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

[Rob]

On 5/1/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 5/1/07, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The real point should be if you have to rely on the Social Security
> > Death Index to tell you if someone is even alive or dead, you might
> > want to consider that you don't have enough reliable sources for an
> > article on that person.
>
> I could imagine lots of situations where a person's life was closely
> followed during a certain period, and then the person dropped into
> obscurity, to the point where no one in the media even noticed his/her
> death.

True, there shouldn't be a rule prohibiting articles about people
whose death can't be verified for this very reason.  But it is a
strong factor when considering whether or not to have an article at
all.  There are people who fall into obscurity, then there are people,
like the subject of the article in question, who have dwelt in
obscurity their entire life.

> > This article, and most of the other
> > Venona-cruft, should be deleted as there is almost no historical
> > context or solid biographical info for any of them, they are just
> > noting a mention in decryption XY4J7 and leaving it at that.
>
> I agree emphatically with this, though I personally wouldn't have a
> problem with a merge and redirect to [[List of Americans in the Venona
> papers]].

Absolutely, a redirect would be fine for people on the list.