Most replicated databases provide at least eventual consistency, which means that if you stop writing to the database and wait for some unspecified length of time, then eventually all read requests will return the same value [1]. In other words, the inconsistency is temporary, and it eventually resolves itself (assuming that any faults in the network are also eventually repaired). A better name for eventual consistency may be convergence, as we expect all replicas to eventually converge to the same value [2].
