What does this mean for sites like CourseReviews, where students post in-depth reviews of their professors and courses? Could this lead to students being punished for writing negative reviews? Are students going to be afraid to write negative reviews?
Disclaimer: I run CourseReviews, previously known as TeacherReviews, which is why I am asking.
I put up another blog post this morning at about 4am about it:
Quoted from http://www.dylangreene.com/blog.asp?blogID=3 88
================== 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...
> Ken Sakamura, a University professor) would be worth mucho if he had just charged for it.
I don't believe that. If he charged for it, then it wouldn't be so popular. If Linus had been charging for Linux since day 1, think it would be as popular today?
Correct and Proper Otherwise you're going to spend all your quick cash on fixing bugs and supporting craptacular software, not to mention bad press and angry users.
Thousands of college students use TeacherReviews.com to influence their decision as to which college classes to take. Some professors complain that they don't think it is fair that their reputation is readily available online for anybody to see (especially when their reviews on TeacherReviews.com is often the first thing Google links to), and there are professors that like it so much that they link their syllabus to the site, even when their reviews aren't so great (so that they can gather more good reviews, I suspect).
> it would be a handy thing in the living room if it ran a real OS.
Why would it matter what OS it runs? If it used Linux instead, it wouldn't suddenly have more functionality. It wouldn't suddenly have the ability to open your curtains or turn on your coffee machine. It already does what it's supposed to do: play games.
No console game player should ever care what OS their game system uses.
(I wonder if the Indrema never came to light because they expected gamers to manually mount the DVD drive before playing each game.)
The site boast several thousand student-written reviews for schools all over the world, is not-for-profit, and is run by students/slashdot readers (as opposed to company or university that might censor reviews).
Slashdot Mirror
This is easily faked by plugging a second console into the tv's inputs on the back of the tv.
They don't show the inputs on the back or mention how the "hack" was done for obvious reasons - it doesn't exist, at least not yet.
I could see the digg kids being fooled, but slashdot?
Just make motherboards, chips, etc work with A/C, problem solved.
What does this mean for sites like CourseReviews, where students post in-depth reviews of their professors and courses? Could this lead to students being punished for writing negative reviews? Are students going to be afraid to write negative reviews?
Disclaimer: I run CourseReviews, previously known as TeacherReviews, which is why I am asking.
Just one step closer to Microsoft.
Add TeacherReviews to the list.
It's not complete enough to launch, but enough is there to show something to the public.
I labeled it as "Preview" instead of "beta" because most non-techie people don't know what beta means.
I've started Roomba Wars: Episode I... Somebody want to "lend" me an Electrolux so I can continue the story?
How about running something a little more recent, like Office XP or Office 2003...
I'd be really impressed to see it running Office for Longhorn.
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...
Roomba Wars Part 1
Once I get a couple of these Roomba Clones I'll have a good army for part two - Attack of the Clones. Let the carnage (and cleaning) begin!
> Ken Sakamura, a University professor) would be worth mucho if he had just charged for it.
I don't believe that. If he charged for it, then it wouldn't be so popular. If Linus had been charging for Linux since day 1, think it would be as popular today?
Correct and Proper
Otherwise you're going to spend all your quick cash on fixing bugs and supporting craptacular software, not to mention bad press and angry users.
Thousands of college students use TeacherReviews.com to influence their decision as to which college classes to take. Some professors complain that they don't think it is fair that their reputation is readily available online for anybody to see (especially when their reviews on TeacherReviews.com is often the first thing Google links to), and there are professors that like it so much that they link their syllabus to the site, even when their reviews aren't so great (so that they can gather more good reviews, I suspect).
> it would be a handy thing in the living room if it ran a real OS.
Why would it matter what OS it runs? If it used Linux instead, it wouldn't suddenly have more functionality. It wouldn't suddenly have the ability to open your curtains or turn on your coffee machine. It already does what it's supposed to do: play games.
No console game player should ever care what OS their game system uses.
(I wonder if the Indrema never came to light because they expected gamers to manually mount the DVD drive before playing each game.)
You can share your opinions of your teachers and read other students' opinions at:
The site boast several thousand student-written reviews for schools all over the world, is not-for-profit, and is run by students/slashdot readers (as opposed to company or university that might censor reviews).
--
dylan greene
http://www.DylanGreene.com