TeacherReviews.com Forced Offline 664
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."
Schools (Score:5, Informative)
Blog text - before it gets slashdotted (Score:5, Informative)
TeacherReviews.com is free site I run for students which lets students share opinions of professors with other students. I have been pressured to shut it down. I'm not sure if it will be down forever or just a short amount of time until some changes are made. Please read on to find out why and what I am going to do about it.
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." These reviews should not have been on the site.
I immediately deleted this professor's reviews, as I always do those rare times that a professor complains. He still threatened to sue - and even threatened to get the involvement of the teacher's union American Federation of Teachers. A lawsuit is not something I have the time or money to be involved in, no matter how confident I am that the courts would side in the favor of free speech and the site.
This would be the first lawsuit against TeacherReviews, however TeacherReview, the precursor site to TeacherReviews had one lawsuit against in about four years ago. TeacherReview had a "no review is ever deleted" policy. The ACLU helped defend TeacherReview, and TeacherReview achieved a victory - the two professors involved settled just days before the San Francisco Superior Court hearing
The purpose of Teacher Reviews has always been to help students find the best professors to take, however the quality and reliability of TeacherReviews has been diminished by the few users who have used the site to write insults, accusations, remarks that can be considered slanderous.
As I find about about these reviews, I always delete them. They no have merit, are not helpful to anyone, and are obviously the product of a bored student who just wants to harm the reputation of a professor. That is not the purpose of TeacherReviews.
There are over 36,000 reviews on the site - far too many for me to read and evaluate. Because of this, and the threat of lawsuit, I have elected to take down TeacherReviews.com for now - at least until I can make some needed changes to how the site works.
Here are some of the changes I hope to put in place:
* Instant review removal. As a rule, I have always removed reviews upon a professor's request. Today the system is manual and it is not obvious enough how it works. The new system will have a link for removing reviews next to every review. Anybody will be able to instantly remove inappropriate reviews. Some friends and I will evaluate these removed reviews.
* Easy professor removal. I believe professors should have the right to make their reviews be private. A professor will have the ability to hide all reviews from public view. Reviews posted will be emailed to that professor, but not shared with the rest of the world. The number of reviews and possibility other information will remain on the site.
* Hide Reviews from Google. One of the complaints I got from a the professor was that if you searched Google for his name, his reviews would show up pretty high in the list of found items. Normally this is a good thing, but if the reviews are inappropriate, then it is not approbate for the to be showing up in Google.
* Email notification of New Reviews. Professors should not have to regularly visit TeacherReviews to see if they have new reviews posted. This feature will give them the option of receiving email when new reviews are posted. Students will be able to use this feature as well. New reviews will also be available via RSS.
* Date-separated reviews. Today reviews that are two years old and older are listed along side of recent reviews. Since people change, I believe that these older reviews need to be identified as older reviews, and be put on a separate page.
These features I'm not sure about:
Ebay precedent? (Score:3, Informative)
Wouldn't this logically apply to teacher reviews and make them nonliable for things posted by their users?
E-Bay... (Score:5, Informative)
Just a few days later teacherreviews.com caves in? Typical.
Polyratings (Score:5, Informative)
Speaking as a bipolar paranoid schizophrenic... (Score:4, Informative)
I've been working for quite some time to change that.
Re:Other sites? (Score:3, Informative)
one example... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:1st Amendment? (Score:1, Informative)
that is why boycotts of the stars at events durring the war were legal. you can say what ever you like and the government will not touch you (out side what thurgood marshal set forth about dangerouse speech). but that does not mean you are free from paying consequenses for what you say from other non-governmental groups or individuals.
"Bipolar Paranoid Schizophrenic." (Score:2, Informative)
Paranoid: Exhibiting or characterized by extreme and irrational fear or distrust of others.
Schizophrenic: Of, relating to, or characterized by the coexistence of disparate or antagonistic elements.
Now considering I'm not a psychologist, I don't know about #1 and #3, but as the comments were deleted and he still threatened to sue, the "paranoid" label sounds appropriate.
Re:Prerequisite (Score:1, Informative)
David Corey Professor of Science (other) Overall Rating: F Reviews: 2 Classes: 2 Review this professor. Bi-polar
Re:You don't need to delete all the site (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Legal? (Score:5, Informative)
Secondly, the method that libel is disseminated is in fact of the upmost importance these days. Thanks to the one teeny tiny good (and constitutional) bit of the infamous CDA, it is legal for people providing services on the Internet (e.g. fora) to have libellous statements therein.
The originator of the libel can be sued -- but no suit can be brought against the web site where the libel resides.
The professor hasn't got a leg to stand on, and the site -- and the offensive comments -- need to go back up.
Re:That Pesky Thing... (Score:1, Informative)
Nobody is accusing the Congress of passing a law abrigding the web site's freedom of speech (or press?), so the Constitutional protection is not directly relevant. In America you can sue anybody for anything, and the threat of the expense of defending a lawsuit is not mentioned in the Constitution.
