Talk:G. L. DiVittorio

Notability and sources

I believe that this article satisfies notability requirements and is adequately sourced, so I have removed the 'multiple issues' tag. DiVittorio is notable in at least three distinct ways: a viral video that was covered by at least two independent news sources; her web series with more than 150 episodes, hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, and more than 6 million likes on TikTok; and her advocacy for cancelling student debt, including the #PensForBiden letter-writing campaign that was covered in The New York Times, and a television appearance on MSNBC where she was interviewed as a prominent member of the student debt cancellation movement. Most of the supporting sources are secondary, with the exception of some tweets and social media accounts. The tweets are primary sources that demonstrate that DiVittorio created the #PensForBiden campaign, and the accounts demonstrate the number of followers and views she has on social media. --CanadianJudoka (talk) 15:06, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Feedback from New Page Review process

I left the following feedback for the creator/future reviewers while reviewing this article: This subject appears to be notable for a WP:SINGLEEVENT (the viral video in 2019), and more sources may be required to show that they are notable beyond that. There are attempts to show notability in the article, but Gina does not appear to be named in many of them..

Pyrrho the Skipper (talk) 19:43, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

It is true that DiVittorio is not explicitly named in some sources cited in the article, but all of the information I have included is carefully research and corroborated. For example, while the Washington Post article does not name her in the text, a screen shot featuring her from an episode of The Pocket Report is part of the article's open graph image for social media (this is documented in what is currently note 8), which is equivalent to naming DiVitorrio/The Pocket Report, and three further references documenting her participation in the White House event are provided following that. This is corroboration, not implication, and there is no reasonable doubt that she was a participant in this highly public event. She is also a prominent member of the movement to cancel student loans in the United States, and appeared as a commentator on a national television broadcast in this capacity, as is also documented in the article.

CanadianJudoka (talk) 20:13, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

@CanadianJudokaYou should not have removed the tags before engaging in this discussion. The additional sources for the white house appearance appear to be primary, as in a TikTok video, and an apparent Tweet which was deleted. We can't just take their word, or your word for it that this person was at the White House call, can we? I'm going to restore the tags. Pyrrho the Skipper (talk) 23:52, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

The social graph image is clear secondary-source evidence that DiVittorio participated in the event (the image link is embedded in the Washington Post article, and you can view the image itself here), and the primary sources further corroborate it. This is consistent with Wikipedia's sourcing guidelines and an example of how multiple types of sources can be used to strengthen the evidence for a fact. You ignored this and the student loan forgiveness advocacy (including a national television appearance) again, and instead focused on a single deleted tweet and condescended to me. If you want to discuss this, then please address these issues in a substantive manner. However, your sole focus on the dating video and reference to DiVittorio as "Gina" suggests that you may have a bias regarding this article (for an accessible overview of the gender bias associated with referring to women by their first name, see "Why referring to women by their first names and men by their surname is a form of gender discrimination"), and I expect that we will have to take this to another forum to be resolved. CanadianJudoka (talk) 01:03, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Disagreement and assumption of bad faith

@Pyrrho the Skipper and Firefangledfeathers:

Pyrrho the Skipper and Firefangledfeathers have assumed that I am editing in bad faith and am engaged in promotional activity that violates Wikipedia’s guidelines (more than half of Firefangledfeathers's edit summaries focus on what they call the ‘promotional’ character of the text they have removed). To be clear, I do not have any relationship with DiVittorio, and I created and developed this article because I genuinely believe that she meets Wikipedia’s notability criteria and that the information I added to the article demonstrates this. Furthermore, I think that their assumption of bad faith has led to a too-shallow assessment of the article that is difficult to support and intended to be punitive. I will address the reasons for this below, but first I want to provide some context.

I have been a editor for about 10 years, and the majority of my off-and-on edits have focused on the subject of judo in Canada; it’s an occasional hobby. I sometimes make edits to and create other types of articles, and decided to create and develop a few articles related to political activism on social media this summer.

I have been following The Pocket Report on Twitter for about a year, and something that was posted in July led me to look into it in more detail. I was surprised to see that there wasn’t a Wikipedia article on something so popular. After further research it became clear that while there isn’t yet enough secondary-source coverage on the web series to warrant an article, its creator Gina DiVittorio is notable in several different ways. They are as follows, in chronological order:

1. Creating a viral video about the dating app Hinge
2. Creating The Pocket Report, a popular web series that has more than 150 episodes
3. Participating in an invitational White House briefing for 30 prominent TikTok content creators
4. Starting the prominent #PensForBiden letter-writing campaign
5. Being cited in an academic article as an exemplar of a particular type of activity on Twitter

Pyrrho the Skipper claims that there is only evidence of #1, and Firefangledfeathers has removed everything from the article except bare reference to #1 and #5. I will address all five bases of notability in turn.

1. Neither Pyrrho the Skipper nor Firefangledfeathers contest that the viral video makes DiVittorio notable, but Firefangledfeathers removed a full paragraph on DiVittorio subsequently being hired by Hinge to star in a web series that was nominated for an award, with the following edit summary: “rmv some more promo; particularly misleading as Hinge's producer was nominated for her collection of various series, only one of which was DiVittorio's; aside from an uncredited snippet in their nomination video, and DiVittorio's own claims, no source connects her to this nomination”.

