Polyratings.com, the site on which Cal Poly students can rate their instructors and view other students’ ratings has been reopened at calpolyratings.com. The site was inaccessible starting in late summer.
The new site has a fresh slate for new teacher reviews and has the old reviews from Polyratings in an archive. It is the same format as the old site, so it is possible that the old domain expired.
The closed site caused a stir on message boards and Facebook. Students registering for classes were unable to use the tool to check out their possible teachers and were upset at the loss.
In a previous Mustang Daily article J. Paul Reed, who managed the site since 2001, said that he was thinking of shutting down the site because there was no one left to manage it. Reed now works for Mozilla Corporation and has his hands full with other responsibilities.
Reed, a former student himself, also feels he has lost contact with the Cal Poly community.
“I really think you need someone who has a local context for things,” he said. “That’s what I think Polyratings is lacking most right now – I haven’t been part of the campus community for three years now, so I don’t have a good pulse on what’s going on.”
The original site was opened in 2002 by two Cal Poly students.
The Mustang Daily tried to contact Reed and Forrest Lanning, a co-founder of the site, but they did not respond. Multiple students contacted the Daily and expressed interest in taking over the site.