Dylan Greene dot com

Hey, first comment...

Just thought that I'd throw my opinion out there. I never actually have been to your site while it was running full force, but I have been to similar ones (ratemyprofessor.com).

The greatest thing about the Internet is the unbelievable freedom it gives people to express their ideas and beliefs. The potential and relative downside is that while people find this freedom great, grand, and wonderful most of the time, they can suddenly jump ship when they see something they don't like.

The fact that this professor actually threatened a lawsuit adequetly demonstrates his obvious naivety. He arrogantly assumes that just because someone expresses a point of view, however incorrect it may be, that he has some right to point his finger and demand repercussions.

So somebody bashed him, so what? The reviewer was venting and while it may not have been appropriate, did it do any harm? As if the Internet is full of fact and truth without a trace of lies, mistakes, propaganda, blah, blah blah...

I don't think you're a wuss for taking the site down, but things like this do irritate me. The fact you can sue anyone for anything these days is a valid source of worry everyone. Taking the site down was probably the best course of action, though I really hope that it makes a comeback worthy of it's predicessor.

I'm sure the changes that you're enacting may improve the overal performance of the site; general moderation by the public does seem to work pretty well usually. The only thing I'll say is that I hope the professors are not allowed any say at all as to what happens on the site. If they want to do something about their ratings, they should do it in the classroom.

Look on the bright side-

The publicity from this fiasco will get you a lot more traffic.

Third post! Ooga ooga!

Sinka is right - I was using ratemyprofessor.com before, but now i'll be sure to check out your site as well.

Re:"The only reviews that will be removed are those that are considered slanderous."

Slander usually refers to spoken statements. Libel refers to written or printed. So, add libelous for accuracy.

I'm sorry to hear of your troubles. After I was fired from my last job for my website, I tried to pursue every legal recourse I could to no avail. It seems the laws in this country of ours favor the "offended" rather than the offender, regardless of truth. Stay strong, though, the Internet takes care of its own. :)

I've never been to this site before, but it seems useful. I'm concerned that you'd allow professors to take down (email to them instead of making public) all their reviews on a whim though, it's basically letting anyone who would otherwise complain not allow anyone to see the bad things posted about them. Keep it to the instant removal system, but don't have a professor opt-out.

(PS, not to mention the fact that it would be difficult to verify the identity of the professor in question.)

You know what would be cool (if you havent' thought of it already) would be to indicate for each professor how many reviews were removed for/by that professor. I think something like that would paint a clearer total picture of the professor's performance without necessarily putting anything slanderous out there.

I'm a professor who works in a faculty of education. And, from about one-third of my class (which is taking a "science methods" course in Post-degree program....so it's a one-year program to award a BEd) I get consistently quite poor reviews. As far as I've ever been able to tell, those reviews come from the students who should not be, in my "professional" view, in the program at all. My university accepts them, against all of the resolutions passed by the professors in my faculty, with undergraduate averages in science (and other subject areas) in the mid to low 50% range.....because they use the program fees to subsidize other faculties that don't bring in enough money to support themselves (and because they have a policy of accepting people who graduated from my institution with quite LOW grades over those who graduated from other (and more prestigious) institutions with quite high grades....mid to high 80's). So, on web sites like this, and others like it, I get public flaying for something that I should be doing....developing a professional degree program that has people with insufficient backgrounds get quite low marks. But do they ever go "hey, maybe I shouldn't be a teacher?". No. The fault, apparently, is mine. So I get substantial abuse for doing what I should be doing for the public...presenting a professional program that poor students fail (and I don't think there's any argument that somebody who barely passes an undergraduate degree in a subject is a "poor" student....or not very bright or whatever) because my "goal" as a professional is to improve the quality of teachers in our schools and to make sure that students who don't have a science background themselves sufficient to teach college prep grade 12 science have difficulty doing so because of their grades (and kindly note that I teach a "methods" course that is premised on having a good science background as a prerequisite and in a one year program I can't compensate for four years of inadequate science background). Frankly, I'm not surprised that somebody has threatened to sue you as these sites offer substantial opportunity for abuse and misrepresentation. All of the above is just food for thought....