   There is nothing misleading about the paragraph that was removed. DiVittorio was hired by Hinge, did star in the web series, and that web series was nominated for an award, all of which was demonstrated by the citations. There are no further claims, and it seems that the entire reason for removing it is that Firefangledfeathers believes that it is ‘promotional’, rather than just further information related to the viral video.

2. Firefangledfeathers has removed all information about The Pocket Report other than reference to its existence. This was done in edits removing information related to #2, #3, and #4. The first such edit, with the summary “trim some promo, closer to source”, removes the line “with over 150 episodes focused on American politics and society that she writes, performs, and edits.”

   This information seems important to establishing The Pocket Report as a notable activity. The number of episodes matters because a web series with over 150 episodes is different from one with, say, just 15. Furthermore, the fact that The Pocket Report is solely produced by DiVittorio matters because a series produced by a team of people would be less significant to her biography. Again, it seems that this information was removed due to the assumption of bad faith, without consideration for its purpose.

3. Firefangledfeathers has removed all reference to the widely publicized White House briefing, and both Pyrrho the Skipper and Firefangledfeathers have claimed that there is no evidence that DiVittorio participated. Firefangledfeathers edit summary is “rmv more promo, the mentionless WaPo source lends no weight to this otherwise solely primary-sourced content”.

   The Washington Post article in question is one of the first sources I thought of when I decided to create the DiVittorio article, because I remembered seeing it a few months earlier and a screen shot from The Pocket Report had been used as an illustration. When I reviewed the article again, I was surprised that neither DiVittorio nor The Pocket Report were mentioned in the text, and instead of a still image illustration there was an embedded TikTok video at the top. After a little investigation, I realized that the screenshot I remembered was part of the article's open graph image for social media (the image link is embedded in the source code of the Washington Post article, and you can view the image itself here). While this is less straightforward evidence than inclusion in the text, it is part of the article and its use by the Washington Post unambiguously associates DiVittorio with the briefing. Furthermore, due to the fact that most news articles now receive the majority of their distribution through social media, this image is likely the most common way that the article has been visually represented to people who have read it. To further corroborate DiVittorio’s participation I checked her social media accounts around the date and included links to posts that address her participation. I also included an explanation of how the social graph image establishes DiVittorio’s participation in the footnote that cites the article, but both Pyrrho the Skipper and Firefangledfeathers ignored this and instead claimed that the social media links are the sole source rather than corroborating evidence to support the article.

4. Firefangledfeathers has removed all reference to DiVittorio’s prominent involvement in the movement to cancel student loan debt in the United States, including both the #PensForBiden letter-writing campaign that she started through The Pocket Report, and her participation in a national television panel discussion on MSNBC. Firefangledfeathers’s edit summary for this removal is “NYT source doesn't mention her, MSNBC clip only verifies that she is a ‘political writer’, already mentioned above; rest of the sources are self-published and promotional”.

   It is true that the New York Times article does not name DiVittorio, but its sole reference for the #PensForBiden campaign is a link to a quote-tweet of the episode of The Pocket Report that introduced the campaign, and that reference is part of the article. I included a citation of the tweet as corroborating evidence, but should have explained its relevance in the previous footnote. The two tweets from The Pocket Report itself that were cited are the episodes in which the campaign was introduced, meant to further support the interpretation of the NYT article, not as ‘promotion’. The MSNBC clip does indeed verify that DiVittorio is a political writer, but it is also further evidence that she is a prominent member of the campaign to cancel student loan debt, which all of the information in that paragraph is meant to establish as notable.

5. Firefangledfeathers changed the word 'exemplar' to 'example', claiming that it is "more neutral wording".

   This is an incorrect substitution because the tweet is indeed cited as an exemplar, meaning a prominent model example in the article's typology of affect, not just an example. I am happy to provide anyone concerned with a copy of the paywalled article in question to verify this if they do not have access. They also removed the word 'viral' here, which I would be happy to accept if someone can point me to an objective measure for whether a tweet is viral or not (this one has 263.8K likes and 49.2K retweets).

Firefangledfeathers also removed all reference to DiVittorio’s social media followers with the edit summary "don't need to tout the social media numbers in prose like this", and replaced the prose with a TikTok count box within the article info box. The point of including these numbers was to further demonstrate DiVittorio’s public prominence (more than 568,000 followers across all accounts), not to 'tout' anything, and replacing this with the follower count for just one account seems intended to diminish this aspect of DiVittorio’s public presence and reduce it to TikTok alone.

Finally, in an edit summarized as “reword first few sentences to avoid the troublesome, unsourced ‘best known for’ phrasing. Shuffling refs to improve text–source integrity”, Firefangledfeathers removed the phrase ‘best known for’. This is the strangest claim Firefangledfeathers makes, since the MOS guidelines require establishing what the subject of the article is best known for, and the only reason I can think of that they would have a problem with this is an objection to the idea that DiVittorio is ‘known’ for anything. Their alternative prose seems intended to diminish the subject of the article.

