[WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR (contd) (Ray Saintonge)

[Ray Saintonge]

jayjg wrote:

>On 12/22/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>>From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
>>>
>>>Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>I don't see what that can't be broadened just a bit. For example,
>>>>let's suppose a library has an online catalog... let's say an online
>>>>catalog that's accessible to anyone. (Two that come to mind are the
>>>>Cornell University Library, and the 16,000-volume public library of
>>>>Bergen-op-Zoom in the Netherlands... well actually it seems to be
>>>>offline but it was available a few years ago).
>>>>
>>>>You can't prove a negative, but you can certainly say "his book is
>>>>not in the Cornell University Library" or whatever, and cite a link
>>>>to the search or a description of how to do the search. This doesn't
>>>>seem very different to me from a citation.
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>More precisely you can say that you could not find the book listed in
>>>the Cornell University Library Catalog.  It's not the same even though
>>>the correlation between the two statements will be strong.
>>>      
>>>
>>Yes, I stand corrected. Quite right. Or even "the book was not found
>>in an online search of the Cornell University Library Catalog." If
>>the citation gives the details of the search, that gives the
>>opportunity for someone else to check and point out that the search
>>succeeds if you spell the title differently. Not at all impossible.
>>    
>>
>No, the accurate statement is "This specific online search by Daniel
>P.B. Smith on this specific date did not return any results". And, of
>course, there's no guarantee that 1 minute after Daniel P.B. Smith
>does his search, the book will not be acquired, or entered into the
>catalog, or re-indexed properly because it had been improperly entered
>before, or...
>
Such tortuous prose is unnecesarry.  The library search results are 
still secondary information with only indirect bearing on the subject of 
the article.  If the work is added to the catalog one minute later, and 
someone's verification efforts reveals this we will all be happy.  This 
still doesn't help us if two minutes later the book is ripped off.  The 
information is verifiable to the extent that someone else can run the 
search independently.

>Once one is forced to make an *accurate* (non original research)
>statement, it starts looking ridiculous, and rightly so.
>
No original research is about being verifiable, not about being accurate.