I just spent the last two weeks in Nigeria (my birthplace) visiting family and eating. Except some days when we ate, then went to go see family. The first week of the vacation was my March Break, but the second week involved me missing those days of school. I am now back, it’s halfway through the week and I am quickly learning what not to do when you have a full week of school work, assignments and projects to catch up on in just 4 days, all while keeping up the the current school work. In case you ever take a leave from school, here’s what you need to know when you come back.

1. Prepare before hand.Go to all your teachers and ask for the specific things they’ll be assigning while you’re gone. And make sure you fully understand what you have to do. I made the mistake of only vaguely understanding the work for my American History course and therefore could not do it while I was away. I’m now back, the project is late and I’ll probably get a lower mark that I would have had I scheduled a meeting with my teacher to clear out the fog in my brain. Big mistake.
2. Take what you need beforehand. Make a checklist of the things you’ll need to take, such as your textbooks, handouts you’ll need, school supplies(!) and the like. Another thing that might pop up, especially if you’re in high school is movies or videos you’ll be watching. I ended up having to pay a silly amount of money for the 30th anniversary edition of Close Encounters of the Third Kind for an English project because I forgot to get it from a friend before we left. So I am now stuck with a collectors item I’ll never use again but am too cheap to get rid of.
3.  Ask for help. Take a lesson from Eckhart Tolle and set aside your ego to ask for help. Ask your classmates first, as they’ll give you the most easily digestible version of what’s been going on while you left, and your teachers second as you’ll need to know the technicals of what you’ve missed. If you still don’t get things after asking the first time, ask again. And you should without a doubt ask for extensions on your projects, assignments and tests.
4. Get enough sleep and take adequate breaks.Whether you missed one day of school, or one week, catching up on missed work is difficult. It is even more difficult if you just got back from vacation to a far away place and have yet to readjust to you home time zone. Getting enough sleep (and water actually) will the crucial for your health, and your student productivity. I am quite possibly the biggest proponent of adequate sleep, as well as it’s current biggest hypocrite. I’ve slept maybefour hours each night for the past few days and have been walking around with a perma-headache and a case of jet lag. Ergo, I’m the slightest bit sluggish and am getting much less work done than I would be able to if I would just give myself a break and take a nap. Take it from someone who’s making the mistake as they write this. You are a human being, and you must be gentle on yourself and easy with your personal expectations as you’re trying to catch up.
5. Take a walk each day.Okay, so the actual walking won’t directly help you finish all your work, but exercise is an effective and healthy mental stimulant. Three cups of coffee isn’t. Neither is several cans of Red Bull nor pop (or soda for you Americans). You’ll need to be nice and alert while you’re slugging through your work so you night as well do it the proper way. And now that exercise advice has arrive at Gearfire, and Daniel’s even written about how to Walk Yourself Fit, you’ve got the perfect place to start.

So there you go folks. The 5 step guide to catching up at school, chock full of good advice, personal anecdotes and a dash of common sense. The perfect recipe for staying on top of the school world. If you’ve even taken a significant leave from school, what did you do to catch back up?

(photo by Maria Schwartzman 2008)

It’s a fact: the world is globalizing. This means that people not necessarily speaking the same language must come together to communicate. In this day and age, it is extremely useful to know more than one language, especially if your native language is English. Also, most universities and colleges require you to have some competency of a foreign language. In this case, it might be prudent to learn some tips for studying a foreign language more effectively.

First, figure out your learning style and concept/thought process. Do you learn better visually, by writing things out, or by hearing what is said to you? Most of the time learning things all three ways, with an emphasis on how you learn best, is the most effective way to go (unless you absolutely do not absorb anything by using a certain method). The latter idea, the thought process, might be unfamiliar. It has nothing to do with your learning style, but rather how you think about the things you’re learning.