It's going back up. (Score:5, Informative)
February 10th blog entry [dylangreene.com]
In part:
TeacherReviews.com is coming back, and it's going to be better than ever - for both students and professors.
The professor who threatened a lawsuit has decided to drop the case. This happened after we talked about the situation, the site as it is today, and the intent of the site, which has always been to help students, as opposed to insult professors. This professor is now helping the site by providing feedback to the new features from a professor's point of view, which is something I have not looked into before.
Re:Schools (Score:3, Informative)
Article lists wrong reason for shutdown (Score:4, Informative)
No. The site was taken down because the site owner caved (temporarily) in the face of a potential lawsuit. There was no legal decision, no jackbooted thugs at the door, no massive DoS attack, no trashing the First Amendment.
The site owner took it down himself. And it appears it will be coming back online [dylangreene.com], with some form of moderation.
Anonymous teacher rating sites are worthless (Score:5, Informative)
There's a similar web site called RateMyTeachers.com [ratemyteachers.com] that lets you rate high school teachers (its sister site, RateMyProfessors.com [ratemyprofessors.com], offers the same service for college profs). I've been teaching high school for 5 1/2 years now, and after my sister emailed me a link to the ratings site, I immediately told my students that hang out in my classroom during lunch to go to the site and say the meanest, most ridiculous things about me possible. Why? Simply to prove the point that if students who like me can say awful, untrue things about me and have them published on the internet, then it's impossible to take those reviews any more seriously than a slashdot poll.
Now, as a professional educator, I value feedback and constructive criticism (it's a fundamental basis of education, so if it's good enough for our students, then why not the teachers?), but like any feedback, it needs to be accompanied with sufficient explanation and some degree of trust. Unfortunately, there's no incentive for anyone to be constructive or even honest on sites that allow anonymous ratings. Sure, you might be able to get an overall view of how students liked or disliked a teacher or professor, but giving them a numerical rating from 1.0 to 5.0 is as useful as basing a person's abilities solely on their SAT, ACT or IQ test score.
If a student really wants to have an effect on a teacher, they should go and talk to them about the problems they were having or make some friendly suggestions. Is this going to work on every teacher? Absolutely not - teachers can be some of the most egotistical and defensive people, and there are some you simply can't reach. (You should see teachers react to having other teachers come into their classroom for peer review - you can almost see their skin crawl.) However, I've found some of the negative comments I received about my teaching, especially early on when I was student teaching, which was such a bad experience that I considered not going into teaching at all, and from students who try but are still struggling, are some of the most helpful when I try to improve my teaching abilities.
However, I simply don't think online, anonymous reviews do anyone any good any more than high-stakes testing helps schools or students improve. The only way to improve a professor or teacher is to try to approach them about their shortcomings, and if that doesn't work (which really wouldn't be surprising), then switch classes and take someone you can enjoy, or suffer through it and hope the class goes quickly.
Re:Problem is... (Score:3, Informative)
Now in the rest of the world, the standard is much different.
pure bs (Score:2, Informative)
You forgot to say IANAL (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Problem is... (Score:5, Informative)
I think it's a shame that these sites are so vulnerable to this kind of legal abuse. I also take music courses at my school, so I'm both a teacher and a student at the same time. I've posted reviews of my music teachers, because I thought the site was a good idea.
Switching back to my other hat as a teacher, it was always interesting to see the contrast between the whototake.com comments on me and the comments students would write when they were formally surveyed at the end of the semester. The online reviews seemed to be self-selected: AFAICT, only the most disgruntled 10% of the class would ever bother to post there.
This could be the only exposure that his potential students get to him. A determined effort to slander his teaching ability -- when very people know him anyway -- could literally ruin his career, as tenure decisions are made in part on teaching ability.
Well, no, because (a) the tenure decision would be made based on the surveys administered formally by the school; (b) research-oriented schools only pay lip service to teaching as an important component of the tenure decision; (c) tenure committees are made up of faculty memers, who realize that disgruntled students are generally disgruntled because they wanted an easy A and didn't get it.
I have to admit to being a little cynical about the whole thing. Some students make good comments that really help me improve my teaching, but many just can't believe that they're really expected to put in 2 hours a week outside of class for every unit they're taking. Many of them write comments that just show totally unrealistic expectations, e.g., they complain that I won't let their whole lab group turn in a single lab report for a grade.
It was also funny reading some of the things students posted on whototake.com about other teachers: DR SMITH SUCKS BIGTIME!! SHE THE FUCKIN WORST ENGLISH TEECHUR IN THE WORLD! WHAT A BITCH!!!! I TOOK ENGLISH 1 FROM HER. AND I HAD TO DROP! CUZ, SHE THINK WE GOT NOTHING TO DO BUT READ BORRING BOOKS. N RIGHT PAPERS N SHIT.
