Negative online student comments and the market

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?

Comments

[Ted Shear]

I agree with Marcus here and that there is only a very small chance that this would impact your chance of success so I wouldn't worry too much about it. That said, in my experience, success on the job market is about adding up small probabilities. So, you may try to reach out to the mods of the subreddit that the comment is posted on with a sympathetic message explaining your situation. If you're lucky, they'll take down the thread.

[anon]

I don't agree with complaining to the authors / subreddit moderators. The next step in the cycle could be a new reddit post about an angry professor making a scene about an old reddit post.

[anon again]

(to be clear, I don't think OP is either angry or making a scene or would make a scene, but am just describing how things might go online.)

[Mike Titelbaum]

I wouldn't worry about this—most search committee members will discount such evidence, if they see it at all. (Keep in mind that google searches are optimized for whoever's conducting the search; I rarely get reddit threads.) But if you can't shake the anxiety, here's something that might be a good idea anyway: In your teaching statement, you could explain the challenges you confronted in those early lectures, how you recognized them, and what you're doing to improve. That will both give a good impression of you as an educator, and contextualize the reddit comments for anyone who sees them.

[on the tt]

Yeah, do not respond to these posts or acknowledge them. Replying to old comments is strange. Reaching out to have (petty but apparently reasonable) complaints taken down is an overreaction. You aren't being accused of anything wrong or bad. If you respond to the posts, as was suggested in another thread, the best case scenario is you come off as insecure. Perhaps worse. Imagine if you had a colleague who responded to any complaint about them online? Horrible.

But also: the posts simply do not matter anymore! You'd try to get better at teaching if those posts did not exist or if you'd never found them, or if they only said good things.

Instead, try and create a growth or progress narrative with your teaching docs. Talk about what you've worked on and what's been effective.

[Trevor Hedberg]

It's extremely doubtful that reddit comments will make any difference in a job search. Feedback on sites like Rate My Professor and Reddit are never representative of the class as a whole, and since some of us teach classes with 100+ students, it's pretty much a guarantee that there will be some disgruntled students in the mix. And those are the most likely students to post in those venues. This isn't worth worrying about unless there's a pattern of negative student feedback in official teaching evaluations.

[Question]

I have a similar question about RateMyProfessor specifically. After this past fall semester a student posted a very negative review of a class of mine that contained numerous false claims about the class (regarding, for instance, assignment structure, course policies, etc.). Students are entitled to have a negative opinion of my class, but I don't think a post like this that blatantly misrepresents my class is fair. I emailed RateMyProfessor about this several weeks ago but they haven't responded. Has anyone had success getting a comment like this taken down? Posts like this seem to constitute libel, but I'm not sure what (if anything) can be done about them.

[it is what it is]

@Question&OP I suggest ignoring it.. I had one-star on that website with numerous complaints (and no counterbalancing) when I was on the job market, but I had never engaged them in any way and had no problem getting multiple job offers.

[Kevin Timpe]

Many of us on hiring committee not only know the problems with such sites, but actively oppose the use of course evals in hiring (and promotion) decisions.

I agree with other folks here that you shouldn’t do anything about the thread.

[TT Prof Now]

@Question...

It's actually quite easy to get comments taken down. RMP's report function seems to be run by a bot. Whenever I've had blatantly false reviews (i.e., not opinions, but stating false information), I've reported it and given the reason as "false information" and the reviews were removed within seconds.

[Ted Shear]

For what it's worth, I wasn't suggesting responding on the Reddit post or to the author of the post (which would obviously be a terrible idea). My suggestion was to DM the moderators of the subreddit in question. This would be very unlikely to create any publicly visible paper trail and nearly no chance of blowback—anyone who spends any time at all on Reddit knows that mods are way to busy handling annoying drama to create new problems. At worst, the DM would be ignored. At best, the post would be quietly taken down.