I consciously came up with this idea and explanation two semesters ago while trying to explain to my friend why she was so good at Computer Science. She is an artist by nature first, and it suddenly hit me that the reason why she could program so well is that art and programming work very similarly: one must look at the big picture first (what do you want to create?), then focus on the little details (a certain color for an area of a painting, or a certain line of code for programming), and then focus back on the big picture to make sure everything is working right, and the process repeats until you’re done. I tested this theory of thinking with other friends, and it worked out that certain subjects interconnect with others in the way of thinking about them.

Your goal is to figure out how you think about your subjects. Do you think like I just described with art and computer science? Or do you tend to just focus on the big picture, for instance, big concepts you would use in the sciences? Or do you narrowly focus in, as you would for math problems? Once you figure out how you think, it becomes much easier to figure out how you need to study a foreign language (or any subject, for that matter). If learning concepts come easily to you, create in your head (or on paper, computer, etc) groupings of concepts such as tenses, themed vocabulary, culture, different themes of grammar, etc. If narrow focus is your style, focus in on each new word or new grammatical issue distinctly. Knowing how you think about what you’re studying will help you get more out of your study time. Don’t try to force yourself to learn material in a way contrary to your most natural way. (Many teachers/professors teach material in a manner different from what you’re used to or what works best for you; take what they teach and translate it back into your own way! This will also tend to help you remember things better.) That being said, it is possible to train yourself to think in different ways, but it does take some time and practice.

Other tips I can offer you for learning a foreign language are

· make flashcards. Flashcards are so important! I cannot stress this enough. Vocabulary can really only be absorbed by use. To use it, you have to have it memorized or stuck in your brain somehow. Grammar can also be learned this way, along with verb tenses, etc. Make a separate card for every word, new concept, new tense, etc.

· practice every day. At least at my university, most language classes meet four days a week. This is great, but to really learn a language you should use it somehow every day of the week. Try to name off all the items in your dorm room. Say hello to one of your friends in your foreign language. If you have other friends who are taking or have taken the language you’re in, hang out with them and practice saying things in a non-pressurized, non-classroom setting. It’s a lot of fun to say random things in other languages!

· don’t be afraid of the professor. Most profs want to help you. Usually language classes are decently small sized to maximize practice time for the students. Take advantage of your professor - ask him or her questions if you don’t understand something, or if you see him or her in the hallway don’t be afraid to say hello in your foreign language.

· don’t cram. You will forget everything you crammed in very quickly. Language forms building block by building block, so it is best to solidly learn the material over the course of the chapter rather than trying to learn it all in one night before the big test. That way you have the foundation for the next concepts you will learn, and it will actually be in your brain rather than just floating out your ears.

· read the book. After the prof’s lecture, it can be easy to mentally shut down for the day, especially if you don’t have any homework for your class (though that rarely happens!). Instead of shutting down, go back and read what your book says about whatever you learned today. This will reinforce the ideas in your brain and help you learn the material better, solidifying the necessary building blocks for the next day’s class.

I hope these tips help you in your endeavor to learn a foreign language. If you have more ideas, comments, or questions, feel free to leave a comment!

In the olden days to measure the distance of a running route I would jump on my bike and proceed to cycle the route. Attached to my bike was a odometer that measured the distance of the route. This set up was all well and good in the early days when I used to run urban routes, and along the promenade at the beach, but not so good when I wanted to change the route to a cross country trek. The bike I used was only suitable for roads, and at a push riverside pathways.

On an occasion that required me to use an online route planner and I believe Google Earth, it dawned on me that perhaps I could use a similar method to map my cross country running routes. As usual I typed a few key words in to Google search and discovered MapMyRun.

What is Map My Run?

MapMyRun.com is a site where you can easily plot maps of your runs without a GPS, search for runs or routes globally, keep track of your routes including distances, and even calculate how many calories you’ve burned on one route versus another!

The site essentially uses Google maps to help you create or search for running routes within your vicinity. The process takes approximately 5 minutes and is as simple as possible.

What can you do?

