Reading notes
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.
Lecture notes
Professor:
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 realty 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.
The reading and the lecture are both about communal online encyclopedias. The author of the reading believes that online encyclopedias are less valuable than traditional printed encyclopedias. The lecturer casts doubt on the claims made in the article. He thinks that online encyclopedias are more valuable.
First of all, the author claims that online ones lack academic credentials. He notes that online encyclopedias are inaccurate compared to traditional encyclopedias. This point is challenged by the lecturer. He says that traditional printed ones are never close to accurate. Furthermore, he points out that errors in traditional ones remain for decades which is not possible with online ones.
Secondly, the author states that vandals have the opportunity to corrupt the information even if the original entry is correct. He argues that hackers cannot change the traditional content. This argument is rebutted by the lecturer. He suggests that crucial facts are reliable. He elaborates on this by mentioning that special editors can diagnose hacker content and delete it.
Finally, the author mentions that communal encyclopedias focus more on unpopular topics creating pseudo impression on what is important and what is not. He is of the opinion that traditional encyclopedia provide a useful proportion of information. The lecturer, on the other hand, feels that what’s important don’t reflect judgements. He puts forth the idea that spacing is not a problem with online encyclopedias allowing great diversity of user interest.
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 194, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...than traditional printed encyclopedias. The lecturer casts doubt on the claims made...
^^^
Line 2, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...nline encyclopedias are more valuable. First of all, the author claims that onl...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...hich is not possible with online ones. Secondly, the author states that vandals...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 4, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...diagnose hacker content and delete it. Finally, the author mentions that commun...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, furthermore, if, second, secondly, first of all, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 10.4613686534 134% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 2.0 5.04856512141 40% => OK
Conjunction : 3.0 7.30242825607 41% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 15.0 12.0772626932 124% => OK
Pronoun: 27.0 22.412803532 120% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 22.0 30.3222958057 73% => OK
Nominalization: 4.0 5.01324503311 80% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1320.0 1373.03311258 96% => OK
No of words: 235.0 270.72406181 87% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.6170212766 5.08290768461 111% => OK
Fourth root words length: 3.91531732006 4.04702891845 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.07456747244 2.5805825403 119% => OK
Unique words: 133.0 145.348785872 92% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.565957446809 0.540411800872 105% => OK
syllable_count: 421.2 419.366225166 100% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.8 1.55342163355 116% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 11.0 3.25607064018 338% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 7.0 8.23620309051 85% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 1.25165562914 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.51434878587 0% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 2.5761589404 39% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 13.0662251656 138% => OK
Sentence length: 13.0 21.2450331126 61% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 31.9309150093 49.2860985944 65% => OK
Chars per sentence: 73.3333333333 110.228320801 67% => OK
Words per sentence: 13.0555555556 21.698381199 60% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.83333333333 7.06452816374 68% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 4.09492273731 98% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 4.19205298013 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 4.33554083885 185% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 4.45695364238 135% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.27373068433 94% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.258197040353 0.272083759551 95% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0851890031656 0.0996497079465 85% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0801640780381 0.0662205650399 121% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.165764342192 0.162205337803 102% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0934935960962 0.0443174109184 211% => More connections among paragraphs wanted.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.6 13.3589403974 87% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 41.36 53.8541721854 77% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 5.55761589404 158% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 11.0289183223 97% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.43 12.2367328918 118% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.19 8.42419426049 109% => OK
difficult_words: 73.0 63.6247240618 115% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 6.0 10.7273730684 56% => Linsear_write_formula is low.
gunning_fog: 7.2 10.498013245 69% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.2008830022 98% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 81.6666666667 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 24.5 Out of 30
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.