TPO 6 , Q 1

In this set of the materials, the reading passage claims that the online encyclopedias are not worthwhile as the traditional and solid versions and provides three reason of support. While, in the lecture, the professor casts doubt on what is presented in the text and rejects each of the author's reasons.

First of all, it is clearly stated in the text that the online encyclopedias have written by unprofessional persons without any master education and it leads to make many mistakes. However, the professor believes that it is not true. She explains that all versions of encyclopedias, including online and offline printed versions, have errors and you can never find a one hundred percent valid encyclopedias without any mistakes. In addition she explains that in the online encyclopedias there is the opportunity for fixing the errors, but the printed ones cannot be corrected and remained the same during the decades.

In addition, the professor disagrees with this point of the reading that the online encyclopedias are hacked several times and changed by users. She points out that there are two strategies for preventing these unreliable changes. In first strategy the main parts of online encyclopedias are designed as the users can only read them and the access for changing is not authorized for ordinary people. In the second strategy, some people are employed for checking any change and eliminating untrusted ones.

Finally, although it is mentioned in the text that communal encyclopedias include unimportant and ordinary topic which have not the value to be presented, the professor provides some points to oppose this view. She asserts that the traditional encyclopedias have the problem of limited space, so they need to contain only main important topics. However, in these new formats there is not any concern about space and any topic in a wide range of interests could be put without any limitation. As matter of fact, this is mentioned as the strongest advantages of online versions.