• Create and save routes
• Calculate your workout pace, calories burned, and distance run
• Share routes with friends
• Search for routes in your area
• Add and print notes about your run
• Create a training a log
• Add routes to your website/blog

Other innovative features include searching for races and events. This is usually a tedious task. In my experience each running club hosts their own website and only detail their specific races and events. If I wanted to plan a years worth of events I have to visit numerous websites to find all the details. With this feature all the information is available on a single site.

MapMyRun have their own communities and forums where people can chat about their routes, ask questions about the site, and meet new running buddies.

The elevation feature is one of my favourites. This feature allows you to include hills and mountains when calculating the distance of a run. I like to include plenty of hills when I go cross country running.

Screen Shot

As you can see, the layout is very much like that of Google Map, and it performs much the same way too. You can zoom in and out, pan left/right and up/down, view the map/satellite/hybrid, select the distance units, and view a full screen.

Map My Run - Objective, goal, and vision

MapMyFitness aims to create an interactive social network that allows people to enjoy and share their workouts. The short-term objective of MapMyFitness is to create the world’s leading activity-based social networking Web sites for participants in sports and leisure activities. These activities currently include running, walking, cycling, hiking, and triathlons. MapMyFitness plans to expand to include many more fitness activities in the future.

The long-term goal for MapMyFitness is to elevate its Web site users’ level of enjoyment in their fitness activities by enabling them to capture, visualize, share, and create a traceable history of fitness activity information.

In my opinion this is a bookmark must for any running enthusiast. For those of you that prefer other forms of exercise then simply check out the alternate versions:

• MapMyRide.com
• MapMyWalk.com
• MapMyTri.com
• MapMyHike.com

To read my complete journey to GTD Mastery see the main post.

Step 15 to GTD Mastery is: I have a paper file system which is fun and fast to use, perhaps using an automatic labeler.

A couple of months ago, I put out a call for help to our readers for the creation of my paper file system. Many of the responses advocated a paperless system. After weighing my options, I chose the Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 scanner (Mac version here). The S300, a lower-end model is also available (comparison chart here). The factors that swayed my decision were the inclusion of Acrobat Standard and the carrier sheet support which helps with the scanning of my odd-shaped newspaper/magazine clippings. The S510 also scans over twice as fast and you can feed it 50 pages compared to 10 pages with the S300. This lets me use the S510 as my inbox.

First Impressions
Upon opening, I couldn’t believe how small the S510 was. Its footprint is less than a standard piece of letter-size paper.

Setup
Step-by-step instructions are provided in the manual and are easy to understand. The first step was to install the ScanSnap’s drivers and software and Acrobat (Windows 2000, XP, and Vista compatible). Everything went smoothly and, despite the software spanning 3 CDs, I only had to restart the computer once. The ScanSnap itself connects via USB and is run off of DC power.

Testing
I tested out the ScanSnap with a pamphlet I received from school. You can take a look at the resulting PDF here.

At this point in the review, I should be writing about how great a product the ScanSnap is and how it has simplified and revolutionzed my paper workflow. However, I’m going to outsource this part of my life, Tim Ferriss style. Ryan Norbauer over at 43 Folders shares my love for the ScanSnap.

Here’s the premise: the SnanSnap is the first consumer scanner (that I’ve used anyway) to truly be about information storage. It’s not for ultra high-resolution photo scanning; it’s all about documents and speed. Firstly, you initiate scans by piling your documents into the stacker and simply pressing the one big button on the face of the device. It then rapidly (and I mean damn fast) gobbles up your papers and spits them out at the bottom. Fujitsu says up to 36 pages/minute in duplex mode, and that sounds about right. The resulting digital document gets dumped right onto your hard drive in searchable PDF format, which every OS seems to understand natively these days. It automatically corrects for mis-aligned papers, auto-detects whether the document is color or monochrome, scans in duplex if it detects a back side to the page being scanned, and detects the size of the paper being scanned and intelligently crops the digital version to the right size. You can mix and match document types liberally and it stitches them all together into one PDF with each page automatically adjusted to its own parameters. I love that there is just one operative button: you just tell it to go to town, and it gets out of your way and makes smart guesses based on what you give it.