Hey Kids, the coverage is good news. Don't panic, keep teachreviews organic! ;) I've had some teachers even mention during their introductory lectures to go check out the site and see what people say about them before taking their class! It's a valuable tool. I think it would be good to moderate students who are angry about their grade. I don't have a problem with removing posts that are just plain noise (unfortunately, that equals administrative overhead, however.) Also a statement mentioning to the posting student to only put factual and constructive information up would be helpful. If you run into problems with libel, talk to some people at eff.org and see what they think.

Hey Anonymous, try out a questionaire/survey on your students at the end of the semester/quarter. Ask them what they think you could do to improve your class. You'll get good feedback, I'm sure. The value I see in teacher review mostly is that it keeps the teachers (this is not you, clearly, otherwise you wouldn't be spending your time reading this) who are set in their ways *and comfortable* from stagnating on developing new teaching methods and learning things themselves, from the students. It gives the students a voice to say, "Yeah, I got a B, but that teacher showed up late, never had addiquate lecture material, gave poor examples and if I was a teacher grading them, I'd give them a C." There is tremendous value in that. As for the bad reviews you have received, it seems inevitable that even good teachers, who are hard, will get bad reviews. If I remember correctly, the dude who admins this site did add a method for teachers to post comments back and remark on why, perhaps, students gave them reviews. Some teachers, for example, (and this does sound like you) are in a position where they have to get many years of missed knowledge into the heads of students and some students might resent them for that position. Goes with the territory, but with a simple statement like that along with your review, the students reading the reviews will take the comments with a grain of salt and know what they are getting into before they enroll. It's a tricky balancing act, but this is the way the world is going now. If teacherreviews went offline, I'd put the next variant up myself. It's too valuable to leave offline.

Ah, one more thought: impliment a "flag for review" function, rather than making a job for someone to review all reviews. This kind of thing is implimented on craigslist.org.

Great going dude! You da man! You show those filthy professor whose boss. Professors all suck anyway! This site makes me be in college with less work, which is good.

I had two professors from another institution threaten a student and the university where I work with libel charges...because the student had posted on his Website quotes of material they themselves had posted to a newsgroup! I had to explain to them that something you actually said yourself could not possibly be considered libelous against yourself. I've been teaching college for 11 years and in university I.T. administration for 9 and I can attest to the facts that there are many, many professors out there who have no grasp of the First Amendment and how it works. You have to remember that although professors may be very, very bright and knowledgable within their discipline, they may not know much about anything else, including the law. Also many professors in universities today did not grow up in the United States and may be genuinely unaware of the depth of protection of free speech provided by the Constitution.

On another note, I am gratified by the general tone and intelligence of the comments on this whole issue. In the program I teach in we place great weight on student evaluations and I have just come to accept the fact that students that do badly in my classes due to sheer lack of effort on their own part are always going to rate me badly. My boss is well aware of what I am doing, so the comments come as no surprise to him either; you just don't give a failing grade to a graduate student with out notifying the department chair, and they then are prepped for these kinds of student critiques. In a public forum such as this one, it is only fair and reasonable that a faculty member should have the opportunity to defend him or herself in an equally public manner, but that in no was should negate or cancel the opportunity of the students to express their opinions. I'm looking forward to seeing the revamped site.

One more thing; the poster of the comment immediately above mine has correctly named himself and if he shows up in one of my classes I'll be sure to call him that.

You know its better to have a teacher slandered on a website than splattered across the wall with a semi-automatic carbine AK-47 with a modified grip and new model scope.

You don't need to pay for a lawyer. A public defense attorney will be provided to you free of charge. You cannot legally be forced to go to trial without an attorney just because you can't afford one. "You have a right to an attorney, if you cannot afford an attorney one will be provided for you..."

Put the site back up, tell the professor to shut up and read the Bill of Rights (as you should do if you aren't aware that you have a right to an attorney) and work on the new site in the background. If a judge doesn't throw the case out before it even goes to trial (highly unlikely) the only thing it will cost you is time. There's plenty of legal precedent to get this case over with quickly in your favor.

"One more thing; the poster of the comment immediately above mine has correctly named himself and if he shows up in one of my classes I'll be sure to call him that."

