TeacherReviews.com Forced Offline

MrCawfee writes "Dylan Greene's site Teacher Reviews which allows students to post reviews of their professors. The site was taken down because a professor complained about comments made against him, and threatened to sue. Here is an exerpt from his blog: 'Yesterday and tonight I talked with a professor who was extremely upset with what written about him on TeacherReviews. He had several inappropriate reviews that made unfounded accusations and inappropriate untruthful remarks such as calling him "Bipolar Paranoid Schitzophrenic."' You can read his blog here."

Prerequisite

[Ghoser777]

I'm pretty sure "Bipolar Paranoid Schizophrenic" (now spelled correctly) is a prerec for being a professor, so I'm not sure what he's complaining about.

Matt Fahrenbacher

the real reason

[potpie]

Apparently, SCO thought the comments were actually written about them and were infringing on their IP. And Microsoft thought the comments were too similar to comments written about Bill Gates that they had already copyrighted. And the RIAA believes that they were the lawful target of the comments, which were shared over the internet and used against somebody else.

totally inaccurate

[Anonymous Coward]

I had that prof, and calling him "Bipolar Paranoid Schitzophrenic" is totally inaccurate; he was not bipolar.

PARANOID?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm afraid people are talking about me behind my back, they're always there, there always watching, I'll just google my name..

Hmm, TeacherReviews.com? I'M ON THERE?!?!?!!?!?

WHAT? WHAT? I'M NOT A BIOPOLAR PARANOID SCHITZOPHRENIC! I KNOW, I'LL SUE THEM!

Said the Professor:

[parliboy]

"I'm not paranoid! Which one of my enemies told you that?"

Re:Blog text - before it gets slashdotted

[omarius]

"Slander is spoken. In print, it's libel."
--J. Jonah Jameson

Re:Blog text - before it gets slashdotted

[z01d]

...and I appreciate any comments you have,...

He mean "sue", right?

That Pesky Thing...

[suwain_2]

Is that "Constitution" thing still intact? I seem to recall a portion of it with some silly notion of "freedom of speech" or something, or was it repealed?

Re:making student evaluations public

[cperciva]

Personally, I think student evaluations should be made public. If a student completely fails to grasp even the simplest of concepts, and fails a course as a result, that information should be online as a public record so that people can choose to avoid that student in the future.

Oops. You're talking about the opposite type of student evaluations. My bad.

Re:Problem is...

[droleary]

To say someone is schizophrenic when you are not an expert in the field is libelous, in any case.

This is a good example of why the system is screwed up. The way it should be is that if you are not an expert in the field (of psychology) then it cannot be libel. In that case, you're just a guy stating your opinion and not a medical professional giving a diagnosis. What's next, I need to be a proctologist to claim the President has his head up his ass, and then I can only do so with with the x-ray as evidence?

Re:Well....

[danoatvulaw]

only on weeknights when the temperature drops to below freezing.. but i stress ONLY ON WEEKNIGHTS!

Re:Schools

[geekoid]

" It can take much longer than necessary to get rid of a problem professor..."

I'm thinking duct tape and a trunk.

Re:well

[ComaVN]

Ah yes, he's in denial. How typical for his condition.

Re:Schools

[SharkJumper]

It would actually be pretty neat if we could standardize the instructor review systems in a manner similar to amazon's book reviews..

Or like Ebay's buyer/seller reviews, thus giving the teacher a nice opportunity to respond.

Student: Test wasn't shipped on time. Professor never explained my low grade. Don't purchase education from this professor!!!!! FFFFFFFFFF-------!!!

Professor: Student was late to class and never returned emails. Never received payment. Responsibility for education rests on student!!!!!!!

SharkJumper