TPO 6, Task 1

In this set of materials the reading part discusses the communal online encyclopedias and their problems which make them less valuable than traditional ones, and provides three reasons of support. And the listening section casts doubt on the information presented in the article, and argues that it is true that communal encyclopedias are not prefect but the arguments in the text are little objective.

First, the passage posits that the information in the online encyclopedias is not reliable because everyone can edit and add information, but the writers of the traditional encyclopedias were experts. However the talk makes the point that online encyclopedias have lots of errors, but the traditional ones are also not perfectly accurate, no one can find a comprehensive encyclopedia without errors, while in the online encyclopedias it is possible to edit the mistakes but in the written versions it may remain for decades.

Second, the text asserts that in online encyclopedias the hackers and vandals can change and corrupt the original text and mislead the reader. On the contrary the lecturer believes that the crucial parts of the text are in read-only format which no one can edit them, therefore the crucial parts of the text remains reliable. Furthermore online encyclopedias have editors which monitor all changes in the articles and prevent from getting damage.

Third, according to the article, disadvantage of the communal encyclopedias is focusing on the trivial and popular topics rather than to important ones, and this can misguide students. The speaker disagrees with this point, and postulates that in the traditional written encyclopedias the space was limited and a group take decision that which topic is important to include in the book, but in the online encyclopedias the space is not an issue and can put diverse topics in it such as the unimportant or important academic topics. The diversity of the topics is one of the advantages of the online encyclopedias.