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the day a bitter rating appears often yields a couple of prime suspects. Teaching writingclasses, I am fortunate to have the additional benefit of being well aware of each of mystudent’s writing stylistics, that tend to be as identifiable as fingerprints.Besides addressing the issue, proactive management tends to elicit multiple additionalratings, as other students seem to become motivated to express contrary, and generallypositive, opinions.Additionally, this technique has a possible tangible benefit that impacts educationbeyond the artificial confines of the RateMyProfessor arena as I believe that addressingthe issue of wrathful ratings tends to boost actual university-administered studentevaluation scores. My basis for this is that it allows irate students to feel that their issueshave been addressed, while moving the non-whining majority of students to redress theperceived injustice via more favorable evaluations. This, of course, is just a working and,given the variables, ultimately un-provable, theory. But I like it.FINAL THOUGHTSRateMyProfessor tends to be viral in its nature. This is to say that usage spreads fromcampus to campus, during which time it rapidly ramps up in popularity as studentsdiscover and spread word of the site to their friends, and then, like a flashy Christmastoy that has lost its allure, slows down to a trickle of users. One of the most strikingexamples I found of this phenomena took place on March 2nd 2005, when theUniversity of Wisconsin Washington County campus received the site’s “most rated”award for the day with 40 ratings. Prior to this the campus’s last (and singular) entrieshad occurred on three days in 2004; December 29th, December 6th, April 13th 2004,and May 11th 2003.Having tracked site statistics of number of ratings added and most-rated schools forthe past year (see Appendix A for 40 day usage statistics compiled at the midpoint ofthe Fall 2004 and Spring 2005 semesters 1) it is my feeling that RateMyProfessor, as aquasi-assessment tool, is facing a national decline in popularity. This decline, however,does not signal the end of the problem as it is possible that another similar evaluationsite, such as Pickaprof.com or the acrimoniously entitled MyProfessorSucks.com, couldsupersede RateMyProfessor as the preeminent source of student evaluations of theirprofessorate.Regardless of the outcome, given the indefinite shelf life of Internet information,wise instructors will consider and enact management methods to counter the impact oftoday’s evaluation will have on their classrooms, campuses, and reputations for years tocome.1 The midterm point was chosen as this tends to be the most active time for the siteas students prepare scheduling for the upcoming semester.10Feedback March 2005 (Vol. 46, No. 3)