On 02/05/07, Gwern Branwen <gwern0(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Absolutely. I think we've all worked on at least
one such article;
purely off the top of my head I can remember [[Guillermo
Hernández-Cartaya]]. I wanted to use the DOJ's biographical
information to put his death sometime in the '90s, but that didn't
seem kosher at the time.
For historical figures, we usually don't see a problem with "1765 -
c.1830" and a note in the body of the text explaining that whilst it
isn't known when they died, X source notes them as still living in
this year but they were dead before Y source was published in that
year.
(Yeah, original research, novel synthesis, I know. Sort of maybe; the
example I recall is an elderly officer who I concluded died before
1820 because otherwise he'd have been in a comprehensive biographical
work published that year. Is it inference to take "I have listed every
living..." to conclude that someone listed is no longer living? But I
digress)
Somehow it seems a little more dubious to do this for someone who may
or may not be dead. I think we need to weigh the conflicting issues of
"does it matter?" vs. "how stupid are we going to look if they write
and complain?"
As for someone arguing that "we think they're dead therefore BLP rules
don't apply", hit them with a damn big stick, that's just being silly.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk