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Greg,

I'm interested in making a posting--shall we call it, the Hall of Fame or the Hall of Shame.

The primary objective of this posting is based on a double-edged sword. This means, to advise both foreign "teachers", agents and employers we are watching. What we are watching exactly is the track record of schools (good or bad) and employment agents (who to stay away from).

I am very certain many foreign teachers have been to schools of hell or have meet pathetic employment agents. I know the agents. What's your suggestion? And yes, I hope those who reply or add their comments do so on a honour basis. No slandering "ABC agency" because of some childish prank. After all this would defeat the purpose.

Your suggestion comes at a very interesting time because this is the second request I have received in just two days regarding the creation of a venue for posting reviews of unscrupulous schools and recruiters (and, in one case, a China EFL forum).

I have just revisited this issue with Ken and—in contrast to what I suggested to you via e-mail—we have decided, again, not to venture into this territory. Let me explain why.

Middle Kingdom Life was established to protect the interests and enhance the social welfare of foreigners in China. While, on the surface, it may seem like a contradiction not to post critical reviews of employers, recruiters, and China EFL websites, the only way we could do so and remain true to our mission statement is by personally and thoroughly investigating each and every report of not only abuse but of positive experiences as well. As you know, many glowing reviews of schools are written by Western lackeys who have been put up to it by their unscrupulous Chinese employers. We just don't have the manpower or time for undertaking a task as formidable as that.

Kanadian wrote:And yes, I hope those who reply or add their comments do so on a honour basis.

While we would hope for the same, there would be no way for us to know what is real or not unless we took the time to carefully examine each and every report. Without a rigorous and good faith effort to investigate each and every review, MKL could easily fall into the very same trap that we warn our readers about: Psychopathology of Anonymous EFL China Teacher Forums.

I personally know of not one but two China EFL websites (one is a Yahoo mailing list) that published and then unscrupulously retained at least one scathingly negative review of a school in China--even after the administrators were presented with tangible proof that the complaint was groundless, contained false information, and was motivated entirely by personal vendetta. Based on my many years of experience with China EFL websites, anonymous reviews of schools and recruiters (both negative and positive) are essentially worthless unless there is a clear and consistent pattern over a long period of time.

Having just written this, we do actually warn our readers about one infamous Chinese recruiter by name and that's only because we have received dozens of complaints about her over the years.

Basically, we advise our readers to avoid the use of all recruiters for obtaining employment in China barring the one instance in which it might be the only way to obtain employment, i.e., for those who are, for one reason or another, not competitive for English teaching jobs. This is not to say that there aren't reputable recruiters in China—I'm guessing there are a few.

The problem is—and it's a point we stress repeatedly throughout the Guide and in our companion blog—recruiters and China EFL websites (that accept advertising) view the schools and advertisers, respectively, as their real clients, not the foreign teachers. This is why we do not and will not accept advertisements from schools and recruiters. This would necessarily produce a conflict of interest and would entirely defeat the purpose of Middle Kingdom Life.

Pointed noted, point taken... too bad.

From my perspective, after almost seven years in China, it would make a lot more sense to maintain a list of decent and reputable recruiters and schools than issue warnings about those recruiters and schools that are doing precisely what is expected of the vast majority: lying and cheating. If we were to try and maintain an exhaustive list of every recruiter and school in China that lied to and cheated foreign English teachers, we would quickly run out of disk space.

Related, foreign teachers who choose to increase traffic and advertising revenue for China EFL websites by serving as frequent contributors absolutely need to understand that they are not the clients of those sites, even if they have a grand total of 10,000+ posts. Push comes to shove, the administrators and moderators of these sites will throw their most prolific, helpful, and useful contributors under the bus in a New York minute in order to preserve and protect their revenue sources. China EFL websites are businesses, not foreign teacher public service bureaus.

Do NOT use anonymous China EFL websites for anything other than virtual socializing and take extreme caution not to provide any information that could be used to identify you.

You have certainly aroused my curiosity with the dire warnings about providing identifying information on forum websites. I would like to know what motivated the dire tone, and I would also like to relate a personal experience with another forum. I have included the name of the moderator, but please do not hesitate to remove it if you wish.

I was a member of a forum operated by an individual who identifies himself as [name deleted] where the norm seems to be providing identifying information. New members are required to post an introduction discussing themselves. It seems to be the pattern for existing members to ask questions about the introductions provided by new members to increase the quantity of personal information obtained. Most or all of this information seems to be available to non-members, at least it was to me before I became a member.

The amount of introductory information that should be provided by new members was a hot topic on that forum during my brief period of membership. Some older members were vigorously advocating that higher standards of disclosure be set for new members. The point seemed to be just to be able to identify new members, at least this was clearly the effect of the proposals.

