I'm new here, and I apologize in advance if this has been previously covered.
Browsing the QT forums, I've seen a couple of posts about bad agents that say something like, "I checked them out on Preditors & Editors, and they seemed okay, or there wasn't any information on them."
I suspect that a lot of P&E is badly out of date, and should be used cautiously for that reason.
I have no way of checking their agent listings, but here's something I do know about: Quintamid. Quintamid is a database of SFF short fiction markets. About ten years old. It was great when it started. It's still on the web, but hasn't been updated since 2005. It includes markets that have vanished, doesn't include important new markets that have appeared, and its information for existing markets is often wrong.
P&E's evaluation of Quintamid: Highly recommended. "A service to the Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Communities."
This is completely wrong. (I've sent P&E a heads up, but I can't believe no one else did that in almost a decade.)
P&E's founder died last year, and I wonder whether he neglected P&E for a long time on account of declining health. It's now under new management, by a respected guy, Andrew Burt, and I hope he'll bring it up to its old quality. In the meantime, though, be cautious when using P&E.
Edit: fixed misspelling
