In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:
I have a question about web presence. I'm in my second year on the job market.
I know that some committee members google candidates, because they leave a footprint on linkedin, academia.edu, philpeople. I do not use social media apart from those sites.
If you google my name, one of the first things to come up is a reddit comment from a student in the first week of classes in the first class I taught, a year ago. It expresses extreme frustration at my shaky lecturing. It also expresses frustration at the fact that their department (biomedical sciences) requires them to take this philosophy course -- but that's mentioned as an aside. Two other students from the same class chime in, agreeing. A student from another course I was teaching the same term, in which I had a better first week, expresses disagreement, but that's a ways down the thread.
The reddit thread is a year old. My teaching evaluations are so-so and can't entirely counterbalance it. Students tend to give fairly balanced critiques that reflect the real weaknesses in my lecture style -- though they also say other things that reflect strengths in the facilitation of classroom discussion. In other words, the reddit thread expresses (though also sort of caricatures) a genuine shortcoming.
Since this thread, which has been dormant for almost a year, is still at the top of my google results, I've started to think that it might be a good idea to ask for advice about the effect that this might have, and whether there is anything I can or should do to counterbalance it. (The problem is partly related to the google algorithm, which places reddit results near the top of the results, but that's not within anyone's control.)
I wouldn't worry about what the OP describes. Everyone knows that unhappy students can say things online (including on RateMyProfessors), so I think search committees who come across this stuff are likely to take it with a real grain of salt, especially if your official student evaluations are decent. The only time to worry, I think, is if the number and tenor of negative online comments is overwhelming, and/or this is corroborated by official evaluations.
But what do other readers think?
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