Teacher hails ‘small win’ as Google Maps to remove UK and Irish school reviews
Google says move is to prevent ‘unhelpful or prank reviews’, after petition by Merseyside deputy headteacher
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... uk-ireland
But it's the Internet. It's an open website, Google Maps. Anyone can add information to it. Given which, there can be nobody on the planet who is going to think the review system will have anything sensible to say about a school. Every pupil with a sense of humour will have had a go at amusing their friends on it. It makes no difference whether the reviews can be made or not, neither position is going to be helpfully informative.
The same goes for Amazon and TripAdvisor, to name a couple. Or "Expertreviews", or any other review system. Not because they're necessarily attractive to schoolchildren like a school review site (and the article didn't even mention ratemyteacher.com!), but because the world is full of idiots.
I bought a rechargeable electric pepper grinder with built-in torch last week from Amazon for £6. The reviews were weighted down by fools saying it arrived broken and they'd returned it so it was useless, who had clearly not read the instructions on first time use. Of course none of them arrived broken. You have to take the plastic plug out of the on-off switch trench first, then you have to charge it because it needs power, and then - the obvious but ignored aspect - once it's charged and you can turn it on you have to turn it upside down for any pepper to be ground out. And everything I've bought on Amazon has a few of these tonks giving one-star reviews solely indicating their inadequacy for post-Palaeolithic living.
As for TripAdvisor, it's infested with either friends of the establishment or people wielding a petty power despite the best efforts of managers who have put their careers into a place. It's more of a web pollutant than a web asset.