There was a hierarchical system of awarding status for the number of posts an individual made in which meaningless titles, like professor and dean, were awarded. This resulted in competition between posters, which actually led to posts such as: “No, now I am in the lead again, ha ha.” The two most prolific posters on the forum seemed to engage quite frequently in such antics. The site was promoted as a place to find reliable information about teaching in China, but it seemed more to me to be a place where these two individuals could indulge in precisely the kind of behavior that gives testosterone such a bad rep in certain quarters.

One thing about this forum, at least as it was a couple of months ago, was that the postings were not screened by the moderator before they went up. So after several weeks of not having made another post after I answered questions arising from my introduction, I decided to join in the discussion about raising the standards for new members.

I posted a comment basically stating that it seemed neither fair nor realistic to expect new members to reveal personal information about themselves when these new members did not have access to equivalent information about the current members whom they were expected to open up to. I went on to point out that the self-declared mandate of that forum was to provide useful information on teaching in China, when in actuality the purpose of the postings seemed more frequently to be engaging in juvenile behavior, so the forum was not really living up to its commitment to new members.

I was neither surprised nor disappointed when my membership in that forum was cancelled immediately by the moderator.

I have no evidence that the moderator/operator of this site is up to any specific nefarious activity, but I am very curious as to what the point of aggressively collecting such information might be.

Thank you.

Hi Gregory,

A few days ago I received an e-mail from the original poster of this thread inquiring why Middle Kingdom Life does not maintain a black list of unscrupulous schools and recruiters.

In my initial reply, I invited the poster to start this thread as I had intended to revisit the possibility of creating a section for black lists and school reviews with Ken. After further thought, for reasons that I try to make clear above, we decided against doing so again.

No less than two days after receiving the aforementioned e-mail (and prior to the creation of this thread), I received a second e-mail from a very disgruntled member of a very popular ESL/EFL website who had essentially written a complaint about the forum's administrator intended for publication on our site. As the complaint was intended for publication, I am reproducing it here minus the names of the site and administrator in question:

Dear Sir or Madam;

I am a teacher that has been teaching around the world for a bit more than a decade. I am writing to thank you for having my account activated with your site as well as I am writing in a hope to have my recent experiences and observations in the story below edited on Middle Kingdom Life site.

For years on mainland China, I have used [three names of anonymous China EFL websites deleted], I have sought positions, advertised teaching jobs with them, and participated on their forums. From my experience, they offer advantages and disadvantages as it is with just about everything in this world. In the case of these sites, what all should know is that the approach to managing the sites and the moderators' practices on forums are more often in favor of the local authorities and employers, and it seems that they have little choice.

My most recent experience with the [name deleted] indicates that job advertisements may be abused by the locals and teachers following up on the posts may as well end up the same road, abused. Moreover, if one seeks some advice or any information about local employers on this site's forums, he/she may end up getting either only partial information or some manipulated topic by dishonest users of the forums.

In fact, I posted a truthful follow-up on one local employer that was without reasons deleted by the [the site's] administrator a few days later. However, I was contacted with an invitation to Skype as according to the site's administrator, "things were ugly". To my surprise, justifying the thread's deletion somehow, the administrator followed up my e-mail correspondence and job application with a local employer, which raises questions of the email confidentiality and its disclosure to the third party, in this case the [name of site deleted].

The case is that some board users, me inclusive, have charged some local employers with racism, dishonesty, and manipulations which I have demonstrated in my posts and well supported in my email correspondence reasoning with the site's administrator called [name deleted]. If the truth is too much to write, then what is the site for?

The Internet is unarguably abused and probably will be abused, but if the sites that are supposed to serve us, the teachers, do not do enough to protect us, and then allow the local employers further abuse of the sites and forums, we will end up with little to go on with. Then, if the western sites chose some local practices over the ones used in the developed nations, I believe whatever we have worked for will evaporate into the air in a few years to come.

I am looking forward to your reply and a hopeful publication of my story.

Sincerely yours,

What immediately struck me about the complaint was the following false premise:

... but if the sites that are supposed to serve us, the teachers, do not do enough to protect us, and then allow the local employers further abuse of the sites and forums, we will end up with little to go on (italics added for emphasis).

Ken and I go through great pains to warn prospective and current foreign teachers throughout the Guide and the rest of the site that China EFL websites and forums that are commercialized do NOT view the foreign teachers, their contributors, as their clients: The real clients are the advertisers who generate income.

