首页
登录
职称英语
Being the founder of the Internet’s largest encyclopaedia means Jimmy Wales
Being the founder of the Internet’s largest encyclopaedia means Jimmy Wales
游客
2024-08-05
42
管理
问题
Being the founder of the Internet’s largest encyclopaedia means Jimmy Wales gets a lot of bizarre emails. There are correspondents who assume he wrote Wikipedia himself and is therefore an expert on everything—like the guy who found some strange chemicals in his late grandfather’s attic and wanted Wales to tell him what to do with them. There are kooks who claim to have found, say, a 9,000-year-old fifteen-foot human skeleton and wonder if Wales would be interested. But the emails that make him laugh out loud come from concerned newcomers who didn’t know even the basic function of Wikipedia and have just discovered they have total freedom to edit a Wikipedia entry at the click of a button. "Oh my God," they write, "you’ve got a major security flaw.
Wikipedia is a free open-source encyclopaedia, which basically means that anyone can log on and add to it or edit it. And they do. It has a stunning 1. 5 million entries in seventy-six languages—and counting. Academics are upset by what they see as info anarchy. An Encyclopaedia Britanica editor once likened Wikipedia to a public toilet seat because you don’t know who used it last. Loyal users claim that collaboration improves articles over time.
But what exactly is a wiki and how does it work? Wikis are deceptively simple pieces of software that you can download for free.
You then use them to set up a website that can be edited by anyone you like. Need to solve a thorny business problem overnight and all the members of your team are in different time zones? Start a wiki.
Wikipedia is the cumulative work of 16, 000 people, the bulk of it done by a hard-core group of around 1,000 volunteers. Its 500, 000 entries in English alone make it far larger than the Encyclopaedia Britannica. And Wales pays just one employee who keeps the servers ticking. Naturally there are a lot of idiots, vandals and fanatics, who take advantage of Wikipedia’s open system to deface, delete or push one-sided views. Sometimes extreme action has to be taken. For example, Wales locked the entries on John Kerry and George W. Bush for most of the 2004 Presidential election campaign. But for the most part, the geeks have a huge advantage: they care more. According to an MIT study, obscene comments randomly inserted on Wikipedia are removed within 100 seconds, on average. Vandals might as well as be spray-painting walls with disappearing ink.
As for edit wars, in which two geeks with opposing views delete each other’s assertions over and over, well, they’re not much of a problem these days. All kinds of viewpoints co-exist in the same article. Take the entry on Wikipedia: "Wikipedia has been criticized for a perceived lack of reliability, comprehensiveness and authority. " Indeed, Larry Sanger, Wikipedia’s former editor-in-chief(now a university lecturer), still loves the site but thinks his fellow professionals have a point. " The wide-open nature of the Internet encourages people to disregard the importance of expertise ," he says. Sanger doesn’t let his students use Wikipedia for their papers, partly because he knows they could confirm anything they like by adding it themselves. [br] What do people find out when they discover they have total freedom to edit a Wikipedia entry?
选项
答案
The basic function of Wikipedia.
解析
(第一段倒数第二句表明,很多新手不知道维基百科的basic function便是他们可以完全自由地编辑其中的任何一个词条。)
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3706677.html
相关试题推荐
从长远看,网上购物仅仅是低层次的网络化,未必会成为主要的趋向。(low-level)Fromalong-termperspective,Internet
ThelargestriverinEnglandis______.A、theSevernRiverB、theThamesRiverC、Be
ThelargestriverinEnglandis______.A、theSevernRiverB、theThamesRiverC、Be
ThelargestriverinEnglandis______.A、theSevernRiverB、theThamesRiverC、Be
Australiaisthe______largestcountryintheworld.A、fourthB、fifthC、sixthD、se
OurliteratureteacherMarkisgainingmorepopularityontheInternet,whois,
Astheworld’ssmallestcontinentandsixthlargestcountrybytotalarea,Austr
Astheworld’ssmallestcontinentandsixthlargestcountrybytotalarea,Austr
AddictedtotheNet?SymptomsofInternetaddiction
AddictedtotheNet?SymptomsofInternetaddiction
随机试题
IntimeoftroubleCharliecouldalways______asolution.A、putasideB、lookdown
EngineeringforsustainabledevelopmentTheGreenhouseProject(Himalayanmounta
下列不属于乡镇企业用地使用权的权利内容的是( )。A.占有权 B.使用权
图示结构,EI=常数,弯矩MCA为: A.Pl/2(左侧受拉)B.Pl/
如果选用心得安药物作为甲状腺功能亢进手术前准备,下列哪项应慎用或不用A.低血压
下列属于场外交易市场的有( )。 ①拆借市场 ②期货交易所 ③黄金市场
用改良牛鲍板计数红细胞的实验中,计数面积为A.25个中方格B.16个中方格C.5
某外宾货主托运一木箱鲜活植物,重25公斤,体积40×60×100cm3,计费重量
根据材料,回答题 求助者一般资料:小刘,男,28步,某公司程序员。 求助者主
若在潮湿环境或水中条件下使用的砂浆,必须使用( )作为胶凝材料。A.水泥 B.
最新回复
(
0
)