Carrier Sheet
I pulled out an old magazine clipping to test out the carrier sheet. Needless to say the ScanSnap came through again. You can find the resulting PDF here.

CardMinder
You can also scan any business cards you may receive.

The ScanSnap includes the CardMinder software for managing your business cards. Unfortunately, it only supports the reading of the contact’s name, company name, one phone number, email address. In the future, I hope that it will support address info, multiple phone numbers, and website. You can export the card info to Outlook or Outlook Express. If you use a different email client, CardMinder also allows you to export the info to a CSV file. I use Gmail and it supports the importing of CSV files.

Gmail correctly identifies the “name” and “email” fields from CardMinder’s CSV. However, the “phone” and “company” are placed in the contact’s notes under “more information.”

Final Thoughts
Being a student with a budget, I had my reservations about the ScanSnap’s price tag. However, in the long run, the ScanSnap will be cheaper than filing cabinets, file folders, a labeler, and labeller refills. I purchased mine from ATS Systems here in Canada with free shipping on orders over $99. There’s also a $50 rebate on all S510s purchased from January 1 to March 31. You can download the rebate here. The total cost of my ScanSnap came to $450 CAD. Amazon and eBay are currently selling them for ~$400 US (plus shipping). If you’re on a tighter budget, the S300 is listed for $260 CAD at ATS Systems. If you don’t need the carrier sheet and don’t mind slightly slower scan times, I would save your money and buy the S300. If space is a concern, the S300 is half the depth of the S510.

OneBigU’s slogan says it all, “Answer Questions, Help Darfur.” OneBigU is the brainchild of Eric Cheung, a University of Toronto graduate.

The idea came when I was stuck on an assignment for school. Sure, I could call up a friend or pester them with messages, but why do that?

I was pretty sure I wasn’t the only student in the world to be stuck on this particular problem.

If only there was a place where you could find old and new questions asked by students around the world along with the answers…

Perhaps Eric didn’t find that community, but he is starting to build it. Launching at the beginning of the year, OneBigU’s premise is similar to Yahoo Answers: ask questions and share your knowledge with anyone over the web. However, OneBigU focuses on students, with questions stemming from a student’s homework problems. Anyone is free to post a question without signing up. However, you must sign up in order to answer questions.

Upon answering a question, other members can vote if they believe your answer is correct. Ultimately, the submitter of the question selects a “best answer.” Following this, OneBigU pays the user who submitted the “best answer” as a portion of its ad revenue. The user is then free to either withdraw the funds to their PayPal account or donate the funds to OneBigU’s partner charity, Help Darfur Now (HDN).

HDN is a non-profit organzation geared specifically for students and their families that is dedicated to raising funds for and awareness of the genocide in Darfur, Sudan. It was started by three New Jersey high school students. Currently, HDN has 100 chapters across the US.

Prominently displayed on HDN’s home page are endorsements by the likes of George Clooney, Martin Sheen, and Senator Barrack Obama.

Hands-On
Below you can see the results of my experience with OneBigU.

What Does the Future Hold?

Currently, OneBigU has raised $35, with $25 going towards HDN. It remains to be seen whether OneBigU’s social consciousness will provide enough incentive to attract a larger user base.

One key factor at play would be its existence as an “online study group.” This has recently come under fire in Canada, where the Toronto Star reports that a student at Ryerson University (where I attend), located in Toronto, has been expelled for running a study group in Facebook.

For more info, see Eric’s interview with tech journalist Amber MacArthur, on the commandN video podcast.

Image source: Hamed

Walking is a much underrated form of exercise. The general perception is that the energy expenditure to time taken ration is biased in favour of time taken, therefore people assume that a 30 minute walk is close to useless when trying to improve one’s fitness.

I for one disagree. When I refer to walking I am describing outdoor walking as a means of getting from one place to another and not simply walking aimlessly around a park. Although this too can can be beneficial.