As a preface to our list of China EFL job websites, we post the following warning to our readers in big, bold letters:

CAUTION

Please keep in mind as you visit the EFL/ESL job sites listed below that an acceptance of an advertisement is not an endorsement of that school's credibility or desirability as a employer. Websites accept advertisements to earn income, not as a foreign teacher public service. All China EFL websites that accept advertising regard the advertisers as their real clients, not the foreign teachers.

Regardless of how reputable a website may try to be, there is no practical way for any website administrator to monitor the ongoing activities of each of its advertisers, whether they be schools or recruiters. Irrespective of the job advertisement's source, you MUST use the information contained in this Guide to evaluate each and every potential employer.

A similar warning--wrapped inside a large letterbox--is also inserted at the head of our chapter on finding employment in China. We honestly don't know what more we can do warn prospective foreign teachers that China EFL websites and forums are businesses and are completely oriented to their advertisers, not the foreign teachers who contribute to them. Consequently, they are NOT reliable places for ascertaining valid and reliable information about schools and recruiters--period.

In addition to these aforementioned warnings, we also have written an article about How to Evaluate the Credibility of China EFL Websites for the uninitiated. For the sake of convenience, I will list the five criteria here without the full explanations contained in the original text:

Criteria for Evaluating the Credibility of China EFL Websites and Resources

1. Specifically, what type of website are you visiting and can the identity of the website's authors be clearly ascertained? If so, have they established qualifications and credentials that necessarily qualify them as experts on the subjects they are writing about?

2. Assuming the authors are named, do they list their contact information (phone number, mailing address) and the organization or institution with which they are affiliated?

3. Aside from his or her personal blog, does the author have any peer-reviewed publications to his or her credit either in journals, on the Internet, or in hard copy?

4. Is the provided information backed-up with authoritative, external citations? Is the information well-documented or are you reading nothing more than an opinion or a story about a personal experience? If the information being offered qualifies as an opinion, does that author qualify as a subject area expert based on his or her credentials (in addition to personal experience)?

5. Does the author clearly state upfront whatever biases he or she may hold about the subject being discussed? Are there any apparent conflicts of interest and, if so, are they made explicit?

Obviously, anonymous EFL forums cannot be viewed as credible venues for obtaining useful information because the sources of the information cannot be verified and evaluated. This is not to suggest that these forums do not contain valid information: they often do. The problem is, for each correct opinion or viewpoint offered, the reader is also faced with a cacophony of opposing and often incorrect replies.

Finally, any China EFL website that accepts advertisements from schools and recruiters has a very clear conflict of interest, one that is never made explicit but should be assumed by any reasonable person. To complain that a China EFL website has deleted a bad review in favor of one of its advertisers is equivalent to complaining about one's cat having coughed up yet another hairball. This is what cats do.

Gregory, as for the website you had specifically mentioned by name, I am not really sure why posters would be asked to reveal their true identities. I am guessing the intent is to foster a greater sense of virtual community and to increase the apparent validity of the information being offered.

Your hairball analogy is very appropriate. I am most definitely a dog person.

About the website I referred to, I am afraid that I left an erroneous impression. They do not actually post people’s true identities, although some people do use actual pictures of themselves as avatars. But the website does routinely collect and post sufficient info through the introductions required of new members, info such as place of employment and basic demographics, so that anyone familiar with the teachers at a particular school could easily figure out who the poster is.

I think your hunch is most likely quite correct that the primary motivation for getting people to disclose personal information is to foster a sense of community and thus lend more credibility to the advice that is offered to those who come looking for it.

Fabricating and maintaining an artificial sense of community makes the real purpose of the forum--keeping visit numbers up and thus maximizing the operator’s advertising revenue--much easier to achieve.

But ultimately, though, it does not really matter why they do it since the problem is so simple and easy to solve just by not having anything at all to do with recruiters and those who take their money for advertisements. In my case I initially did not enlarge the circle enough to include those who take advertising money from recruiters, but now I have remedied that oversight.

Thanks.

I think Dr. Greg has done well explaining why this site will not venture into offering a "blacklist" service.

In my view, "Blacklists" of schools in China don't work because:

1. There is no practical method to verify the accuracy of the information.

2. There is also no practical method to update the information. If a blacklisted school decided to clean up their act, how would one know they really did?

3. There is no means to link the blacklisted schools with owners. Blacklisted schools can easily change their names.

The idea of lists has floated around on various forums over the years. And, over the years, I have seen them tried and all have failed as blacklists, white-lists, etc. And they fail for the very reasons I enumerated above.

I have long believed that accreditation was a better solution. This would require an on-site inspection, interviews of teachers, and a comprehensive list of criteria to be met in order to be accredited.

However, until school owners see the value in accreditation and are willing to pay the costs for site visits, etc., that will probably be only a dream.