[WikiEN-l] Are phone books reliable sources?

[Ray Saintonge]

Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>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".
>
While I acknowledge that most phone book information has very limited 
value, but it is easy to imagine situations where that would not be the 
case.

Ec