Why walking then?

Think back to the last time you walked for any considerable duration of time. The likelihood is that you climbed hills, descended hills, dodged in and out of people, dogs, children, and cars, stepped up and down curb stones, and stopped and started often. These simple manoeuvres may appear relatively insignificant at the time but when treated as a collective they add up to a fairly strenuous episode of exercise that will improve balance, flexibility, coordination, and strength.

• Climbing and descending hills strengthens the knee flexor and extensor muscles
• Dodging objects adds a lateral element to the walk, beneficial for the adductor and abductor muscles of the groin
• Stepping up and down curb stones engages the muscular neuro pathways thus improving coordination
• Starting and stopping requires the body overcome inertia, when starting, and resist momentum, when stopping (I think that is right, although physics is a little rusty these days), therefore requiring muscular force
• Standing still requires isometric contraction of the postural muscles (not just the legs), a strenuous task when the legs are fatigued

These reasons relate specifically to walking and are additional to the general health benefits of exercise such as:

• It burns calories, helping you to maintain a healthy weight
• It helps to boost your metabolism, upon arriving at your destination you will continue to have a raised metabolism that will benefit from a healthy option food source such as fruit
• It helps to reduce body fat, walking is an aerobic exercise that utilises fats and lipids as the fuel substrate
• It lowers your blood pressure, by improving the cardiovascular system an increased cardiac output reduces the heart rate
• It helps you to manage stress and release tension, you have time to think things through and resolve all of life’s little worries (nearly all).

The Gearfire blog aims to increase student productivity, here is why walking will do just that:

• Improved concentration. If you are struggling with a particular essay or piece of coursework make it your priority to walk to college. On the way you can devise a mental list of the stressors and systematically work through them enabling you to start your day in a positive manner.
• Fight illness. Moderate exercise and immune response are highly correlated.
• Greater confidence. Exercise will help you to look better and feel better about yourself.
• Better sleep. You will spend greater periods of time in deep sleep and allow you to wake up feeling refreshed and ready for the day ahead, rather than waking up and feeling ready to go back to sleep.
• Optimised circulation. Regular exercise promotes growth of the heart allowing an increased efficiency at pumping blood around the body. This is of particular benefit to the brain, an organ that thrives on the oxygen that is contained within the blood. Exercise the heart and improve cranial activity, it is as simple as that.

These are my top 5 exercise related factors that will improve student productivity, for more information please read my introductory post Fitness Advice Arrives at Gearfire

Walking as a form of exercise

If I take you back to the start of this post you will remember that many people consider walking to be an ineffective form of exercise that does not provide sufficent fitness gains compared to the duration of exercise. Well, if I were to tell you that walking can burn up to 370 kcals per hour would that change your mind? That is more than a certain brand of cheeseburger, although this does not mean that you can now go to a drive through an order one of these health hazards. Consider the calories burned as recompense for a time when you were vulnerable and ate one under mental duress.

Based on 40 year old male and females the following rate of calories per hour can be burned at specific walking speeds:

• 2 mph~ 150 kcals
• 3mph ~ 250 kcals
• 4mph ~ 370 kcals

source: walking for fitness

Where and when can students find time to walk?

There really are no excuses. Students are busy people but let’s face we can all spare 30 minutes per day for a bit exercise. If you live close to college or campus, I don’t mean on campus, get yourself up an hour earlier, have some breakfast then walk in. Those who bus in can walk a few extra stops before catching it or get off a few stops early and walk the rest of the journey. During your lunch break you can walk to the sandwhich shop rather than use the canteen, take a friend for a walk and discuss things that may be causing you trouble, walk to a quiet place and read a book, or anything else - just walk. Don’t use lifts/elevators take the stairs instead, every little step counts. When you run out of milk or bread forget the car, take a 10 minute walk instead. There are numerous ways to incorporate walking into your daily activities you don’t need me to go on and on so I’ll stop here.

If you decide that walking is for you then let me know in the comments section. I’ll be glad to hear your views either way.

