Tutoring reviews section?

[kenhung123]

There is quite a lot of tutors on VN. If their students can write reviews, it would be great. I have barely seen any reviews from students.

[ReVeL]

I'm assuming you mean a seperate board titled 'Tutor Reviews' or something. I think the idea has some merit.. But I also think there would have to be measures put in place to stop people faking reviews which could become a serious problem, perhaps a minimum post count requirement (Don't know if this is possible/would work?).

[m@tty]

Or the tutor has to confirm that the prospective reviewer was a student of theirs, though that would defeat the purpose of the review system: the tutor would not admit to teaching a user if they write a bad review.

[Gloamglozer]

I'm assuming you mean a seperate board titled 'Tutor Reviews' or something. I think the idea has some merit.. But I also think there would have to be measures put in place to stop people faking reviews which could become a serious problem, perhaps a minimum post count requirement (Don't know if this is possible/would work?).

One thing we will know is whether or not the tutor and the reviewer(s) are the same person.  However, this problem still exists:

Or the tutor has to confirm that the prospective reviewer was a student of theirs, though that would defeat the purpose of the review system: the tutor would not admit to teaching a user if they write a bad review.

and as ReVeL said, "fake reviews".

[ninwa]

That's the problem with all review sites though - you don't know if they're genuine. I think it's a great idea. Maybe get enwiabe to stick a post warning people to take the reviews with a grain of salt.

[Gloamglozer]

Another problem we might have is that, there might be some students who won't reveal the fault(s) of the tutor because they don't want to back stab (if you know what I mean) their tutor because after all, the tutor did assist them in one way or another.

So we could be getting plenty of reviews saying that each tutor is great just like what we have in the advertising section right now.  then this just defeats the purpose.

[ninwa]

Perhaps find a way for people to post anonymously? (as in, anonymous usernames, obviously mods/admin would still be able to see IP addresses to ascertain whether it was the tutor posting)

[sgeorge]

I'm assuming you mean a seperate board titled 'Tutor Reviews' or something. I think the idea has some merit.. But I also think there would have to be measures put in place to stop people faking reviews which could become a serious problem, perhaps a minimum post count requirement (Don't know if this is possible/would work?).

What about if there was certain amount of posts/activity/karma that a user must have before they can post a review? A bit like the karma system.
At least that way the issue of fake accounts would be at a minimum.

[Collin Li]

I agree there is a lack of information regarding good quality tutors and Merspi was originally going to go down the path of providing that service.

Feel free to take this idea and implement it.

An eBay for tutors. Registered tutors create a free account, post their ad, with no contact details allowed (or stripped), to force students to contact them via the site.

The site logs the hours they have billed (this provides an opportunity to take a cut of the money and monetise too***), and accepts reviews (maybe only after 3-5 lessons, except in the case of quitting beforehand, in which case it will be tagged like so on the review, for the other students to make their own judgements)

Reviews can be anonymous, and released at random times and dates to further protect privacy. (another possibility is only releasing reviews at particular times: at the start of each holiday period or something)

*** Infact, this is necessary to keep the integrity of the reviews, because otherwise the tutor could "tutor himself" via another account and then provide a ravingly awesome review. At least this way (s)he'd have to pay the system. Also, number of hours tutored with the student/tutor pair would be shown on the review (approximately, in a bracket, once again, to protect privacy maybe), but this value obviously increases the credibility of that review, and would probably be shown first or on top (hours could be even completely hidden, but then have reviews ordered by the backend).

[ninwa]

That sounds so hard to implement though

[Gloamglozer]

That sounds so hard to implement though

It'll definitely have be separate from the forums.  And not to mention a lot of brains and knowledge of coding.

[Collin Li]

That sounds so hard to implement though

It'll definitely have be separate from the forums.  And not to mention a lot of brains and knowledge of coding.

Well, yeah I don't expect it to be integrated into a forum. Merspi was going to be simply that, with the current Q&A as an aside/community builder.

[IntoTheNewWorld]

not to mention a lot of brains and knowledge of coding.

...or monies to hire that =]