首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Wikipedia’s Trembling [A]Wikipedia is dying! Wikipedia is dying! That’s the line repeated by the media every six months or so si
Wikipedia’s Trembling [A]Wikipedia is dying! Wikipedia is dying! That’s the line repeated by the media every six months or so si
admin
2014-12-18
58
问题
Wikipedia’s Trembling
[A]Wikipedia is dying! Wikipedia is dying! That’s the line repeated by the media every six months or so since 2009, when Spanish researcher Felipe Ortega first noticed that unprecedented numbers of volunteer editors were abandoning the sixth most popular website in the world. As the now familiar story goes, the byzantine(极其复杂的)infrastructure behind the free, crowdsourced encyclopedia—30 million articles in 287 languages, including more than 4.3 million in English—is choking to death. Wikipedia pessimists say the site is fatally blocked by white American men who would rather describe the extreme details of a new breed of Pokemon or fervently debate the politicization of an Arabic food than guide a diverse group of new editors around the world.
[B]The other corrosive element is the pervasive fighting by editors that sometimes supersedes(替代)the facts. "You have to realize that there are two very different sides to Wikipedia," Tare, a 40-year-old IT worker from New England, told Newsweek in an email. One is "the public face of Jimbo Wales and ’the sum of human knowledge,’ represented in tens of hundreds of thousands of articles, i.e. the encyclopedia proper." The other is "harsh and ugly," like "taking the red pill and waking up in the Matrix." [C]In many ways, Wikipedia is a victim of its success, and the Wiki spirit upon which it was founded. The site grew quickly: more than 20,000 articles in 18 languages just one year after Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger founded it in January 2001. Two years later, Wales launched the Wikimedia Foundation to finance and run the site; the nonprofit now has a staff of 187 people who develop and maintain open-content, Wiki-based products. After the site saw gigantic growth from 2004 to 2007—the English-language Wikipedia had around 750,000 entries by late 2005—the community created some tools to preserve quality and accuracy. Things didn’t go as planned.
[D]A study published in the American Behavioral Science Journal by former Wikimedia fellows earlier this year found that the new automated quality-control tools and bureaucratic editing guidelines "crippled the very growth they were designed to manage" by scaring off new editors: The proportion of "desirable newcomers"—defined in the study as both "good-faith" editors who try but fail to be productive and "golden"(successful)contributors—entering Wikipedia has not changed since 2006, and they are significantly more likely than their predecessors to have their first contributions rejected. The number of editors peaked in 2007 and has been falling ever since, and it’s now next-to-impossible to become a high-ranking "administrator," editors who check entries for accuracy and fairness.
[E]The Wikimedia foundation disclosed in its 2011-2012 annual report that "declining participation is by far the most serious problem facing the Wikimedia projects." The Wikimedia fellows behind a comprehensive study led by computer scientist and University of Minnesota Ph.D. candidate Aaron Halfaker were more blunt: They suggested Wikipedia change its motto from "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit" to "the encyclopedia that anyone who understands the norms, socializes him or herself, dodges the impersonal wall of semiautomated rejection and still wants to voluntarily contribute his or her time and energy can edit."
[F]Wikimedia has been working hard on this problem, but the site is still "almost entirely written by techno-Libertarian white guys in their 30s," said Kevin Gorman, a longtime Wikipedia editor who has done work for the Wikimedia Foundation. According to a 2011 worldwide Wikipedia Editor Survey, the typical editor is college-educated, 30 years old, and intimidatingly tech-savvy(懂行的人); 91 percent of them are men.
[G]Headlines proclaiming Wikipedia’s decline are "exaggerated and wrong," said Andrew Lih, a journalism professor at American University and author of The Wikipedia Revolution. Even Halfaker thinks there’s hope. "I’m inspired by what Wikipedia has done for the accessibility and access of knowledge generally," he told Newsweek. "But that doesn’t mean that we can’t do better."
[H]Wikimedia Executive Director Sue Gardner told Newsweek that Wikimedia is primarily focused on fixing the infrastructure, streamlining Wikipedia’s weak and inscrutable(高深莫测的)text-based editing tool so that it’s as accessible to undergraduates and grandmas as it is to geeks(极客). She believes Visual Editor, currently in buggy Beta(测试), will do just that—as soon as it stops crashing.
[I]She also pointed to another pet cause: modifying the site’s interface in small ways most users probably won’t notice. For example, when Wikimedia realized that successful editors got their sea legs by fixing typing errors, the foundation started directing new registrants toward articles full of them. "The idea is to handhold people so they’re getting positive feedback," she said. According to Wikimedia, that quick fix has led to 3,000 new Wikipedians a month making their first edits.
[J]Wikimedia has also hired diversity advocates like Sarah Stierch, a longtime Wikipedia editor and gender issues campaigner. Before joining Wikimedia as a program evaluation community coordinator, Stierch held a paid Wikimedia fellowship during which she focused on gender work and taught women around the country how to edit Wikipedia. She also founded Teahouse, described on its Wikipedia page as "a friendly place to help new editors become accustomed to Wikipedia culture, ask questions, and develop community relationships."