“To walk, or not to walk: that is the question.” - William Walkshere, there, and everywhere.

To read my complete journey to GTD Mastery see the main post.

Step 22 to GTD Mastery is: My computer files are set up for maximum productivity.

Above is a screenshot of all my files. Even with nearly 50,000 files spanning multiple computers, managing my digital data is painless.

Organizing
The first step is to establish a folder hierarchy. If you have multiple computers, I recommend using the same structure on each to allow for easy synchronization. The exact structure will vary for each user and there is no one solution. The only criteria I have is that I’m able to quickly locate required files. Below is a mindmap of my “My Documents” directory.

Searching

Vista has Instant Search, Mac has Spotlight, Linux has Beagle. I’m using XP and use Google Desktop for my desktop search. While it isn’t perfect, it is much more efficient than manually point-and-clicking.

Backup
Nothing is a bigger productivity killer than losing your data (not to mention grade killer when that term paper is due the next day). There are different levels of backup that you can take to protect your data.

Level 1: Create a separate partition for your documents
For Linux and Mac, this means you should have a separate partition for your “home” directory. For Windows, this means your “My Documents” should not be on your C: drive. Instead, you should have a separate partition (e.g. X: drive) where you place your documents.

If you already have a spare partition, you can move your documents by right clicking on “My Documents” and selecting properties.

If the C: drive got corrupted, you can simply reinstall Windows and point your “My Documents” back to that other partition. If you don’t have a separate partition, you can resize your C: drive to create a new partition. If you’re doing a re-install you can create your partitions during the installation. An introduction to “partitions” can be found here. A search for “your OS and hard drive partition” should provide guides for your specific OS.

Level 2: Backup to a separate hard drive
The next level is to backup your files to either an external hard drive or a dedicated server. I use SyncToy to synchronize and backup all my files. My laptop is backed up to my server at home. My server is then backed up to external hard drives.

Level 3: Off-site backup
The final level is to backup your files either to a computer outside your neighbourhood or through an online solution. This is the only way of protecting your data from a natural disaster (e.g. fire/flood). If you have friends/family who are willing to run a backup server and who you trust to respect the privacy of your files, re-imbursing them for the electricity costs will generally be cheaper than an online solution. This depends on the size of your data. There are many free online backup solutions that offer a few gigabytes of storage. However, if you’re data needs are larger, check out our partner, Carbonite, who provides unlimited, automated online backups for only $50/year. Computers are disposable, your data isn’t.

How do you organize, search, and backup your files?

Here is the story. Fresher student wants to write the single best essay they have ever attempted. Student searches keyword in Google. Student clicks on first entry on the page that will usually end with, for example …/wiki/French_Revolution. Student reads, believes, cites, and references Wikipedia. Student hand in essay, waits, and fails. Or maybe does not fail but is told in no uncertain terms NEVER to reference Wikipedia.

How many of you can relate to this story? Is that unnamed student you? It was me at some point I can promise you that, but, I quickly learned my lesson.

What are my research options?

The degree I read was BSc. Sport Sciences, a degree heavily rooted in biology, psychology, and biomechanics amongst a few other smaller disciplines. This made researching a particular topic a tiresome and endless process using multiple online databases that spewed out vast amounts of scientific literature in answer to a single keyword entry. For example, the definition of DNA, I’d enter “DNA” and hit “search” only to be confronted by thousands of articles, half of which were inaccessible, some written in Spanish, French or German, and others were published in the early 1900s long before sport science, as a discipline, existed. Alternatively, I type”DNA” into Google and I’m provided with …/wiki/DNA. what do I do? I need a simple definition DNA and I face the choice of sifting through tens of PDF documents or opening up a browser window that will display the definition of DNA according to someone that entered it into the wiki database. The answer is simply neither

Wikipedia has revolutionised the way that we can access information I agree, but these wonders have far too often been infiltrated by individuals seeking to destroy all that is great about the site using the “anybody can edit” feature. Examples of this have been highlighted in the press, for example, Wikipedia’s biography of John Seigenthaler Sr. where nearly the complete article was false and linked him with the assassination of JFK and was posted on the site for 132 days. Another example is that of Chris Benoit where a person wrote about the death of Nancy Benoit 12 hours before it actually happened. A coincidence or otherwise I am not sure but the whole situation infers that Wikipedia is an unstable, unreliable, and a limited resource.

