It is
completely unacceptable, in my view, to add caveats to cited
references as you did, stating "Attempts to verify Bard's attribution
to the UN Mediator's report have so far failed
(
http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/ab14d4aaf…
or as Bjorn did ("Attempts to verify Bard's attribution to the UN
Mediator's report have so far failed: see Talk:Estimates of the
Palestinian Refugee flight of 1948."), simply because you are
unwilling or unable to expend the necessary energy to look up the
primary sources. Moreover, telling people to refer to Talk: pages is
bad form, particulary (but not exclusively) because Talk: pages change
all the time, and are often archived.
If I see a reference in an encyclopedia I expect it to have been verified
by the author of the article, or else the author should state if he has
attempted to verify it and been unsuccessful. This is important
information about the quality of the citation and must not be omitted.