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6. Communal online encyclopedias

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리딩 지문 읽기 (3분)

 

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 non- specialists 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.

 

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리스닝 스크립트

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.

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.
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.
Third, what’s worth knowing about? The problem for traditional encyclopedias is that they have limited space, so they have to decide what’s important and what’s not. 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. But space is definitely not an issue for online encyclopedias. The academic articles are still represented in online encyclopedias, but there can be a great variety of articles and topics that accurately reflect the great diversity of users’ interests. The diversity of use in topics that online encyclopedias offer is one of their strongest advantages.

 

30점을 위한 분석

리딩 주장
The communal online encyclopedias have several critical problems and are less valuable than traditional, printed encyclopedias. (공용 온라인 백과사전은 몇몇의 중대한 문제점을 가지고 있고 전통적인 책으로 된 백과사전보다 가치가 떨어진다)

첫번째 근거
First, compared to traditional encyclopedias written by experts, the inaccuracy of a communal online encyclopedia is a huge problem because the contributors are not reliable in terms of expertise. (첫째, 전문가에 의해 쓰여진 전통적인 백과사전에 비해, 공용 온라인 백과사전의 부정확성은 큰 문제이다. 왜냐하면 전문 지식이라는 면에서 보자면 온라인 사전에 글을 쓰는 사람들을 신뢰할 수 없기 때문이다)

두번째 근거
Second, unlike a traditional encyclopedia, various people, including hackers or unscrupulous users, can alter the original information, which can be fabricated or corrupted. (둘째, 전통적인 백과사전과 다르게, 부도덕한 사용자나 해커를 포함한 다양한 사람들이 원래의 정보를 수정할 수 있으므로 온라인 사전의 내용은 조작되거나 틀릴 수 있다)

세번째 근거
Third, when it comes to topics they deal with, the communal online encyclopedias focus mainly on trivial and popular topics and this can provide people with a false impression about what is important. (셋째, 공용 온라인 백과사전은 주로 사소하고 인기있는 주제에 집중한다. 그리고 이것은 사람들에게 무엇이 중요한지에 대해 잘못된 인상을 줄 수 있다)

리스닝 반박
The arguments mentioned in the reading passage are based on prejudice and ignorance about online encyclopedias. (리딩 지문의 주장들은 온라인 백과사전에 대한 편견과 무지에서 온 것이다)

첫번째 근거
First, as far as error is concerned, unlike online encyclopedias, it is hard to correct incorrect information in traditional encyclopedias because they are already printed. It is, however, easier for errors in factual material to be corrected in an online encyclopedia. (첫째, 에러에 대해서 말하자면, 온라인 백과사전과 다르게, 전통적인 백과사전에서는 잘못된 정보를 고치기 어렵다. 왜냐하면 그들은 이미 출판되었기 때문이다. 그러나 온라인 백과 사전에서는 에러를 쉽게 고칠 수 있다)

두번째 근거
Second, online encyclopedias have some strategies to prevent their articles from being changed with some malicious intention such as a read-only format and special editors who monitor all changes. (둘째, 온라인 백과사전은 내용이 악의적인 의도를 가지고 바뀌는 것을 막기 위한 몇가지 전략을 가지고 있다. 즉, 오직 읽기만 되는 형식이나 모든 수정을 감시하는 특별 편집자가 그것이다)

세번째 근거
Third, traditional encyclopedias have an issue of limited space, so they have to decide what to include and what to omit. On the other hand, online encyclopedias don’t have this kind of problem and contain more information that users may be interested in. (셋째, 전통적인 백과사전은 제한된 공간을 가지고 있어서 무엇을 포함해야 하는지, 무엇을 빼야하는지를 결정해야 한다. 반면에, 온라인 백과사전은 이런 문제가 없기 때문에 다양한 독자들의 관심을 담아낼 수 있다)