Pericles, I don't know about the advice that you received about not believing anything you read on the internet. On the internet there are truths as well as lies. Lots of good honest people post on the internet.

What your son should have told you is to be wary of what you read on the internet as there are occasions where things are written that are not true.

I do believe however those if you were to study it and investigate the issues you would find that the majority of the people that have grievances or an axe to grind have legitimate and/or justifiable good reasons to feel that way and that they need to tell.

As is often the case, my opinion is closest to Pericles' here:

"What can possibly be the justification for these sites? Who in their right mind would take even the slightest notice of their content?"

Anybody with half a brain should surely know that such sites are manipulable beyond any useful credibility. Sure, lazy journos and self-styled pundits utilise their dubious Internet elicitations, but who takes them seriously?

I agree with Jolanda:

"...I don't know about the advice that you received about not believing anything you read on the internet. On the internet there are truths as well as lies. Lots of good honest people post on the internet. "

However, there's an awful lot of bollocks out there too, from all political, philosophical, religious and other persuasions. I don't believe anything until I've verified it from several separate reliable sources, preferably from different media.

Indeed, for examples of these aspects of Internet debate one need look no further than On Line Opinion - which IMHO is one of the best of these kinds of forums. Despite this, we'd all be familiar with the extreme variation in quality of the 'truths' presented in both the articles and comments here.

While I agree that anonymity is a useful condition for expressing subjective evaluations of others, I certainly don't agree that these evaluations can be relied upon to describe objective reality. Sites like 'RateMyTeachers.com' shouldn't be banned, but they should be regarded with about as much credibility as most popular websites - i.e. zilch without corroboration.

What do students know about their teachers?

I remember in high school students constantly moaning about their teachers and how "bad" they were, when in reality they were simply strict and didn't spoon-feed them all the answers. I remember complaints about how a teacher couldn't teach from people who didn't even try and bother learn, do homework or some cases turn up regularly to school.

Feedback reports are useful in universities and tafes where adults are involved, not high schools.

The use of sites like the one referred to lack the rigour of structured analysis and responsible report writing. Teachers are subject to rigour when writing reports. There are issues about confidentiality and privacy of student information which may jeopardise their ability to respond to what could infact be defamatory comments about them in a public forum.