The reading
Communal online encyclopedias represent one of the latest resources to be found on the Internet. They are in many respects like traditional printed encyclopedias collections of articles on various subjects. What is specific to these online encyclopedias, however, is that any Internet user can contribute a new article or make an editorial change in an existing one. As a result, the encyclopedia is authored by the whole community of Internet users. The idea might sound attractive, but the communal online encyclopedias have several important problems that make them much less valuable than traditional, printed encyclopedias.
First, contributors to a communal online encyclopedia often lack academic credentials, thereby making their contributions partially informed at best and downright inaccurate in many cases. Traditional encyclopedias are written by trained experts who adhere to standards of academic rigor that nonspecialists cannot really achieve.
Second, even if the original entry in the online encyclopedia is correct, the communal nature of these online encyclopedias gives unscrupulous users and vandals or hackers the opportunity to fabricate, delete, and corrupt information in the encyclopedia. Once changes have been made to the original text, an unsuspecting user cannot tell the entry has been tampered with. None of this is possible with a traditional encyclopedia.
Third, the communal encyclopedias focus too frequently, and in too great a depth, on trivial and popular topics, which creates a false impression of what is important and what is not. A child doing research for a school project may discover that a major historical event receives as much attention in anonline encyclopedia as, say, a single long-running television program. The traditional encyclopedia provides a considered view of what topics to include or exclude and contains a sense of proportion that online “democratic” communal encyclopedias do not.
The lecture
drive.google.com/open?id=0B1PjU … EZkbll0dWM
My essay
The reading and the lecture provide a heated debate surrounding the Online Encyclopedia. While the reading states several hazardous disadvantages of the Online Encyclopedia, the lecture disagrees with that perspective, stating several benefits of the Online Encyclopedia, which are believed to outweigh its disadvantages.
First of all, the reading manifests that the online encyclopedia has an inadequacy of trust-worthiness. In fact, any one can contribute there piece of work to the encyclopedia, whether they are complete novice or professional experts. Moreover, it is well-known that experts who are leading in their disciplines always write that traditional encyclopedia. Therefore, it is incontrovertible that the traditional encyclopedia prevails its online competitor in academic terms. However, the lecture opposes this viewpoint, saying that no encyclopedia is perfect whether they are online versions or offline ones. However, taking into account the easiness in modification of online versions, it is believed that the online encyclopedia is better than the traditional one. As a matter of fact, the errors in the traditional encyclopedia remain for decades before they are fixed and accurately modified. Therefore, the lecture rebuts the argument of the reading.
Secondly, the reading asserts that the online encyclopedia cannot immune to the threat of online hackers. In fact, there are an abundance of opportunities for online hackers to get access to the piece of work and make malicious modification to the original information. However, this disadvantage of the online encyclopedia cannot be seen in the traditional one. The lecture, on the other hand, casts doubt on this viewpoint and saying that protective measures have been underway since these threats rose. There two primary course of actions that have been taken. The first of which is the " Read only format". The use of this format enables audience to view and get access to the information but not gives them a chance to make any modification. The second solutions which has been executed is the organization of specialized editors. As a matter of fact, these people have the power to decide whether these changes in the information are proper or not. This is the place where the lecture puts the reading under rigorous scrutiny.
Last but not least, the reading indicates that the online encyclopedia focuses its attention solely on popular or trendy subjects. As a result, this may falsify the impression of the public to the seriousness of a course of event. For example, when a child carries out research for his school subject, he may get the assumption that the popularity of a historical event equals to a long television series. This example confirms the reading hypothesis that the online encyclopedia cannot replace the traditional ones, which successfully exclude any course of insignificant events. Nevertheless, the lecture, challenges this point and cites that the availability of space accounts for this tremendous difference. In fact, in fact, the traditional encyclopedia always comes across the issue of inadequacy of paper space. Therefore, it has to adapt to the situation by the means of excluding some events. However, the online encyclopedia has an unlimited source of space. Therefore, it can bring in a variety of topics, which greatly reflects the public attention. The lecture once again refutes to the argument of the reading.
TOEFL listening discussions: A conversation between a student and his counselor