You don't belong in the classroom with an attitude like that. Students are paying you to teach. We're not paying you to express your attitude problem.

"I have just come to accept the fact that students that do badly in my classes due to sheer lack of effort on their own part are always going to rate me badly."

We're not paying you so we can teach ourselves. I don't suppose you've ever considered that these students do badly because you're a terrible teacher. And the students that do well do so despite you.

"I don't have to listen to him because he got a bad grade."

You really are arrogent and dense.

Ben

#17 you're a juvenile wannabe.

Wait, I mean, uhhh...please don't kill me!

christ...I hope you're not an indication of the quality of your generation, and btw bring it, turd

I'm afraid that I have to agree with the people who said that removing reviews or allowing professors to remove themselves from the site WILL, in fact, make the site useless. What, for example, use would Consumer Reports be if theo only said the good things about the cars they review, and omitted facts like the ford pinto's tendancy to explode and burn its occupants to death?

The fact is, that there ARE bad professors out there. There ARE professors out there who just can't teach. NOT every bad review is from a student who is underqualified, or just won't try. And a review site *IS* useless if we can't read the bad with the good, and be warned away from these guys.

And a bad professor may even be bad for fairly benign reasons. Where I went to college, the engineering and CS departments had a policy of hireing professors out of "the indusrty", based on their INDUSTRY expierience. This makes for some great insights on how "the indusrty" works. Unfortunately, someone who IS an excellent engineer or programmer is not always the best person to TEACH someone how to be an engineer or programmer. And our CS program suffered, somewhat, for that. (IMHO, at least)

But if you refuse to allow the bad to be presented along with the good, no one will ever know that without actually going and taking those classes, and possibly wasting thousands of dollars worth of their tuition money.

I agree with:

"We're not paying you so we can teach ourselves. I don't suppose you've ever considered that these students do badly because you're a terrible teacher. And the students that do well do so despite you."

I earned my BSEE from Case Institute in Cleveland. And I mean earned, because despite the fact I paid the professors to teach all they really did was test.

Teachers, Doctors, Police - you are paid to serve your customers you are not doing them a favor. At least waitresses understand that concept.

Let the reviews flow

>>You don't belong in the classroom with an attitude like that. Students are paying you to teach. We're not paying you to express your attitude problem.<<

I see.....soooooo students (primarily student's parents to be precise...and/or the rest of us taxpayers) are free to have their attitude problems plastered all over the net but woe be unto a prof who thinks that declaring his own thoughts is reasonable? I sure as hell think an "all professors suck" over-generalization deserves a response...and calling the poster what he called himself is in no way unreasonable. I have to ask you just how far your studies in logic have progressed...oh wait..no I don't...you've managed to show us all without my asking...

cheers

i go sf state.

i heard my school is a cheaper school compare to others. yet, the tuition is still expensive for out-of-state students.

we pay our tuition which has been raised because of the crisis. less class, less teacher.

we pay for our education.

teachers should do their job for students.

the teacherreviews.com is very helful for students who want to and need to take right class with right teacher.

it's just sad that some students bitch about their grades and teachers on the site where they shouldnt.

why can't the site exist just for students who need right classes?

is this too innocent complain?

i guess this will not make the situation any better.

sorry.

thank you dylan greene for your deed.

and also i thank all good teachers out there.

i hope the site will be back in better shape asap.

peace

Whatever their legality, some of the comments on TeacherReview surely merit DELETION. I am thinking of one in particular--a rant against one professor that included the "accusation" that he had divorced his wife in order to marry a former student. To the student critic this "outrage" was but more evidence that the teacher was unfair and incompetent.

"We're not paying you so we can teach ourselves. I don't suppose you've ever considered that these students do badly because you're a terrible teacher. And the students that do well do so despite you."

I don't think that that was the point of Ray Trygstad's post. I believe he meant that as sure as there are bad professors, there are also bad students. Many times, these students simply do not want to be in the class and will put forth no effort what-so-ever to learn the material presented (i.e., they don't do homework or other lab or reading assignments, and they miss quite a few classes trhoughout the semester). Sometimes these students expect to get a passing grade for simply paying for the course. Basically, they want to buy their degree without learning anything for it.

