评论
打印
Now listen to part of lecture on the topic you just read about.
现在来听一段有关你刚刚所阅读到的话题的演讲。
The communal online encyclopedia will probably never be perfect, but that's a small price to pay for what it does offer.
公共的在线百科全书也许永远不会完美，但是，我们只需要为它能提供的付一点点钱。
The criticisms in the reading are largely the result of prejudice against and ignorance about how far online encyclopedias have come.
阅读文章里面的批评大部分是对在线百科全书的现状有偏见和不了解的结果。
First, errors. It's hardly a fair criticism that encyclopedias online have errors.
首先，错误。在线百科全书有错误，这几乎是一个不公平的批评。
Traditional encyclopedias have never been close to perfectly accurate,
传统的百科全书从来没有接近过完全准确，
if you are looking for a really comprehensive reference work without any mistakes, you are not going to find it, on or off line.
如果你在寻找一个一点错误都没有的真正全方位的工具书，不管线上线下，你都找不到的。
The real point is that it's easy for errors in factual material to be corrected in an online encyclopedia.
真正的问题是，在线百科全书里的实际材料里面的错误改起来很容易。
But with the printed and bound encyclopedia, the errors remain for decades.
但是，印刷装订的百科全书里，错误保留了几十年。
Second, hacking. Online encyclopedias have recognized the importance of protecting their articles from malicious hackers.
第二，黑客行为。在线百科全书已经认识到防范恶意的黑客，保护他们文章的重要性。
One strategy they started using is to put the crucial facts in the articles that nobody disputes in a read-only format,
他们开始用的一个策略是，把文章中没有人争论的重要事实放在一个只读格式里，
which is a format that no one can make changes to.
这个格式没有人能对其做任何改变。
That way you are making sure that the crucial facts in the articles are reliable.
那样你就能确保文章中的重要事实是可信的。
Another strategy that's being used is to have special editors
另一种在运用的策略是，有专门的编辑，
whose job is to monitor all changes made to the articles and eliminate those changes that are clearly malicious.
他们的工作是监管所有对文章的改变并且去除那些明显恶意的改变。
Third, what's worth knowing about?
第三，什么值得去了解？
The problem for traditional encyclopedias is that they have limited space, so they have to decide what's important and what's not.
传统百科全书的问题是，他们的空间有限，所以他们必须决定什么是重要的什么不是。
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.
而且事实上，做这些决定的学者们的判断不能反映人们广泛的真正兴趣。
But space is definitely not an issue for online encyclopedias.
但是空间对在线百科全书来说就绝不是问题。
The academic articles are still represented in online encyclopedias,
学术文章仍然呈现在在线百科全书上，
but there can be a great variety of articles and topics that accurately reflect the great diversity of users' interests.
但是，它有大量的文章和话题准确反映用户广泛的兴趣。
The diversity of use in topics that online encyclopedias offer is one of their strongest advantages.
在线百科全书提供的话题使用的多样性是它们最强的优点之一。