Actually -- TeacherReviews is coming back. (Score:5, Informative)
Actually -- TeacherReviews is coming back.
I put up another blog post this morning at about 4am about it:
Quoted from
http://www.dylangreene.com/blog.asp?blogID=
==================
TeacherReviews.com is coming back, and it's going to be better than ever - for both students and professors.
The professor who threatened a lawsuit has decided to drop the case. This happened after we talked about the situation, the site as it is today, and the intent of the site, which has always been to help students, as opposed to insult professors. This professor is now helping the site by providing feedback to the new features from a professor's point of view, which is something I have not looked into before.
Here are some changes I've been working on:
Redesigned and rebuilt the entire site from scratch. Not one line of HTML, ASP, or stored procedure code is from the old site. There will be a fresh new look that will hopefully be easier for you to navigate, and the system will make it easier for me to plug new features into.
I've reorganized the database. For example, departments are now associated with classes instead of professors - since a professor might teach classes in different departments, but classes typically don't change departments. All 34,000 reviews are still there.
Reviews can be "Flagged for Removal." Anybody can flag a review, but only volunteers and I will have the ability to permanently delete them. When a review is flagged, you will see the grade and the flag, but not the content unless it is unflagged.
When a Flagged Review is removed, it is considered Banned from the system. If a user has too many Banned reviews, that user risks being banned from using TeacherReviews.
Professors who ask not to be reviewed will still have their names in the system and it will still accept new reviews for them in case they change their mind. Their reason for not wanting to be on the site will replace their reviews.
Helping out:
Contact your editors: TeacherReviews can make a great story for your school or local paper. I've been interviewed twice this week from different papers. Who's next?
Donate: Donations will go toward improving TeacherReviews unless you say otherwise.
Create Fliers: Schools always have players for posting flyers. Save those fliers because I'm also going to create a Flier Exchange to share your fliers with others.
Finally - once again, thank you everybody who wrote in. As of right now (~4am), my blog entry "What Happened to TeacherReviews?" has just under 200 comments. I've received over 100 emails, and I think I managed to reply to every single one of them. If you didn't get a reply it might have been eaten by my spam filter.
So... Save your TeacherReviews.com bookmarks. The new site is coming soon.
==================
My first time being slashdotted and I was off watching The Daily Show...
RMT is better... (Score:2, Informative)
Forget it (Score:2, Informative)
and
www.ratemyprofessors
are still around.
They are based on the same system (operated by the same people) and they have a pretty decent system for regulating comments and reviews.
My major complaint with both of the fact that ANYONE can annonymously mark a comment as inappropreiate which allows anyone to "deface" the site.
Also if a school's administration isn't careful just anyone (READ students) can become the admin of their www.ratemy*.com account very easily by writing a simple e-mail.
i cant spell and i didnt type this comment in ms word first... sorry
-SniperBoB-
Re:Blog text - before it gets slashdotted (Score:5, Informative)
TeacherReviews.com is coming back, and it's going to be better than ever - for both students and professors.
The professor who threatened a lawsuit has decided to drop the case. This happened after we talked about the situation, the site as it is today, and the intent of the site, which has always been to help students, as opposed to insult professors. This professor is now helping the site by providing feedback to the new features from a professor's point of view, which is something I have not looked into before.
Re:Blog text - before it gets slashdotted (Score:5, Informative)
Libel (Score:3, Informative)
Freedom of speech? (Score:3, Informative)
who scored you "Insightful"?? (Score:3, Informative)
Republican tend to resort to violence early and often.
First off, only two wars in the history of the US were initiated with Republican Presidents in office: Gulf Wars I and II. Every other war from the War of 1812 on were started by Democrats (I'm including the Civil War in this, as it was Southern Democrats who seceeded from the Union and sparked the war). So to claim that Republicans "resort to violence early and often" is just plain assinine.
Secondly, no political persusasion is free of nutjobs out to hurt or destroy innocent people (incidentally, the nutjobs who burned down black churches and tried to blow them up in the South in the 60s were all Democrats, as was Nathan Bedford Forrest, the founder of the KKK). Trying to paint all conservatives as violent maniacs is hateful speech, pure and simple.
Why is it that liberals constantly feel the need to attack conservatives and their principles in such crude and childish fashion?
Re:Schools (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Blog text - before it gets slashdotted (Score:5, Informative)
The difference is the professor is (potentially) providing a service that I am paying for. It is not the reverse with the students.
-Colin [colingregorypalmer.net]
Re:Freedom of speech? (Score:3, Informative)
The US legal system has always defended against slander and libel. And thus, you're free to make as many negative opinions about people as you wish. However, you may not state falsehoods about people as fact.
IMHO, the system probably doesn't seem as "screwed" if you are the victim.
Re:Schools (Score:3, Informative)