Yes, I understand that the students who basically don't care about their actual education are a small minority of the students out there. However, they do exist; and they do get upset (and sometimes leave horrid reviews) if they do not pass a class. I think that it's basically reviews like that that Dylan is trying to avoid on the site.

RE #18: "You don't need to pay for a lawyer. A public defense attorney will be provided to you free of charge. You cannot legally be forced to go to trial without an attorney just because you can't afford one. "You have a right to an attorney, if you cannot afford an attorney one will be provided for you..." "

Actually, I think that the sixth amendment only refers to criminal proceedings. A lawsuit against the web-site would probably be a civil matter, not a criminal one. Thus, the right of an attorney is not guaranteed.

Um, doesn't RateMyProfessors.com already have these features? And about 50 times as many ratings?

We need more of these sites. I work with a bunch of fools here. Hmmm.... maybe ratemycoworkers.com? ratemymanager.com? Lets design a site that allows you to select the rate description while you are rating if the site doesn't have a rating system that you want to rate by. call it ratemyblank.com

Way back in the days when Yahoo was a CGI script, some friends of mine thought it would be a great idea to do what you did, the idea got out, and professors were FREAKED OUT. Some of us got all political like "censorship is crap, and freedom can only make things better for students." Later, sympathetic professors explained that wrong reviews are much more expensive than the potential upside of good (as in journalistically accurate) reporting. Also, student opinion does not equal the quality of the benefit the student gets from the experience. There is a bigger problem than between student/instructor in the academic system, and your site should engineer a way to expose that kind of stuff while avoiding the harms of creating a red-herring for the Universities to attack.

Hope the teachers don't have to much influence on your website to hide the truth about teachers.

I hope you have example messages that show how to negatively characterize a professor without actually crossing any legal lines, suggestion legalese that allows creative descriptions with the appropriate loopholes. Then users can express themselves to their hearts content, without causing the site problems.

If students can put names of their professors, why shouldn't they have to put their names on the reviews? I think this would add validity to their comments. Ok...Freedom of Speech....I am all for that...but posting views anonymously? I am not to sure how accurate the information really is. People on the board flamed the instructor who posted anonymously. Calling the person a coward..how is this site any different? Are we the students cowards? I have never heard of an instructor being able to take back a grade, most of the time you will not see that instructor again. With that said I think students should be required to post their name. Maybe this will force people to "Think before you they speak".

Re: #32 and his/her belief that professors could not take back a grade ...

At my university, professors have up to one year from the end of the class to modify/update grades. This is not to say that the power would be used in a vindictive way, but it is a valid reason to allow anonymous reviews on the site.

I'm pulling a 4.0 and I had never even seen or posted reviews to any of the ratings sites until about a month ago. In fact the really bad profs I had, deserved worse reviews than I wrote, and I earned A's in those classes.

I like #15's comments, you make alot of sense, man. However, I have a hunch that you know better than anyone that some your colleages are in the wrong profession. Matter of fact, they're the ones you should consider confronting, and save people like Dylan, and all students in general, a whole lot of hassle.

This education is costing me a fortune, and I think teachers make way too much money for what they do. Recently, my tuition went up (again), and when it was picked up in the local paper, the admins claimed that their salaries were still below comparable executive positions. So what, now schools consider themselves on par with corporate America? If so, that's one corp. that would be 3 seconds from the eternal dirt nap. If incompetence needed a role model, the administration/faculty at my school would be their new poster child.

I had some great profs too, and they earned rave reviews from my keyboard. But, and this is sad, they only count for about HALF of the faculty by my own experience.

Who is at fault? I don't know and I don't care. I have enough work to do just being a student, and I don't feel it's my responsability to guide my school down the straight and narrow (at least for free).

But, it feels really good to see their names out in the open connected to an appropriate grade of sorts. I'm sure the new site may not have the raw feel of the original, but anything that evolves from what I consider semi-underground, to full-on public, rarely ever does.

Furthermore, I'm sure poor students will continue to be a problem with misplaced anger leading to unjustified reviews, but again they're not "my problem".

