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
14
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.
Welcome,Freshmen.HaveaniPod.A)Takingastepthatmanyprofessorsmayviewasabitcounterproductive,somecollegesanduni
A、Negative.B、Objective.C、Affirmative.D、Indifferent.C观点态度题。对话中女士介绍了她朋友结婚采用的一种新的送礼方法后,男士说这样的做法太聪明了,这样客人就会知道主人想要什么,也避免了两个人送给主人一
Recently,anearlydecadeoldpaperontheeconomiceffectsofhumancloningbyaFrencheconomicsprofessorhasbeengettingso
A、Hewouldgetanotherone.B、Hewouldbeheart-broken.C、Hewouldgowiththedog.D、Hewouldbeunconcerned.B细节辨认题。女士问男士小狗死后他
A、Thedogwenttofindtheman.B、Themanstolethedog.C、Themanfedthedog.D、Afriendgaveittohim.A事实细节题。女士询问男士是如何得到他的狗
A、Alotofgoodpublicity.B、Talentedartiststoworkforit.C、Long-terminvestments.D、Adecreaseinproductioncosts.A事实细节题。
HereareSofiaFranco,thefoodwriterandstylist’stop11tipsforahealthydiet:1.Drinklotsofwater.Takea1.5literbo
A、Themanmaybeasexist.B、Thewomanisahomemaker.C、Thewomanisunhappywithherhusband’swork.D、Themanisrunningabr
A、Therelationshipthecompanyestablisheswithitscustomers.B、Legalresponsibilitiessharedbythecompanyanditscustomers.
随机试题
病毒性肝炎合并妊娠的处理哪些项不正确:
刺激交感神经对胃肠道的影响是
孕1产0,足月临产14h,宫口开7cm,产程进展缓慢,胎心140~150次/分钟,胎头矢状缝与坐骨棘间径一致,枕骨在母体右侧,S-2。其诊断是下列哪项
采取私募方式发行,不需要使用严格的招股说明书,只需使用信息备忘录,原因是私募的对象一般是( )。
根据出租汽车客运的特点,各级运管机构应做到()。
我国会计法规定,应当办理会计手续进行会计核算的经济业务事项主要有()。
探戈是流行于拉丁美洲的一种舞蹈节奏,其节拍采用________。
在平面直角坐标系xOy内,曲线y=x3-3x2+1在点(1,-1)外的切线方程为________。
古罗马共和时期,以《十二铜表法》为教育内容的学校是()
Oneofthemostalarmingthingsaboutthecrisisintheglobalfinancialsystemisthatthewarningsignshavebeenouttherefo
最新回复
(
0
)