What can I use instead?

Citizendium. A compendium initially set up to serve as mirror of Wikipedia where expert authors would edit the posts deemed inaccurate, this mission was recently altered and the site now contains its own original database of posts. Citizendium aims to stamp out the aforementioned accuracy, post hijacking, and general limitations of Wikipedia by implementing fundamental principles. These include:

• Open collaboration - anyone can participate, much like Wikipedia.
• Expert contribution - all posts can be edited by Citizens but certain decisions are placed in the hands of subject experts.
• Article approval - a post is approved once it is deemed true, unbiased, and accurate by a subject expert.
• Real names - all participants are required to provide their real name, unlike Wikipedia where false names are often used.

For a greater depth of information regarding the policies then click on http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Citizendium.

Why Citizendium?

I read the page Why Citizendium? because I do not completely understand why they are trying to out do Wikipedia. The page is written in a manner that initially compares the two sites and basically declares that Citizendium is better, however, towards the end of the article they set Citizendium apart from Wikipedia and discuss its merits independently. An interesting read to say the least.

The founders of Citizendium strongly believe that they can catch up with the millions of articles contained within Wikipedia. Why? The Citizendium added five million words in its first year - more than Wikipedia achieved. The authors do not believe that Wikipedia is simply “good enough”, they state that it is full of inaccuracies that blemish the massive database, editors “squat” on posts ensuring that they are never edited in a way that does not suit their personal opinion, textual vandalism is rife due to the anonymous author feature. The Citizendium authors believe that real names will stamp out hijacking of posts because people are considerate when a name is on the line, expert approval will ensure that nobodies will not be able to approve an article as fact, and sensible governance is better. New participants, called Citizens, are required to agree to the Statement of Fundamental Policies, and are reined in upon by Constables when/if they behave irresponsibly.

The Citizendium also offers supplementary reference material or sub pages.

The Citizendium has “subpages.” These are pages, such as Bibliography or Related Articles, attached to a main (encyclopedia) page via a standard table. A main article together with its subpages is called a “cluster.” You might look at the Biology article and its subpages–our “biology cluster”–as an example.

The purpose of subpages is to provide supplementary and background information to allow people to find all different types of information about a topic.

This in my opinion is a superb addition to the wiki model, subpages offered to you on a plate by experts in the field. The numerous hours that I used to spend looking for a decent video clip of a sporting action will never be returned to me but for you this should not be an issue.

Another useful addition is Signed Articles.

Signed articles are introductory, overview, general review, and perspectival articles attributed to one person or a small group of people. Such articles have two fundamental requirements: first, they must be characterizable as reference material, and neither brand new research nor mere polemics; second, they must be crafted by people who are unquestionably experts on the topic in question.

Basically, academic experts can post their personal opinion about a post contained in Citizendium. This to me in genius. In science, as with many subjects I suppose, there are differing views on almost all topics. In psychology there are; Cognitive, Behavioural, Psychoanalytic, Humanistic, Biological, among other paradigms, prominent psychologists from each of these will undoubtedly have fairly opposing views on the formation of personality, who is to say which views are correct and which are not. With Signed Articles you can follow the arguments from different perspectives and devise a theory or belief of your own.

The final word from the founder of Wikipedia himself

Jimmy Wales, the site’s founder, has acknowledged Wikipedia’s limitations. “If what you are after is ‘Who won the World Cup in 1984′, Wikipedia is going to be fine,” he said. “If you want to know something more esoteric, or something controversial, you should probably use a second reference – at least.”

Source: Wikipedia amateurs face backlash from the experts