Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 5/30/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
If among all those Ngs there is only one Egg Foo Ng it might still be useful there.
I don't see how. Just because there is only Egg Foo Ng in the phone book still doesn't mean that there is only one Egg Foo Ng in the area served by that phone book. I just don't see how such information can be useful, especially considering how easy it is to put false information into a phone book (in my experience there is generally no verification of the names at all).
People can indeed put false information into phone books, and into many other publications. Most don't. Assume good faith is as important for reading phone books as for reading Wikipedia edits. It also happens that widows leave the phone listing in their husband's name long after his death. The average person wants the phone book information to be correct. That's how people find him. The value of a phone book when used as a sole source of information is limited, but it can be very helpful when used in conjunction with other references. It is poor research to prejudicially dismiss any source.
And we haven't even mentioned the usefulness of the yellow pages in establishing the existence of a business over a time frame.
It's even easier to put false information into the yellow pages section.
So? That doesn't mean that every entry has false information.
Ec