Communal online encyclopedias represent oneof the latest resources to be found on the Internet. They are in many respectslike traditional printed encyclopedias, however, is that any internet user cancontribute a new article or make an editorial change in an existing one. As aresult, the encyclopedia is authored by the whole community of Internet users.The idea might sound attractive, but the communal online encyclopedias haveseveral 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 onlineencyclopedia often lack academic credentials, thereby making their contributionspartially informed at best and downright inaccurate in many cases.
Traditional encyclopedias are written bytrained experts who adhere to standards of academic rigor that non-specialistscannot 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 theonline encyclopedia is correct, the communal nature of these onlineencyclopedias gives unscrupulous users and vandals or hackers the opportunityto fabricate, delete, and corrupt information in the encyclopedia. Once changeshave been made to the original text, an unsuspecting user cannot tell the entryhas been tampered with. None of this is possible with a traditionalencyclopedia.
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 toofrequently, and in too great a depth, on trivial and popular topics, whichcreated a false impression of what is important and what is not. A child doingresearch for a school project may discover that a major historical eventreceives as much attention in an online encyclopedia as, say, a singlelong-running television program. The traditional encyclopedia provides aconsidered view of what topics to include or exclude and contains a sense of proportionthat 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。
托福综合写作听力观点：
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 willprobably never be perfect, but that’s a small price to pay for what it doesoffer. The criticisms in the reading are largely the result of prejudice againstand 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 criticismthat encyclopedias online have errors. Traditional encyclopedias have neverbeen close to perfectly accurate. If you are looking for a really comprehensivereference work without any mistakes, you are not going to find it, on or offline. The real point is that it’s easy for errors in factual material to be correctedin an online encyclopedia. But with the printed and bound encyclopedia, theerrors 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 haverecognized the importance of protecting their articles from malicious hackers.One strategy they started using is to put the crucial facts in the articles thatnobody disputes in a read-only format, which is a format that no one can makechanges to. That way you are making sure that the crucial facts in the articlesare reliable. Another strategy that’s being used is to have special editorswhose job is to monitor all changes made to the articles and eliminate thosechanges 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。
Third, what’s worth knowing about? Theproblem for traditional encyclopedias is that they have limited space, so theyhave to decide what’s important and what’s not. And in practice, the judgmentsof the group of academics that make these decisions don’t reflect the greatrange of interest that people really have. But space is definitely not an issuefor online encyclopedias. The academic articles are still represented in onlineencyclopedias, but there can be a great variety of articles and topics thataccurately reflect the great diversity of users’ interests. The diversity ofuse in topics that online encyclopedias offer is one of their strongestadvantages.
第三，关于内容价值。传统百科全书由于受到空间的局限不得不决定哪些事重要的，哪些是次要的。然而，在实践中，是由学术团队的判断来决定的。这导致百科全书不能全部反应读者的兴趣和需求。但是对于在线百科来说，空间就不是问题。学术类条目在百科中存在的同时，还有很多种类的条目和内容用来满足用户多样性的偏好。在线百科在内容上的多样性是他们最大的优点。
托福综合写作听力笔记：
Main point: prejudice
Sub point one: never, accurate, corrected
Sub point two: read-only, monitor,eliminate
Sub point three: limited space, don’treflect, variety
本篇范文可以借鉴的模板
The lecturer addresses each of the three criticismsof ________________ mentioned in the reading passage.
The lecturer admits that _____________, butshe claims that______________. The reading passage, in contrast, pointsto_____________________, presenting the argument________________.
The lecturer then__________________. Sheexplains that_________________. In addition, she says,________________________.
The lecturer also challenges the finalpoint in the reading regarding the_______________________. She saysthat_________________. Moreover,
托福综合写作范文(仅供参考)：
The lecturer addresses each of the threecriticisms of communal online encyclopedias mentioned in the reading passage.
The lecturer admits that communal onlineencyclopedias, like any reference book, may contain errors, but she claims thatthese errors can be corrected much more easily and quickly than those printedin a paper encyclopedia. The reading passage, in contrast, points to theinaccuracy of information in online encyclopedias, presenting the argument thaterrors in these resources are due to lack of professional knowledge amongcontributors.
The lecturer then gives two strategies thathave been proven very effective in protecting online encyclopedias frommalicious alteration. She explains that contents that consist of indisputable factsare stored and presented in a read-only format so that nobody can make changesto them. In addition, she says, there are specialists who constantly monitorcontents online so that they can quickly remove a suspicious change once it isdetected.
The lecturer also challenges the finalpoint in the reading regarding the nature of topics covered in onlineencyclopedias. She says that because of virtually unlimited space on theInternet, there is no need to worry about what is important enough forinclusion in an online encyclopedia.
Moreover, the greater variety of topics inonline encyclopedias more truly reflects the genuine interests of the generalpublic, even if some of these topics are less serious or academic than those intraditional encyclopedias.