Viewing topic: English First: first English school to be penalized for directory abuse

Since Michael Simmons, Academic Director at EF in Saint Petersburg, took it upon himself to use the school review system to write a short promotional article about his school, I have decided to introduce a new sanction and an amendment to the site Terms of Use policy to deal with similar situations.

The existing Terms of Use clearly prohibit school representatives from registering on the site as teachers or students. How it is not clear that a staff member with the title ‘Academic Director’ – i.e. a member of staff at the level of director, should be considered a school representative is beyond me, but the new ToS coming out later this week will remove any trace of ambiguity that there may have been.

The ToS already states that schools abusing the site will be publicly named, so this is exactly what will happen from now on. No form of abuse will be tolerated any longer.

Mr Simmons contacted me with a vacancy advertisement through the site feedback form on Nov 6. On the same day I replied with a message including the price of vacancy advertising and an invitation to email or call for further details.

I received no further contact from Mr Simmons, but on Nov 10 he apparently decided it might be more cost-effective to write a promotional ‘review’ of his school in the directory instead.

This is fairly typical of my own experience of EF – not willing to part with money. It is the second time I have been approached by EF regarding recruitment issues, and the second time they have turned down the offer of paid services.

So, I decided it was time to take the first action against a school for abusing the review system.

I should add that the review system was not introduced in order to ‘blacklist’ schools. It was designed to help teachers find reliable, impartial information about schools, to find good places to work at and to avoid the bad.

It not only protects teachers, it also protects schools. Good schools will get good reviews; bad schools will get bad reviews. When a good school gets a bad review (or vice-versa) from a site user I don’t know, I can investigate the source of the review. If I cannot verify 100% that the review is genuine, I can delete it.

In some cases, it is possible (even easy) to establish the source of a review. To Mr. Simmons’ credit (I think...) he did not make any attempt to disguise his identity (although when he registered he did say he comes from Afghanistan, which I suspect is another violation of the ToS, albeit a far less serious one).

When someone who is in the capacity to hire teachers comes along and thinks that he can use VisaRus as a free platform for promotion of his school, I get rather cross. When schools refuse point-blank to support a site that exists to promote TEFL in Russia as a whole (i.e. effectively widening the potential pool of teachers to their benefit), to protect good schools and act in the interests of teachers and, indeed, when schools ABUSE such a site... I get even more annoyed.

It galls me yet more when a school that already benefited from a positive review (benefited not only because not many schools get rated at all, but also because many of those that are rated receive negative reviews) decides to try underhandedly for a bigger slice of the pie. It already had an above-average (and arguably undeserved) rating in the directory which separated it from the lower-ranked schools, and it wanted more for free.

If some schools think they can treat your community with so little regard, how much respect do you think they have for you as individual teachers?

I decided that the best sanction against such schools was simply to change all their ratings to zero – not just the ones abusively submitted by their representatives. I am loath to create a ‘blacklist’, but something approaching it may appear in the near future. Fortunately, good connections keep me safe from anyone who would do me evil

At the moment, I’m still formulating the amendments for the ToS, but so far I have the following:

- ‘School’ means:
o the name or reputation of a school
o the ownership or management of a school
o a school collectively as a company or business
o a School Representative

- ‘School Representative’ means:
o any friend, associate or relative of school owners, managers or directors or of any person having a vested interest in the affairs of a school, whether employed by a school or otherwise
o any person authorized to represent a school in any official capacity
o any member of school staff with authority over another teacher (including but not limited to the authority to advertise vacancies, handle vacancy enquiries, interview, negotiate contract terms, hire, dismiss, discipline) whether that member of staff is described as a teacher or otherwise
o any person having a vested interest in the reputation of a school
o any person receiving reward or incentive to review, promote or otherwise represent a school

- Sanctions will be imposed against schools abusing the site. ‘Abuse’ is defined as:
o knowingly or unknowingly allowing or encouraging anyone who is a representative of their school to register on the site as a teacher
o using the site to publish job vacancies without prior authorization
o using the site to solicit job vacancies to teachers without prior authorization
o using the site to send unsolicited messages to teachers or students
o knowingly or unknowingly allowing or encouraging a representative of their school to review a school in the directory

- Sanctions will include the following:
o for any breach of the Terms of Service, a school may be publicly named with a description of its breach of the Terms of Service
o for breaches involving unsolicited messaging of teachers or students, the School in question will have its access to the site revoked. Any monies paid for access to site resources will not be refunded.
o for breaches involving the review system:
+ all reviews will be set to zero
+ any future reviews may be set to zero
+ any future reviews may not be mediated



That’s it so far. It’s sad that I have to go to such pedantic lengths, but there are schools abusing the system that I worked very hard to set up, and they are attempting to skew the information that I have made available to teachers.

Any thoughts on the ToS would be appreciated. Also, any thoughts on conditions for lifting the review sanction would also be welcomed. I’m almost tempted to say ‘pay $xxx and don’t let it happen again’ - this would pay for some nice stuff for the site, but that might get me done for extortion I’m sure it would deter them from doing it again though.