阅读材料：
Communal online encyclopedias represent one of the latest resources to be found on the Internet. They are in many respects like traditional printed encyciopedias, 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.
交互式在线百科是互联网上新的资源模式。在线百科在诸多方面与传统纸质百科全书类似。但是在线百科同传统纸质百科不同的地方在于任何一个网民都可以创建或者编进词条。因而，可以说在线百科是由所有网民共同编辑的。这个想法听起来可能很不错，但是跟传统纸质百科全书相比，在线百科也因此具有了一些严重的问题。而这些问题将很大程度地削减在线百科的价值。
First, contributors to a communal online encyclopedia often lack academic credentials, thereby making their contributioins 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.
首先，在线百科信息的提供者往往缺乏学术资格，因为他们提供的信息很多时候不够完美，甚至是不够精确的。传统的百科全书是由受过良好训练的专家编撰的。这些专家符合严格的学术标准，而这一点是业余人士无论如何都达不到的。
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.
第二，即使在线百科词条最初是正确的，但是其互动的特性允许一些无原则的用户，蓄意破坏的人以及黑客们伪造、删除和篡改条目。当原始的版本被篡改之后，那些对条目深信不疑的用户不能发现问题。而这样的情况是不会发生在传统百科全书中的。
Third, the communal encyclopedias focus too frequently, and in too great a depth, on trivial and popular topics, which created 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.
第三，在线互动百科对于绯闻和流行话题的关注过多过深，这一点使大家对孰轻孰重产生错觉。孩子可能会通过在线百科完成学校留的作业。这时，他可能会发现在线百科上面，重大的历史事件所受的关注度跟一档长线播出的电视节目是一样的。而在传统百科中，对于内容的取舍和均衡是非常注意的，而这一点在具有“民主性”的在线百科上是没有体现的。
阅读部分需要提取的观点是：
- Main point: 在线互动百科的缺陷种种
- Sub point 1:最初创建的时候可能不准确
- Sub point 2:即使初始是准确的，也可能会被篡改
- Sub point 3:对于琐碎流行的内容关注过多
在听力部分，我们可以预测到的就是这三个缺点都是不存在的。
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.
尽管在线互动百科永远都不会达到完美，但是总体看还是瑕不掩瑜的。阅读部分的批评更多是来自于偏见和对于在线百科发展进程的忽略。
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 really 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.
首先，关于错误。对于在线百科有错误的这种批评是很难令人信服的。传统的百科全书也很难做到完全精确。如果你渴望一个完全没有错误的综合参考书，你是不会找到的，无论是线上还是线下。而且事实上，在线百科上的事实性错误时很容易纠正的，而那些纸质的百科全书上的错误，确实数十年难有机会改正。
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.
第二，黑客篡改。在线百科意识到了保护条目不受黑客恶意篡改的重要性了。他们采取的策略之一是对于无争议的关键事实条目设置为只读模式，这样就没有人可以修改了。这样可以保证你相信条目里的关键事实是可以信赖的。另一个策略师设置专门的编辑来审查对于条目的修改，并删除那些恶意篡改的内容。
