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 non-specialists 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 an online 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.
Lecture notes
Professor:
The communal online encyclopedia will probably never be perfect, but that's a small price to pay for what it does offer. The criticisms in the reading are largely the result of prejudice against and ignorance about how far online encyclopedias have come.
First, errors. It's hardly a fair criticism that encyclopedias online have errors. Traditional encyclopedias have never been close to perfectly accurate, if you are looking for a realty comprehensive reference work without any mistakes, you are not going to find it, on or off line. The real point is that it's easy for errors in factual material to be corrected in an online encyclopedia. But with the printed and bound encyclopedia, the errors remain for decades.
Second, hacking. Online encyclopedias have recognized the importance of protecting their articles from malicious hackers. One strategy they started using is to put the crucial facts in the articles that nobody disputes in a read-only format, which is a format that no one can make changes to. That way you are making sure that the crucial facts in the articles are reliable. Another strategy that's being used is to have special editors whose job is to monitor all changes made to the articles and eliminate those changes that are clearly malicious.
Third, what's worth knowing about? The problem for traditional encyclopedias is that they have limited space, so they have to decide what's important and what's not. And in practice, the judgments of the group of academics that make these decisions don't reflect the great range of interests that people really have. But space is definitely not an issue for online encyclopedias. The academic articles are still represented in online encyclopedias, but there can be a great variety of articles and topics that accurately reflect the great diversity of users' interests. The diversity of use in topics that online encyclopedias offer is one of their strongest advantages.
The reading and the lecture are both about communal online encyclopedias, which are unique because they can be revised and edited by anyone in the world. The author of the reading believes that they are less reliable than traditional printed encyclopedias. The lecturer casts doubt on the claims made in the article. He thinks that online encyclopedias are more valuable.
To begin with, the writer claims that such encyclopedias are edited by individuals without academic credentials. In addition, he notes that this means their contributions are sometimes inaccurate or ill-informed. This point is challenged by the professor. On the contrary, he says that even traditional encyclopedias are not perfectly accurate. Furthermore, he points that when errors creep into printed books, they remain there for years, unlike in online sources where they can be quickly corrected.
Secondly, the scriptwriter states that hackers have opportunities to include false information in online encyclopedias, or to corrupt and vandalize correct information. Besides, he argues that unsuspecting users have no way of detecting when this has occurred. This argument is rebutted by the tutor. Contrarily, he suggests that the administrators of online encyclopedias have methods of protecting their content. Also, he elaborates on this by mentioning that they have special editors who watch all changes and revert those which are obviously malicious.
Finally, the essayist mentions that communal reference works tend to focus on topics which are trivial or unimportant. And, this can create a false impression of which topics are important and which are not. The lecturer, in contrast, says that because online encyclopedias have unlimited space they are free to cover a wide variety of topics. Therefore, he puts forth the idea that because a considerable number of articles are written about popular topics, we should not assume that academic topics are not being represented.
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Grammar and spelling errors:
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...than traditional printed encyclopedias. The lecturer casts doubt on the claims made...
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...nline encyclopedias are more valuable. To begin with, the writer claims that su...
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...s where they can be quickly corrected. Secondly, the scriptwriter states that h...
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...t those which are obviously malicious. Finally, the essayist mentions that comm...
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Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, besides, but, finally, furthermore, second, secondly, so, therefore, in addition, in contrast, on the contrary, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 10.4613686534 182% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 4.0 5.04856512141 79% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 7.30242825607 110% => OK
Relative clauses : 23.0 12.0772626932 190% => OK
Pronoun: 38.0 22.412803532 170% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 32.0 30.3222958057 106% => OK
Nominalization: 5.0 5.01324503311 100% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1666.0 1373.03311258 121% => OK
No of words: 302.0 270.72406181 112% => OK
Chars per words: 5.51655629139 5.08290768461 109% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.1687104957 4.04702891845 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.05223303266 2.5805825403 118% => OK
Unique words: 173.0 145.348785872 119% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.572847682119 0.540411800872 106% => OK
syllable_count: 531.0 419.366225166 127% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.8 1.55342163355 116% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 13.0 3.25607064018 399% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 7.0 8.23620309051 85% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 1.25165562914 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.51434878587 66% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 2.5761589404 155% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 13.0662251656 138% => OK
Sentence length: 16.0 21.2450331126 75% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 41.6465136448 49.2860985944 84% => OK
Chars per sentence: 92.5555555556 110.228320801 84% => OK
Words per sentence: 16.7777777778 21.698381199 77% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.27777777778 7.06452816374 103% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 4.09492273731 98% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 4.19205298013 119% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 4.33554083885 138% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 4.45695364238 157% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.27373068433 117% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.213632150945 0.272083759551 79% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0665827208892 0.0996497079465 67% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0623225402038 0.0662205650399 94% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.140058192822 0.162205337803 86% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0564298109538 0.0443174109184 127% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.0 13.3589403974 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 38.31 53.8541721854 71% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 5.55761589404 158% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 11.0289183223 108% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.44 12.2367328918 118% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.14 8.42419426049 108% => OK
difficult_words: 90.0 63.6247240618 141% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 6.5 10.7273730684 61% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.4 10.498013245 80% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.2008830022 80% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 80.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 24.0 Out of 30
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.