I would be interested to see how a phonebook would be used as a source.

The surname "Ng" is one of the most common in Melbourne, spanning 47 pages of the 2006 phone book... Steve On 5/29/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist(a)googlemail.com> wrote: > I would be interested to see how a phonebook would be used as a source. >

The surname "Ng" is one of the most common in Melbourne, spanning 47 pages of the 2006 phone book... Steve On 5/29/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist(a)googlemail.com> wrote: >I would be interested to see how a phonebook would be used as a source. > >On 5/29/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: > > >>Anthony DiPierro wrote: >> >> >>>On 5/26/06, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote: >>> >>> >>>>When we choose to publish facts on private people >>>>versus public people, for example, is a judgment call about how >>>>"notable" they are---not anything to do with verifiability, as many >>>>private/non-notable people have information about them verifiable from >>>>e.g. phone books. >>>> >>>> >>>Actually, I'd dispute that a phone book is a reliable source. It's >>>pretty easy to get fake information into a phone book. Also I'd say >>>there usually isn't enough information in a phone book to uniquely >>>identify a person anyway. >>> >>>I'd go so far as to say phone books are completely excludable as >>>Wikipedia sources, regardless of whether the information is on a >>>public or private person, famous or average, "notable" or >>>"non-notable". >>> >>> >>While I acknowledge that most phone book information has very limited >>value, it is easy to imagine situations where that would not be the >>case. >>

On 5/30/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: What did I do to deserve having the word "straw man" thrown at me?

On 5/30/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: I did what? I was asked for an example of a phone book being a reliable source for a claim. I gave one. Now you're just being nasty.

On 5/31/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: I really take exception to the phrase "straw man".

Original request: My reply: What "I now claim": ???

On 5/30/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: 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).

It's even easier to put false information into the yellow pages section.

No, it doesn't. However, it does mean that a phone book isn't a *reliable* source.

I essentially agree. Some people still argue that Wikipedia itself is not a reliable source. On the other hand "Scientific American" for this month used [[Sudoku]] as a reference in an article on the same subject.

Diferent sources will have different levels of reliability for different types of information. It's ultimately up to the user to exercise critical thinking in making such evaluations, not us.

On 6/2/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote: If you're checking the source "further upstream", you should be citing the original source, not the encyclopedia article.

This all depends on how rigidly you look at the term "source". Scientific American does not typically have a lot of footnotes, but it does give opportunities such as this for further exploration. Are you saying that this makes the magazine less credible?

On 6/4/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: Scientific American generally gives far more references than most other science magazines I can think of (Discover is generally on or below SA's par, and Science News is definitely way below)

On 6/2/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: You should cite both.

On 6/3/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: I realised after I sent this that I had misread. If you're checking the source, then you're right, you probably don't need to cite Wikipedia, though it may be polite to do so.

On 6/2/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: Wikipedia *isn't* a reliable source. I certainly don't think it should be used as a reference in another encyclopedia article. Unless Scientific American was using the Wikipedia article for a trivial piece of information which is already obvious, I think they made a big mistake. Even Jimbo has said that Wikipedia shouldn't be used, for instance, as a reference in an academic paper.

Anthony DiPierro wrote: That conclusion is not logical..If you are going to be imposing such strict criteria on one kinde of publication you should be applying these criteria to them all. Very few publications would pass your test of reliability. Ec

Steve Bennett wrote: >The surname "Ng" is one of the most common in Melbourne, spanning 47 >pages of the 2006 phone book...

That's a great example of a non sequitur. It's usefulness won't be established by choosing one of the most common names as a straw man. Once you've established that a person lived at a particular address his continuing appearance in the phone books for a 15 year period is evidence that he may have lived there for that 15 years. Whether any information source will be useful depends on what we are trying to do with it. Why dismiss it prematurely?

On 5/30/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: Because you have no way of knowing whether the phone book is up-to-date. Even if the celebrity in question doesn't have a secret phone number, the encyclopedic merit of including phone book information is pretty much non-existent.