Frequently Asked Questions

• • Q. Who can access the site?
  • A. All current students can read and post reviews on the site. The general public does not have access. Faculty may have access to the site in the future, so bear that in mind when posting reviews.
• • Q. How do I review a class?
  • A. After you have logged in, use the search form or click on a department to find a class that you have taken and would like to review, and click on the course title to view its detail page. From there, you will be able to view any ratings and comments the course has already received and add a review of your own.
• • Q. Are reviews anonymous?
  • A. Yes. However, the system logs all posts by username, so you can be held responsible for your comments. The WSA assumes no responsibility for any comments made on the site. In layman's terms, they're gonna sue your ass for libel, not ours. For more on this, be sure to read the Acceptable Use Policy.
• • Q. How do you define appropriate comments?
  • A. Basically, think before you post. We want E-Squid to be a positive addition to the community, not a divisive one. No personal attacks, no abusive language—constructive criticism is the goal. In other words, don't just write "this class sucked"; explain why it failed to meet your expectations.
    
    Be sure you have read and understand the Acceptable Use Policy before posting.
• • Q. How do you handle inappropriate posts?
  • A. The E-Squid comment system is designed to be largely self-policing. Below each comment posted on the site are buttons to mark the comment as helpful or unhelpful and another to flag it for review. After a post is first flagged for review, the author will receive an automatic notification e-mail offering the opportunity to revise the post. Multiple complaints will cause the comment to be automatically taken down, pending review by the WSA. Repeated or particularly egregious offenses may result in the author's permanent removal from the system. Comments that are consistently marked as unhelpful may also be deleted from the site after review by the WSA.
• • Q. There are other rate-a-professor sites on the Web—why is E-Squid necessary?
  • A. Unlike all those other sites, E-Squid was created by and for Wesleyan students, providing a single, WSA-supported destination for Wesleyan course evaluations. This allows us to ensure that only current Wesleyan students can post reviews and only members of the Wesleyan community can read them, whereas at most of the generic sites, anyone in the world can do either; our way guarantees the authenticity of the reviews and respects the privacy of professors. Furthermore, whereas many sites offer only professor reviews, E-Squid offers course reviews for all Wesleyan courses, divided by section and semester; this allows us to include factors such as course design that other sites are not able to offer. E-Squid also provides a mechanism for reporting inappropriate posts for review.
    
    We hope that these important distinctions will foster an atmosphere of mutual respect that will allow E-Squid to make a positive contribution to the community.
• • Q. For the love of all things holy, why is it called E-Squid?
  • A. That's a great question. We haven't the foggiest idea. Mainly we just like the squid graphic in the header bar. But, if you really must know, there have actually been two or three E-Squids prior to this one (it's a bit like the Matrix), taking their name from a printed publication known as The Squid's Eye View that ended in the early '90s. Apparently squid is an old slang term for someone who studies all the time. It's also the acronym for Swimming Queers United in Denver. But that's just a coincidence.

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