jayjg wrote:
Right, we can all come up with some extreme example of an absolute madman editing some page. At some point common sense has to prevail, if not the "extreme minority" provisions of [[WP:NPOV]]. But, to get back to the original point, there's no way that a claim that something is "legal consensus" based on a search of some database you've done can ever be considered a "simple fact", or even something that has been "reliably cited". Quote a legal expert or legal tome making that claim.
Yes, I agree this discussion has diverged quite a bit from the original topic. Certainly *I* never tried to make the claim that "I could not find a contrary opinion in a legal database" could reasonably be taken to imply a "legal consensus" without engaging in original research.
My point earlier in this thread was that, in my view, not all databases are equal, and that specifically, at least for some libraries, the claim that "no book with this ISBN is listed in the catalog" is not only in itself a meaningful and verifiable fact, but in *some* cases *might* even be taken as reasonable evidence that the book is not, at least officially[1], to be found at the library in question.
In the particular message you replied to, my point was simply that any policy that assumes that "no reasonable person will" can only work in the long run if there is some way to deal with the eventual appearance of an unreasonable person.
([1] It is, of course, possible that the book is, in fact, to be found in the shelves because someone put it there while nobody was looking; this may seem unlikely, but stranger things have happened, such as people sneaking paintings into a museum. Whether that really counts as it being part of the library's collection, at least until it is discovered, is of course debatable, as is the (more common) case of whether a book that has been stolen from the library should be counted. In any case, phrasing the citation such that it only makes claims about the official catalog should render such concerns irrelevant.)