【正文】 od evidence that the great houses were used for special ceremonies TPO6 Reading Communal online encyclopedias represent one of the latest resources to be found on the Inter. 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 Inter 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 munity of Inter users. The idea might sound attractive, but the munal online encyclopedias have several important problems that make them much less valuable than traditional, printed encyclopedias. First, contributors to a munal 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 nonspecialists cannot really achieve. Second, even if the original entry in the online encyclopedia is correct, the munal 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 munal 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 longrunning 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 munal encyclopedias do not. Listening Professor: The munal online encyclopedia wil! probably never be perfect, but that39。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 e. First, errors. It39。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 prehensive reference work without any mistakes, you are not going to find it, on or off line. The real point is that it39。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 readonly 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 that39。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, what39。s worth knowing about? The problem for traditional encyclopedias is that they have limited space, so they have to decide what39。s important and what39。s not. And in practice, the judgments of the group of academics that make these decfsions don39。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 stiii represented in online encyclopedias, but there can be a great variety of articles and topics that accurately reflect the great diversity of users39。 interests. The diversity of use in topics that online encyclopedias offer is one of their strongest advantages TPO7 Reading In an effort to encourage ecologically sustainable forestry practices, an international anization started issuing certifications to wood panies that meet high ecological standards by conserving resources and recycling materials. Companies that receive this certification can attract customers by advertising their products as ecocertified. Around the world, many wood panies have adopted new, ecologically friendly practices in order to receive ecocertification. However, it is unlikely that wood panies in the United States will do the same, for several reasons. First, American consumers are exposed to so much advertising that they would not value or even pay attention to the ecocertification label. Because so many mediocre products are labeled 39。new or improved,39。39。 American consumers do not place much trust in advertising claims in general. Second, ecocertified wood will be more expensive than uncertified wood because in order to earn ecocertification, a wood pany must pay to have its business examined by a certification agency. This additional cost gets passed on to consumersAmerican consumers tend to be strongly motivated by price, and therefore they are likely to choose cheaper uncertified wood products. Accordingly, American wood panies will prefer to keep their prices low rather than obtain ecocertification Third, although some people claim that it always makes good business sense for American panies to keep up with the developments in the rest of the world, this argument is not convincing. Pursuing certification would make sense for American wood panies only if they marketed most of their products abroad. But that is not the case— American wood businesses sell most of their products in the United States, catering to a very large customer base that is satisfied with the merchandise. Listening W