Things seemed better when teachers in general used to make less money, and still did it because they wanted to, not because they couldn't make it in the real world, and decided to hide behind the veil of academia as a last resort. #20 touched on the bigger problem of having field experience yet lacking teaching skills, but let's face it, alot of them are high on credentials but low on worth to begin with. Again, this is the schools' human resource dept.s' problems, not mine.

At least Dylan is trying to do something, imperfect as it may seem, and it's really not his problem either. Matter of fact any rewards that may come of it, in due time, will be justly deserved. I'm tired now......goodbye and good luck.

Thanks, Kirk (#34), yes--I am well aware that some of my colleagues are (for example) gifted researchers and terrible teachers. Students, on the other hand, need to know what their college is all about. If you want to go to a major PhD-granting research university you need to realize that the more senior a professor is, the more likely it is that their main focus is research rather than teaching. If you go to a smaller college that only offers graduate education at the Master's level, odds are a bit better that you will get professors who are more focused on teaching, and if you go to an institution that offers only undergraduate degrees, you will have professors with a real passion for teaching as expectations for research from them will be minimal. They work there because they want to teach instead of research. In major research universities, it's research and publications that get you tenure and promotion, not what your students think of your teaching. Most Department Chairs at major research universities don't really give a rat's ass about what students think of their faculty as teachers, as the academic reputation of the department is also based on research and publications.

I happen to love teaching, and unlike most posters here (many of whom took issue with my previous posts) as you may notice I am not at all afraid to use my full name. I don't believe it's arrogance--I believe my work stands on it's own and the knowledge my students carry away is the true demonstration of my skill as an educator. If I am rated or ranked on a site like Dylan's (which I already said I think is a good idea), I just think I would to be able to make a public response. I teach well and make every attempt to cover my subject material completely; if a student does poorly in my class it's certainly not because I have not covered the material, it's because they have not put forth the effort. I'll never convince everyone but if you want the true test, show up in my classroom. And I still maintain that someone who labels themself "shitheadfilth" has the attitude problem--not me.

Why waste time AND ATP complaining about teacherreviews.com and why it should be put back up. Start your own review website or visit another one!! Don't waste time waiting for teacherreviews.com to come back up...

If teacher reviews ever come back up, can you please add a section describing the age and hotness of the teacher in question. I tend to learn more from really hot teachers :)

If you remove tyhe reviews considered as "slanderous," then the site becomes worthless!! How about the university decided that our professors were not allowed to give us grades under C??? They would scream bloody murder! Then how come we're not free to write what we think of them?? If a professor is doing a good job, then he's not going to worry about teacher reviews.com, since he knows he's going to receive good reviews.

Please Dylan, don't compromise and put this website under censorship of a few scared pofessors. If you do that, they win, there is no freedom of speech and the website is useless.

It seems like the professor who is suing teacherreviews is a coward: we don't even know his name or her name.

I really hope the website will remain the same and you won't allow such a coward to decide what can and what can 't be shown on YOUR website!

I for one think sites like yours are a great resource for everybody. In essense the additional information we students are recieving about professors helps us decide on who to pick for class, obviously. However, another great point, is that the additional information creates competition. First, lets think about why a professor may get a bad rating: a) the student had a genuine concern with the professor's teaching style, or b) the student posted negative reviews which were subjective or invalid. It is safe to assume that when a student enjoys a professor he/she will not post negative comments about them. Now, why are professor's up in arms about rating sites? Going back to competition, I think angry professors are afraid. They are afraid that people might actually find out what goes on in their class, whereas before they could get away doing what they were doing, now they have to fear administrators looking at review sites and actually having something to go on other than the professor's word. Let us imagine two car manufacturers, X and Y. Now lets assume X produces a great car and Y produces a bad car. It is to X's advantage for reviewers like Car & Driver, Consumer Reports, etc to rate their car... they will get, in essense, free advertising. But manufacturer Y will try to discredit the ratings and hold back as much information as possible so that people may not find out that their car is bad. This can be applied to professors as well. Some professor may be legitimately concerned that he/she will recieve unwarranted negative reviews, but these will be isolated cases. If the professor is doing a good job overall, the positive reviews will more than likely wash away the effects of the few negative reviews. The only professors that should be really concerned are the ones that do a bad job and want to get away with it.

