[WikiEN-l] Looking up death dates in government death records: original research?

[Ilmari Karonen]

Will Beback wrote:
> Matthew Brown wrote:
>> 1) ...
>>  Is it enough to simply match name, approximate age, and state of
>> residence in death records to prove someone is dead for BLP concerns?
>>
>> 2) Are such lookups in SSDI legitimate sourcing for articles, or are
>> they original research?  
> 
> Under special circumstances (highly unusual names, extremely advanced 
> ages, very small states) the information may be presumed correct. Under 
> normal circumstances it's impossible to be sure that one has the right 
> entry. My opinion is that the guideline should be to exclude raw primary 
> source material like the SSDI but that editors could plead a special 
> case, as with any guideline.

And my opinion is that the guideline should say the same thing as common 
sense, without any mention of red herrings like "raw primary sources": 
if the source, of whatever kind, clearly says something (and is 
otherwise regarded as reliable), go ahead and use it -- but don't go 
leaping into inferences that might be wrong.

Deciding when something is clear and when it isn't must be made on a 
case by case basis, using common sense.  But then, this is a decision 
one must always make, when deciding whether a particular source is 
really talking about the same thing as the article you'd like to cite it 
in.  The issue is by no means limited to names (though they're a common 
source of confusion), nor to databases or even primary sources in general.

-- 
Ilmari Karonen