I do not have a personal stake in this article other than the few hours I put into researching and writing it and a desire to see all topics treated fairly on Wikipedia. I am happy to accept a broad, well-reasoned, and good-faith consensus on what can and cannot be included, but Pyrrho the Skipper and Firefangledfeathers’s assessments are too-shallow and suggest that they may be biased. They are shallow because they ignore the things that I have just outlined above. They suggest bias because of Pyrrho the Skipper’s sole focus on the dating video and reference to DiVittorio as "Gina" (for an accessible overview of the gender bias associated with referring to women by their first name, see "Why referring to women by their first names and men by their surname is a form of gender discrimination"), and Firefangledfeathers has assumed that this is a promotional article and seems to be trying to make some kind of point with their edits. These problems fit a pattern I have observed with the way that some editors treat articles that address the intersection of politics and social media, especially regarding TikTok.

I acknowledge that I should not have removed the tags that Pyrrho the Skipper added before they had a chance to respond to my comments on the talk page. I will leave Firefangledfeathers’s edits as they are for now, but Firefangledfeathers should either address the points that I have made above or revert the related edits themselves. I hope that other editors will also share their thoughts.

--CanadianJudoka (talk) 18:51, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi CanadianJudoka. I haven't assumed bad faith on your part; I don't know who you are. You seem to have assumed some bad faith on my part. Happy to talk through the edits. When I say "promo", I do not suggest that the author of the text intended to promote anyone, just that the language and tone is overly promotional. Our goal should be to document what reliable, secondary sources say about DiVittorio. Occasionally supplementing uncontentious self-sourced material is fine, but primary/non-independent sources can't be the foundation of the article.

Having said all that, I've only skimmed the lengthy post above. Could we perhaps take it one item at a time? Which content do you feel most deserves to be reinstated, based on the weight afforded to it by reliable, secondary sources? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 19:44, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

As you will see when you read the post, I have already taken the time to address each of your major edits separately. It is lengthy because I had well-thought-out reasons for all of the information that I included in the article, and you removed everything except two modified sentences. I don't mind waiting for you to take the time to read and respond to it. CanadianJudoka (talk) 21:36, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

I feel pretty good about my removals, but other interested editors might side with you. I encourage you to articulate your points in a way that is more amenable to newcomers to the conversation. Maybe potentially interested editors will check in soon after reading the WP:BLPN posts. You might also want to comment there and solicit more voices. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 21:57, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

@CanadianJudoka I apologize if my comments have come off as condescending, that is not my intention, and I don't believe you're acting in bad faith. While I agree that bias is a recurring problem on Wikipedia, I don't believe that was affecting my analysis of the article. For what it's worth, I am glad you've called the first-name bias concept to my attention, as I wasn't aware of it. I sometimes refer to subjects by their first name regardless of gender, so I don't believe my use of her first name is due to bias. I agree with Firefangledfeathers that the next step might be more noticeboard discussion, or an RfC about a particular point of contention, one at a time, since there is already a third opinion involved. This Talk Page may not be visible enough to attract more independent voices to the discussion. Pyrrho the Skipper (talk) 22:11, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Sorry for my late reply, I've had a busy week.

@Firefangledfeathers: I will do a RfC, because I've given good reasons to accept the interpretation of the sources that I have provided, but those reasons are unfamiliar to some editors and deserve wider awareness and discussion. In the meantime, though, I think that you should at least do me the courtesy of addressing points 3 & 4 above, which clearly explain my reasoning for using the Washington Post and New York Times articles as anchors for the White House briefing and student loan activism paragraphs. You can't claim that you're acting in good faith if you won't even do that. "I feel pretty good about my removals" isn't an adequate justification of your edits against the explanations I have provided.

Also, regarding your most recent edit to the article, I know that DiVittorio does often style herself 'G.L. DiVittorio' (that's her current Twitter handle), and the MSNBC reference that you removed credits her this way. The people who made the name change said that she requested it. I don't see the request in any of her public accounts, so maybe they're friends of hers (IP accounts with single or only a few edits). I don't see any problem with moving the page, or an reason to doubt that it is the subject's preference.

@Pyrrho the Skipper: Glad to hear that you will take the first name issue seriously. And as I said above, I will do an RfC, but I would appreciate it of you could also address at least points 3 & 4 above. If you still do not think that the Washington Post and New York Times articles and associated information should be included after reading my explanations, I would like to know why.

CanadianJudoka (talk) 22:37, 15 October 2022 (UTC)

For both 3 and 4, the appropriate weight for inclusion is zero. As a tertiary source, our role is to cover what the secondary sources are covering. No reliable, secondary sources are affording any weight to DiVittorio's White House zoom call or her role in the #PensForBiden campaign. The latter, in particular, seems like a major miss from the NYT and others. It happens!

If you decide you'd like to start an RfC, I encourage you to read or re-read WP:RFCBRIEF for guidance on crafting the opening statement, and please pick one issue to start with. If you'd like to workshop the opener here first (one of the suggestions in the info page), I'm down, though I'd definitely rather not have an RfC. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 01:53, 16 October 2022 (UTC)