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

[Ray Saintonge]

Will Beback wrote:

>Matthew Brown wrote:
>  
>
>> 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.
>
Better still:  Use common sense, and avoid yet another stupid rule that 
some idiot can take literally.

Ec