Being the founder of the Internet’s largest encyclopedia means Jimmy Wales gets a lot of bizarre e-mail. There are the correspondents who assume he wrote Wikipedia himself and is therefore an expert on everything—like the guy who found vials of mercury in his late grandfather’s attic and wanted Wales, a former options trader, to tell him what to do with them. But the e-mails that make him laugh out loud come from concerned newcomers who have just discovered they have total freedom to edit just about any Wikipedia entry at the click of a button. Oh my God, they write, you’ve got a major security flaw!

As the old techie saying goes, it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Wikipedia is a free open-source encyclopedia, which basically means that anyone can log on and add to or edit it. And they do. It has a stunning 1.5 million entries in 76 languages-and counting. Academics are upset by what they see as info anarchy. Loyal Wikipedians argue that collaboration improves articles over time, just as free open-source software like Linux and Firefox is more robust than for-profit competitors because thousands of amateur programmers get to look at the code and suggest changes. It’s the same principle that New Yorker writer James Surowiecki asserted in his best seller The Wisdom of Crowds: large groups of people are inherently smarter than an élite few.

Wikipedia is in the vanguard of a whole wave of wikis built on that idea. A wiki is a deceptively simple piece of software (little more than five lines of computer code) that you can download for free and use to make a website that can be edited by anyone you like. Need to solve a thorny business problem overnight and all members of your team are in different time zones? Start a wiki. In Silicon Valley, at least, wiki culture has already taken root.

Inspired by Wikipedia, a Silicon Valley start-up called Socialtext has helped set up wikis at a hundred companies, including Nokia and Kodak. Business wikis are being used for project management, mission statements and cross-company collaborations. Instead of e-mailing a vital Word document to your co-workers—and creating confusion about which version is the most up-to-date—you can now literally all be on the same page: as a wiki Web page, the document automatically reflects all changes by team members. Socialtext CEO Ross Mayfield claims that accelerates project cycles 25%. “A lot of people are afraid because they have to give up control over information,” he says. “But in the end, wikis foster trust.”

1. Why do many people think that Wikipedia has a “major security flaw”?

［A］ It has lots of bugs.

［B］ Because they don’t understand the concept of a wiki.

［C］ Because Jimmy Wales is not a computer expert.

［D］ Because a wiki is a simple computer code.

2. Why are many academics unhappy with the idea of a Wikipedia?

［A］ Because they don’t trust online encyclopaedias.

［B］ Because all information in Wikipedia is inherently unreliable.

［C］ Because they believe that certain information should not be available on the internet.

［D］ Because anyone can add or change the information in it.

3. Which of the following is NOT given as an advantage of a wiki?

［A］ You can choose who edits it.

［B］ Wiki software is free.

［C］ Any bugs in the code can be changed easily.

［D］ It’s easy to use.

4. Why do “wikis foster trust”?

［A］ Because the people who use it need to trust the information other users post on it.

［B］ Because they are used in business contexts.

［C］ Because they can be used in a wide variety of situations.

［D］ Because only trustworthy people use them.

5. What kind of reader is the article aimed at?

［A］ Computer specialists.

［B］ Academics who don’t like wikis.

［C］ Computer science students.

［D］ The general reader with an interest in computing.
答案：1-5 BDCAD