[WikiEN-l] Are phone books reliable sources?

[Anthony DiPierro]

On 5/26/06, Delirium <delirium at 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".

Anthony