阅读理解 Wikipedia. To many it is still considered a dirty little secret. A site secretly consulted when an office conversation veers out of your comfort zone. When directly referenced, it is often accompanied by a hasty acknowledgement of its shortcomings. We are all familiar with the sarcastic undertones that lace the mantra "it must be right, because Wikipedia says so". But those undertones are slowly fading as the system improves and the site becomes less dirty, less little and less of a secret every day.
Exactly 10 years after its launch and 17 million articles later, the poster child for collaboration is an accepted part of daily life in the developed world, with serious inroads being made to the rest of the world.
The person tasked with steering Wikipedia's growth is Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. A feisty former journalist and senior director of CBC.ca, Gardner was brought in to develop a clear strategy for the non-profit organisation in 2007. The main challenge was to ensure that the enormous, disparate community of contributors from around the world were aligned in a common cause. According to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, hiring Gardner was "one of the best things we ever did".
To many people, Wikipedia is a shining beacon of the original promise of the web. Gardner goes as far to say that it's the "embodiment of the best aspects of the web".
Where does it fall short? Gardner doesn't hold back: "It's a work in progress so we are always going to need to do better. All aspects need to be improved." As Wikipedia focuses on improving and expanding, the site is under constant fire from those who accuse it of being biased, unreliable and favouring of consensus over credentials in its editorial processes.
Robert McHenry, author and former Editor-in-Chief of Encyclopedia Britannica, summarises what he describes as the "fatal fallacy" in the Wikipedia model:
The fatal fallacy in the Wikipedia theory is that a Wikipedia article can be thought of as an "open source" project like those that produce software and that, like those, it will undergo steady improvement toward some ideal state. But the software is clearly identified as developmental while in this process, and it is constantly tested against objective criteria: it performs as intended, or it does not. The article is published to the world in whatever state it may be, changes for the better or for worse at random times, and is held to no standard that the user can rely upon.
He certainly has a point—there are plenty of examples of false, and sometimes defamatory, information being posted to biographical profiles. There is also a systemic bias that often sees current events attract more attention than older ones and pop culture get a disproportionate amount of coverage, as well as perspective bias when reporting global events. That is not to say that traditional encyclopaedias are error-free. There have been a series of studies comparing the reliability of Wikipedia with traditional encyclopaedias, which have shown that Wikipedia's reliability is improving. A study revealed that Wikipedia's scientific articles came close to the level of accuracy in Encyclopaedia Britannica and had a similar rate of "serious errors".
单选题 6.It can be inferred from Paragraph 1 that______.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】属推断题。选项A断章取义,其表述本身就有错误,维基百科作为全球知名网站,网民基础深厚,故选项A错误。选项B是对原文观点的误解,原文列举了人们平时对维基百科的评价——“这一定是正确的,因为维基百科是这么说的”,这样的评价其实是反话,是具有讽刺意味的,讽刺维基百科的不准确性,故选项B错误。选项D捕风捉影,与原文关系不大,故选项D错误。根据原文列举人们对维基百科那句讽刺的评价可以推测人们经常怀疑维基百科的信息的准确性,故推测选项C符合题意。
单选题 7."The poster child" in Paragraph 2 implies______.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】属词义题。此题探讨poster child在这句话里的含义。“poster child”的原意是“achild afflicted by some disease or deformity whose picture is used on posters to raise money for charitablepurposes”,即“出现在为慈善目的而募捐的海报上的生病或残疾孩童”。这里是比喻义,意思为“典型代表”。选项B的意思是“儿童肖像”;选项C的意思是“形象代言人”;选项D的意思是“活动的代表”。选项A的意思是“典型代表”,指只有10年历史的维基百科,故选项A为正确答案。
单选题 8.Wikipedia is often attacked under the accusation of______.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】属细节题。此题探讨维基百科受攻击被指责的原因。第五段的“常常受到一些人的攻击,他们指责维基百科有偏见,不可靠”是关键句。选项A说的是“拒绝合作”;选项B说的是“拒绝改进”;选项C说的是“要价高”,以上三个选项均可排除。选项D说“不公平和不可靠”,是正确答案。
单选题 9.On which of the following would the author most probably agree?
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】属观点题。选项A是反向干扰,原文最后一段提到了即使是《不列颠百科全书》也会出错,故选项A错误。选项B同原文信息相悖,原文第七段提到了维基百科理论的致命错误在于它认为一篇维基百科的文章可以被当做一个“开源的”计划,故选项B错误。从全文来看,作者还是比较支持维基百科的,虽然维基百科有其致命弱点,但还是利大于弊,故选项D错误。维基百科就是信息民主化和信息获取自由化的典型代表,而作者在原文第四段又说道维基百科代表了互联网最初的承诺,故选项C符合题意。
单选题 10.The author's attitude towards Wikipeida is one of______.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】属态度题。该题的解题技巧是:快速浏览全文,把握全文主旨,同时留意作者用词的褒贬,来判断作者对主题事物的态度。只有文章从正反两方面分析事物的利弊,并且没有做出带有明显倾向性的评价时,才是客观态度。回顾全文,文章既评价了维基百科的优势,又谈到了其显存的种种缺陷,故可以判定作者的态度是客观的,故选项A符合题意。选项B和选项D过于片面,而作者对于维基百科并未抱着矛盾的态度,故选项C错误。