[K]Additionally, Wikimedia helps organize domestic and global education programs in which volunteer "ambassadors" work with college professors to assign Wikipedia entries. Gardner extolled(赞扬)the virtues of the program in Egypt, launched in spring 2012 to tackle the gender gap on the Arabic Wikipedia. It reached out to arts and languages departments, where there is a higher percentage of female students. According to Wikimedia, 87 percent of the Egyptian student-editors in the program are women, and they’ve added more than 1,000 articles to the Arabic Wikipedia and have made needed edits on many existing articles.
[L]Gorman, the regional ambassador for the U.S. Education Program for California and Hawaii, spoke passionately of his work with professors and undergraduates. But he said the program lacks oversight(监督), particularly when it comes to targeting underrepresented topics, and wishes Wikimedia would consider paying ambassadors. "A lot of Wikipedians have a strong irrational fear of money," he said, which he believes holds back widespread progress.
[M]Gardner’s response: "I don’t think we would ever consider paying ambassadors, because we really don’t have to. Wikipedians naturally want to share. They like coaching new people." Gardner believes Wiki-media’s initiatives will start paying off in the next few years—and they might—but the data aren’t impressive. Stierch said her grassroots groups haven’t attracted new women to editing and that Wikimedia still struggles to find women for leadership positions.
[N]Even if Wikimedia fails to draw a diverse group of users who want to edit, not just battle one another, it seems unlikely that Wikipedia will self-destruct. What it offers the world is imperfect, but so much better than no Wikipedia at all—even if, as Stierch said, the site "epitomizes(成为......的缩影)a project started by good-faith white males," like so much written history and cultural research in the Western world, that may take years to change. "I can’t even imagine a world without Wikipedia at this point," Stierch said. "Can you?"
Wikimedia is currently working on improving its editing tool.
选项
答案
H
解析
根据editing tool定位到H段第1句。该句提到,维基媒体重点是在完善基础设施,将脆弱的、高深莫测的文本编辑工具进行简化,这样同极客一样,大学生和老奶奶也能够访问维基。题目中的work on im—proving the editing tool对应原文中的is…focused on fixing the infrastructure,streamlining…editingtool,本题句子是对该句的概括。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/tlm7777K
0
大学英语六级
相关试题推荐
Ifyou’rehappyandyouknowit,maybeyoureallyshouldclapyourhands.That’sbecausebeinghappymightmakeyoulivelonger.
OnCrete,NewEvidenceofVeryAncientMarinersEarlyhumans,possiblyevenprehumanancestors,appeartohavebeengoingto
A、Callthecompaniesandcancelthecreditcards.B、Complaintothecustomer’sassociation.C、Expresshisattitudeclearly.D、Re
TheAlzheimer’sAssociationandtheNationalAllianceforCaregivingestimatethatmenmakeupnearly40percentoffamilycare
HowCustomsWorkA)Oneofthelittleritualsallinternationaltravelersgothroughiscustoms.Tomostpeople,thisisjustano
A、TostudyatTom’shome.B、Tostudyathishome.C、TocleanTom’shome.D、Tohelptheotherstudents’study.B弦外之音题。女士询问男士今天下午是
A、TheNationalBank.B、TheSpanishDepartment.C、TheJonesandFrenchCompany.D、AcompanyinRome.C细节推断题。对话中女士问男士是否仍在Jonesand
"Depression"ismorethanaseriouseconomicdownturn.Whatdistinguishesadepressionfromaharshrecessionisparalyzingfear
A、Whattodothatafternoon.B、Howtostarttheirproject.C、Whentodiscusstheproject.D、Whentoreturnbookstothelibrary.
A、Radiohostandguest.B、Lawyerandclient.C、Professorandstudent.D、Employerandemployee.A推断题。对话开头女士使用了典型的主持用语:Goodevenin
随机试题
急性肾小球肾炎时水肿的产生机制主要是
小儿暑温内风扰动证,若属络中之风,虚中夹实,用方为小儿暑温内风扰动证,若属真阴不足,水不涵木,阴虚风动,用方为
基金销售机构应当具备的准入条件不包括()。
根据《中华人民共和国个人独资企业法》规定,导致个人独资企业应当解散的情形有()。
社会工作者小吴正在主持主题为“文明公约从我做起”的社会居民会议,最初大家都不愿意发言,小吴采取提问的方法鼓励大家自由发言。第一位发言者王阿姨讲完后,为了让他感到自己的发言受到重视,同时也激励更多居民发言,小吴适宜的回应有()。
设f(x)是以l为周期的周期函数,则之值()
Ciseo路由器执行showaceess-list命令显示如下一组控制列表信息StandardIPaCCeSSlist30deny127.0.0.0,wildeardbits0.255.255.255deny
假设,两名犯罪嫌疑人因涉嫌共同盗窃而被拘留,警方将两人分开关押,并对他们分别进行讯问。警方向他们提供以下相同的选择:若一人认罪并作证指控对方,而对方保持沉默,【C1】______,沉默者将被判刑10年;若二人都保持沉默,则二人将都被判刑一年;若二人互相检举
DavidLandes,authorofTheWealthandPovertyofNations:WhySomeAreSoRichandSome,SoPoor,creditstheworld’seconomic
【B1】【B14】
最新回复
(
0
)