[WikiEN-l] Are phone books reliable sources?

[Steve Bennett]

On 5/30/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> You extrapolated the frequency of the name "Ng" in the Melbourne
> directory as an argument to prove the much broader hypothesis that phone
> books are not valid sources.  That name was the straw man.  Choosing a
> much rarer name may have resulted in the quite different conclusion that
> a phone book is _sometimes_ a valid source.  If among all those Ngs
> there is only one Egg Foo Ng it might still be useful there.  And we
> haven't even mentioned the usefulness of the yellow pages in
> establishing the existence of a business over a time frame.

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.

Steve