYT piece led me to think you may not be aware of the policy. I apologize if I misinterpreted your comment. On the privacy issue, I disagree with your closing sentence above that "it does not infringe on a person's privacy to cite a New York Times article about them in a Wikipedia article". To the contrary, that's exactly what the policy covers if the information in the article can be perceived as potentially defamatory. Editors are to strive for a neutral encyclopedic tone, because "the possibility of harm to living subjects must always be considered when exercising editorial judgment", as the policy on privacy states.

Cheeers! —Grand'mere Eugene (talk) 23:34, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

@Grand'mere Eugene: Thank you for the further information. There's no dispute that the individual in question currently goes by the names "Riva Ariella Ritvo" and "Riva Ariella Ritvo-Slifka," and has gone by those names since 2004. My understanding of Wikipedia policy, however, is that it is proper to use the name of a person at the time of the event being described, in this case the birth of Max Ritvo. As I mentioned, official sources and sources published before the Times correction (the corrected article itself, the pre-2004 academic publications, and the Ancestry record you found) consistently do not use the name "Ariella"; sources published after it consistently do. This is why I've suggested that she went by the name "Riva Ritvo," occasionally using her maiden name "Golan," during the period in which Max Ritvo was born. It appears that—according to Wikipedia—she went by the name "Riva Ritvo-Slifka" during the time she was married to Alan B. Slifka. (She married him after Max Ritvo was born, so "Slifka" would not have been a part of her name then.) None of this information is in the least defamatory, or I assume the Wikimedia foundation's good attorneys would have scrubbed it from the other page long ago.

I remain puzzled that you consider it invasive or potentially defamatory to cite a newspaper article just because it happens to contain a correction that could be construed as unflattering. The article is the first result (for me, at least) when you Google any form of this person's name. Moreover, the correction was made by one of the world's most reliable journalistic organizations to protect its reputation for accuracy. (It is also one of the world's most legally prudent journalistic organizations!) There is nothing controversial, titillating, or even particularly interesting about this newspaper article in 2017. I used the word "exposed" in describing it because it was indeed an exposure at the time, and covered elsewhere in the press as such. There is, of course, no reason to include that event in Max Ritvo's Wikipedia page. But Max Ritvo's mother's name should be included in his Wikipedia page, and the article is useful to editors in determining it.

If a source needs to be cited for the earlier name, you have already named a few. One could easily cite any of the official or pre-2004 sources to support the claim that Max Ritvo's mother went by the name "Riva Ritvo" when he was born. Thank you again for examining this with me so patiently.

Tarmaccaptain (talk) 01:14, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

@Tarmaccaptain: I can appreciate your concern for adherence to the guideline on changed names. However, it's a style guideline of best practices for editors, and there are Wikipedia principles and policies that supercede that guideline. I recommend four explanatory pages to you: Five pillars, Core content policies, List of policies and Biographies of living persons (which applies to any living person mentioned in any Wikipedia article, and requires neutrality in materials presented).

Your argument, that we need to provide the name of Ritvo's mother at the time of his birth, requires synthesis of existing sources, prohibited by Wikipedia's core content policy of no original research. The "no original research" content policy says:

Wikipedia articles must not contain original research. The phrase "original research" (OR) is used on Wikipedia to refer to material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published sources exist.

Further, it says:

Wikipedia does not publish original thought. All material in Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable, published source. Articles must not contain any new analysis or synthesis that reaches or implies a conclusion not clearly stated in the published sources.

Part of the NOR policy deals with synthesis:

Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources. Similarly, do not combine different parts of one source to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by the source. If one reliable source says A, and another reliable source says B, do not join A and B together to imply a conclusion C that is not mentioned by either of the sources. This would be improper editorial synthesis of published material to imply a new conclusion, which is original research

.

We don't have a reliable source that explicitly states his mother's name at the time Ritvo was born, so we use the term that is most commonly used by reliable sources, which identify her as Riva Ariella Ritvo.

Cheers! —11:44, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

@Grand'mere Eugene: Thanks once again, though it seems to me that you may misapplying no original research, given the following two guidelines from What SYNTH is not.

