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,

The passage and the professor discuss credibilty of online encyclopedias in comparison to old fashion printed ones. The author points out a few flaws of the online encyclpdeias to support validity of the printed ones. However, the lecturer retutes points made by the passage by bringing a few countering claims.

First, the lecturer talks about the errors that might be found in online encyclopedias. She claims that traditional encyclopedias are flawless either. In fact, there is no source of knowledge without mistake, regardless of its nature, online or offline. However, the offline sources cannot be corrected after they are printed. In contrast, online sources cannot easily be modifies later. This points refutes the points made by the passage that stated communal encyclopedias posses more flaws in comparison to traditional ones.

Second, the lecturer argues about the potential threat of online sourcres to be hacked. He mentions that there are several methods to preclude online sources from being hacked. For instance, some parts of the articles which are crucial, might be available in read-only format so that no one can change them anymore. Moreover, some special editors has been appointed to monitor articles before possible changes to take effect. These arguments contradicts the points states by the author of the passage which claimed printed encyclopedias are safer from being hacked.

Thirdly, the lecturer talks about the topics of the articles in encyclopedias. She raise the question: who is to judge what topics are important and what are not? In ordinary encyclopedias, a group of academic professionals decide about the topics to be chosen. Since they are faced with limited space to publish data, they have to omit some topics. However, the online sources let people chose what they like to be discussed. Therfore topics which are actually interesting to the public will be available online. These points refutes the passage that stated traditional encyclopedia include better and more important topics in comparison to online ones.