The Independent's editorial is bemoaning the fact that Irish children are adding more comments than children in the US & Canada combined.
Irish students are putting more comments about their teachers on the site than their counterparts in the US and Canada combined. This week, the site was claiming that 35,548 teachers in Irish schools had been rated and that total ratings on the site from Ireland were now approaching the half million mark.Before I get into whether that's true or not, I'd like to ask whether the Independent has played any role in the growth of this site. Seems pretty obvious to me that if the Irish Independent (& other papers too) didn't give this site so much publicity that it would probably have never taken off like it has. Perhaps, just perhaps, if the Independent had ignored this nonsense it would never have become a "monster".
Now, could it possibly be true that Irish children are adding comments at a rate greater than that of American and Canadian children combined? Well, as the Independent notes, more than 35,000 teachers have now been "rated" and nearly 500,000 comments have been added by Irish students. Yesterday 8,000 comments were added.
The figures for the US & Canada are:
- total teachers rated – just over 1 million
- total comments added – just under 7.5 million
- total comments added yesterday – just under 9,000.
Well, it tells me that this is a fad and kids bore of it quickly. If the Independent and the rest of Irish media had just ignored this it would probably have just quietly faded away. Time to give it a rest.