1. "The under-the-microscope level of scrutiny often practiced now, which demands removal of a single clause until a source can be found that presents the material the same way, is more a result of creep than of well-thought-out policy." If I am understanding correctly, you are asking for "a source that presents the material the same way" when you say, "We don't have a reliable source that explicitly states his mother's name at the time Ritvo was born." The material in question is indeed a single word and not (in the guidelines' term) a whole "crackpot theory."
2. "The policy forbids 'synthesis of published material that advances a position' (emphasis added)." The claim that Max Ritvo was born to Riva Ritvo and not Riva Ariella Ritvo does not, so far as I can see, "advance a position" in any multiply-sided debate except this one. If you believe that it does, I would be grateful to know which position.

If we therefore dismiss the synthesis objection, I think the relevant guidelines are in fact the ones about pseudonyms and nicknames. Riva Ritvo's legal name is indisputably Riva Ritvo. That is how it is stated in four Los Angeles civil cases spanning from 1994 to 2016, which refer to her, respectively, as "Riva G. Ritvo" (1994), "Riva Ritvo" (1998), "Riva G. Ritvo" (2002), and "Riva Ritvo" (2016), and have the case numbers BC103651, BC189270, BD378199, and 16STPB05276. The "G." clearly refers to her maiden name, "Golan," for which I provided a source above. These cases are publicly available for free at the Los Angeles Superior Court website, where you can find them using the case numbers. I will add, since you raised the subject of defamation earlier, that the information provided by the court does not reflect in any way on Riva Ritvo's character. These appear to be humdrum civil cases; the fourth one, for example, is the probation of Max Ritvo's will.

For multiple additional reliable sources naming Riva Ritvo without "Ariella," you may search Google with the query "'riva ritvo' -ariella". You will find numerous reliable sources, including an obituary for Max Ritvo, a New York Times obituary for Alan Slifka, and an academic paper published six months after Max Ritvo's birth, not to mention the Wikipedia entry for Alan B. Slifka that I have noted in two of my previous comments.

As you observe, Riva Ritvo is currently known as "Riva Ariella Ritvo." The guidelines on pseudonyms and nicknames state: "For people who are best known by a pseudonym, the legal name should usually appear first in the article, followed closely by the pseudonym." I think the clearest way to express Max Ritvo's parentage in this article would be to exclude "Ariella" altogether, since it is the pseudonym or nickname of the mother of the subject of the article and is not referenced again in the text. (His mother would then be referred to as "Riva Ritvo." I don't think this needs a citation, on the precedent of the Alan B. Slifka page.) If you think "Ariella" should be mentioned, I can imagine a few concise ways to do so.

I did not expect this to become such a disputation and apologize that it has. Have we perhaps reached consensus on this point?

Tarmaccaptain (talk) 02:50, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

@Grand'mere Eugene: I see you've discussed this with Cullen328, who suggested removing the name "Ariella." What is the appropriate next step?

Let me also reiterate, as he did, that the court proceedings I referred to are not pejorative. (You described them as "4 lawsuits against" Riva Ritvo, but none of them are lawsuits against her; only two of them are lawsuits; and she is a plaintiff, not a defendant, in both of those.)

Tarmaccaptain (talk) 20:13, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

@Tarmaccaptain: I agree that using "Riva Ritvo" is one reasonable compromise. As Cullen328 mentioned, the court cases are original research, and not dispoistory. However, there are at least eight sources that reflect that name.

But there are more sources that give her name either as "Riva Ariella Ritvo" or "Riva Ariella Ritvo-Slifka".

I'd like to examine your assertion that "Riva Ariella Ritvo" is a pseudonym. It relies on a form of synthesis, i.e.: <IF> earlier legal references were to "Riva Ritvo" or "Riva G. Ritvo", <THEN> "Riva Ariella Ritvo" must be a pseudonym, and <THEREFORE> her use of the name "Ariella" is cause for skepticism, given the "exposure" in the NYT correction announcement about her educational credentials. A more neutral conclusion is that "Ariella" is her middle name.

Consider that her professional use of "Riva Ariella Ritvo" is documented in at least 13 sources between 2004-2017, in her publications, conference presentations, interviews. and in at least one of Edward Ritvo's books.