Final note: competition is good for the economy and is good for education because we consumers/students get much better value for our money! I can with confidence that if we get more of these rating websites up & if many more people use them that we will see a rise in the quality of our education.

Best of luck, hope to see the website back up asap :-)

The screen shots look good, but I can't imagine how this could be beneficial if the teachers get to be the final word on what's viewed by students. How is raggin' on a professor considered "slanderous"? If you had a bad experience, you should be able to say to...it's called freedom on speech. I don't remember anybody saying anything slanderous...like somebody sleeping with somebody, or cheating, or doing anything criminal. Saying a teach sucks and can't teach his way out of a bucket or can't speak a word of English isn't slander...and with the cost of college these days, it's damn good information to have before blowing your money. You should have just taken the whole thing down if you can't make it a STUDENT web site.

Julian - the slanderous reviews were attacks on professors. These rare reviews were homophobic, racist, or made false accusations. These sort of things need to be dealt with.

I just hope the reviews taken down will be ones that are indeed slanderous. We need to leave up the reviews that say, "join this class, easy A!" and the ones that say, "I hate this teacher, she makes you read 5 books, omg i am so tired F F F". It gives an idea of what the slackers think of the class, and sometimes, when you sign up for Calc 2, History, Physics+Lab, you want to sign up for a class that will fill a GE and give you an easy A, and avoid anything that may be a good class, but just to hard to work in between the other classes, and a part time job.

Also, to Ray T., I'd like to say that most students do join your classes regardless of a couple F's, because good teachers will score A's or B's regardless of whether everyone hated the class. A trully understanding teacher (and usually easy class), gets all A's. I've also seen hard teachers get all A's. These are notes to me to take the class if I enjoy the subject and it puts me forward for my major.

However a couple D's and F's are nothing compared to 2/3 A's and B's. The D's and F's are usually the brats who got pissed off, but also they help explain what type of person should not join your class. If it looks like the slacker types are the D's and F's, slackers will have a second thought, and i think that is what you want as well.

Not many people will ignore classes that have 6 A's and 2 F's. The F's are great insight, but they do not mean a bad teacher.

Don't get upset over a couple bad reviews. If people are joining your class who shouldn't be, you need to contact whoever you can to change your Pre-Req's! Don't allow people to get in the class who you know you will not pass.

and btw ray, your website is kinda scary.

www.raytrygstad.org

IMO it'd make it look a lot better if you took out 'human person'; the way it's set up makes you look like you think you are superhuman. No flaming, just trying to give a few honest thoughts...

sorry, it's: http://www.raytrygstad.com

OK i just read the thing on why you wrote Human Person and it makes good sense; but honestly if you don't click it it looks really odd. a well rounded fellow you are sir!

I think that the reviews do not necessarily reflect reality, although they hint at it. Why? Consider the following:

Given a class/teacher:

(1) The assumption is that all students get equal chance to write - not true - because not all know/use the site

(2) The students who do see the site write a review - not true, only some of them write a review

(3) The ones who write a review - assumption that the good or bad reviewers do it with equal likeliness - not true - because the bad reviewers are more likely to write something than the ones with good impression (silent majority type effect)

Conclusion:

Based on the above line of reasoning note that the -ve reviews get amplified typically.

Unless these issues are quantified properly and accounted for in a proper way, the perspective can be a distorted view

of reality.

The above points do not assume anything about the teachers or students - just something about people behavior - about which you could probably get a basic understanding from studying a little about social psychology and related fields.

My 2 cents worth

All the Best

i understand your need to cooperate with professor yet the opt-out option seems to defeat the purpose of this website. although your intent is only to remove libelous reviews, the fact that the professors can determine what actually is viewed detracts from truly helpful reviews. A LOT of professors at CCSF are just wretched and have ego issues which would equate only good reviews being shown. this would seriously make it impossible to weed out the truly great professors at schools versus the awful ones that are just there because they have tenure. i just feel like you're giving the professors way too much power over what is supposed to be an objective website.

I've put a FAQ on http://www.TeacherReviews.com - more up-to-date information is there now.

#47 - Professors won't have the power - students will. See the FAQ for more info.