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 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.
The reading passage and the lecture are both about communal online encyclopedias and whether they are better than traditional printed encyclopedias. The author of the article believes that communal online encyclopedias have many problems favoring traditional printed encyclopedias. However, the lecturer holds that although the communal online encyclopedias will never be perfect, what it does offer is far more valuable than any problems or imperfections. she further states that criticisms are largely the result of prejudice against or ignorance about how far online encyclopedias have come.
First and foremost, the speaker in the lecture indicates that it's not a fair criticism to say that online encyclopedias have errors while traditional encyclopedias have never been close to perfectly accurate or free from errors. She further adds that there is no such thing that is a really comprehensive reference work with no mistakes online or offline. Nevertheless, it's easier and faster for errors to be corrected in online encyclopedias than traditional encyclopedias where errors may stay uncorrected for decades.
Secondly, the lecturer argues that online encyclopedias are not totally prone to tampering by malicious hackers as the reading suggests. She asserts that fortunately online encyclopedias implement many strategies to protect against hacking or vandalism. One strategy is making the crucial facts in the online article under a read-only format. This ensures that no changes could be made to those facts. Another strategy is to hire special editors. The job of those special editors would be to monitor all changes made to the articles and eliminate any suspicious changes that look clearly malicious.
Finally, the professor points out that due to limited space on traditional printed encyclopedias, some academic groups have to decide which topics are important and which are not. this has a major disadvantage because some important content might be omitted. Besides, the encyclopedia would not reflect the great range of interests people really have. On the other hand, space is not an issue for online encyclopedias. In addition, one of the strongest advantages of online encyclopedias is the great variety of topics reflecting the great diversity of user's interests.
- Rembrandt is the most famous of the seventeenth-century Dutch painters. However, there are doubts whether some paintings attributed to Rembrandt were actually painted by him. One such painting is known as attributed to Rembrandt because of its style, and 73
- Sea otters are a small mammal that lives in the waters along North America's west coast from California to Alaska. A few years ago some of the sea otter populations off of the Alaskan coast started to decline rapidly and raised several concerns beca 73
- In the 1950s Torreya taxifoha, a type of evergreen tree once very common in the state of Florida, started to die out. No one is sure exactly what caused the decline, but chances are good that if nothing is done, Torreya will soon become extinct. Experts a 3
- Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Governments should spend more money in support of the arts than in support of athletics such as state-sponsored Olympic teams. Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer. 90
- Private collectors have been selling and buying fossils, the petrified remains of ancient organisms, ever since the eighteenth century. In recent years, however, the sale of fossils, particularly of dinosaurs and other large vertebrates, has grown into a 80
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 401, Rule ID: DOES_NP_VBZ[1]
Message: Did you mean 'be'?
Suggestion: be
...ll never be perfect, what it does offer is far more valuable than any problems or ...
^^
Line 1, column 458, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: She
...ble than any problems or imperfections. she further states that criticisms are larg...
^^^
Line 7, column 181, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: This
...topics are important and which are not. this has a major disadvantage because some i...
^^^^
Line 9, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...great diversity of users interests.
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
besides, finally, first, however, look, may, nevertheless, really, second, secondly, so, while, in addition, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 10.4613686534 182% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 6.0 5.04856512141 119% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 7.30242825607 151% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 12.0772626932 124% => OK
Pronoun: 23.0 22.412803532 103% => OK
Preposition: 34.0 30.3222958057 112% => OK
Nominalization: 4.0 5.01324503311 80% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1954.0 1373.03311258 142% => OK
No of words: 349.0 270.72406181 129% => OK
Chars per words: 5.59885386819 5.08290768461 110% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.32221490584 4.04702891845 107% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.04807229891 2.5805825403 118% => OK
Unique words: 191.0 145.348785872 131% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.547277936963 0.540411800872 101% => OK
syllable_count: 633.6 419.366225166 151% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.8 1.55342163355 116% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 3.25607064018 184% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.23620309051 97% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 1.25165562914 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.51434878587 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 2.5761589404 78% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 13.0662251656 138% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 21.2450331126 89% => OK
Sentence length SD: 46.4608224711 49.2860985944 94% => OK
Chars per sentence: 108.555555556 110.228320801 98% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.3888888889 21.698381199 89% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.0 7.06452816374 99% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 4.09492273731 98% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 4.19205298013 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 4.33554083885 185% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 4.45695364238 202% => Less negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.27373068433 23% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.365435810692 0.272083759551 134% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.117814990565 0.0996497079465 118% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0856725251034 0.0662205650399 129% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.222080450547 0.162205337803 137% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0778959303844 0.0443174109184 176% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.6 13.3589403974 109% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 35.27 53.8541721854 65% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 5.55761589404 158% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.1 11.0289183223 119% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.2 12.2367328918 124% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.7 8.42419426049 103% => OK
difficult_words: 91.0 63.6247240618 143% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 10.7273730684 112% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 10.498013245 91% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.2008830022 80% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Write the essay in 20 minutes.
Rates: 81.6666666667 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 24.5 Out of 30
---------------------
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.