Following her marriage to Alan Slifka, there are at many references in independent secondary sources to "Riva Ariella Ritvo-Slifka", including the reference you noted in the Alan B. Slifka Wikipedia article, and in which the source for the inline citation uses "Riva Ariella" in the last paragraph. (This example illustrates the maxim that Wikipedia is not a reliable source.) I still think we should e use the name most commonly used by reliable sources, which identify her as Riva Ariella Ritvo or Riva Ariella Ritvo-Slifka. I'm inclined to move the listing of Max's family members to the end of his bio section, side-stepping the issue of verifying her her name at his birth. Could you agree to that compromise? Cheers! —Grand'mere Eugene (talk) 21:36, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

References

@Grand'mere Eugene: I am glad you agree that using "Riva Ritvo" is a reasonable compromise, and have edited the page accordingly. I noticed that you added further references to Max Ritvo's mother to the page, as "Riva Ariella Ritvo-Slifka," which could cause confusion (whether or not the first reference to her used "Ariella"). I therefore created an explanatory footnote and hitched it to "Riva Ritvo" and both uses of "Riva Ariella Ritvo-Slifka." Please refine it as you see fit. Thank you for your collaboration.

Tarmaccaptain (talk) 03:35, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Tarmaccaptain: I've simplified the text and removed the note, as three notes were distracting and unnecessary if the mother's most commonly used name is the only one used in the article. Also, I am unable to find a reliable secondary or third party source for the information about Louise Glück officiating at his wedding. Have you found any? Cheers! —Grand'mere Eugene (talk) 07:18, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Wedding officiant

(copied from above) Tarmaccaptain: I am unable to find a reliable secondary or third party source for the information about Louise Glück officiating at his wedding. Have you found any? Cheers! —Grand'mere Eugene (talk) 07:18, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

@Grand'mere Eugene: Moving this to a new section.

I don't see any reliable secondary or third party sources. I can find two primary sources that may be eligible for use.

The first is this video, which shows Louise Glück ("I am Louise Glück") officiating Ritvo's wedding ceremony ("I have experiencing at marrying—doing it, to be sure, but also officiating"). The criteria to apply would seem to be those from the policy on video links, which says:

Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. This prevents editors from engaging in original research. A primary source may only be used to make descriptive statements that can be verified by any educated person without specialist knowledge. Editors should not use a video as a citation to present their own interpretation of its content. If the material in a video only available on YouTube includes content not previously produced or discussed in other reliable sources, then that material may be undue and inappropriate for Wikipedia.

The video does not require specialist knowledge to interpret. Depending on whether the second source I found counts as reliable, the video may include "content not previously produced or discussed in other reliable sources." If so, its use would be a question of appropriate weight.

The second source is Ritvo's book, Four Reincarnations, which says, in its acknowledgements section (p. 75): "I thank Louise Glück, who gave me my voice. ... [W]hile I have so many brilliant notes in your hand in my margins, my very favorite is your signature at the bottom of my wedding certificate." The criteria in this case would seem to be those you cited in the previous discussion on verifiability: "Self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, usually in articles about themselves or their activities, without the self-published source requirement that they be published experts in the field, so long as:

1. the material is neither unduly self-serving nor an exceptional claim;
2. it does not involve claims about third parties;
3. it does not involve claims about events not directly related to the source;
4. there is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity;
5. the article is not based primarily on such sources."

Perhaps either of these sources is sufficient on its own, or they're sufficient together, or they're not sufficient.

Tarmaccaptain (talk) 21:18, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

I like the idea of using Ritvo's acknowledgment of Louise Glück, with the rest of the quote as part of the footnote. It's a classy addition, in his own words. I added it just now. Cheers!—Grand'mere Eugene (talk) 00:07, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

@Grand'mere Eugene: I also really like including that quote. I fear, though, that it may disrupt the flow of ideas in that spot. I added a reference to Glück's mentorship of Ritvo at Yale (mentioned in the Times obituary), rephrased the wedding section, and moved the whole quote into the citation.

There is a lot of lovely material about Ritvo's relationship with mentors in teachers in the interviews he gave towards the end of his life; I wonder if there is somewhere to put some of it.

Tarmaccaptain (talk) 03:07, 5 November 2017 (UTC)