Topic: Suggestion

[maichai]

For those of you who come here to slug it out with one another over issues and bs that most us could care less about, why don't you take your bickering to a specially designated section of the board?  Better yet, why don't you go elsewhere and let this board get back to doing what it should be doing instead of serving as forum for your personal tirades.

If your goal is to kill this board, you are well on your way to being successful.

Shame, really.

[Nemesis]

here, here! This is a resource for teachersto know about good and bad schools. When users decide to post drivel, pick fights, or generally do their level best to disrupt the board, all they do is play into the hands of the schools. It's proven that schools want this site gone. The Axis of Evil met with Mr Ajarn last November to talk about ways to get rid of TEFLWatch. They tried to do it by pulling the plug on any links between Ajarn and TEFLWatch. That didn't work. They tried by putting pressure on the old admin, but he just passed the reins onto Andy.

What is their next little plot? I don't know, you tell me, but one thing we got now is several users playing little childish games and attemtping to hijack threads and post their insane blabbering. You got Mr Ajarn and his lackey LDMA grinning on their forum talking about how impossible a site like this is to run and how the actions of the few trolls here vindicates them for taking the school side in every dispute and not allowing Ajarn users to talk freely about their teaching experience. Sure, if it's good, talk about it. If you had a bad experience, shut the f*ck up.

Thanks maichai and wordsworth for standing up and making your voice heard. Andy may be wishy washy about deleting personal attack threads, but I'm not.

Some of you all have the history of the old Thai School Watch and TEFLWatch confused. The old admin of this site proposed the first Thai Gray List nearly 3 years ago. Nothing came about from it because users really didn't care to just list their bad schools. Fast forward many months and the first Thai School Watch was formed. Thai School Watch was run by none other than LDMA. All three versions. Each time, he got tired of being with the BS and he deleted it only to start up again. Finally in January of 2006, he threw in the towel for the last time. The old admin jumped into the breach.

TEFLWatch filled the breach by providing a place for people to talk about teaching experience worldwide. We have slowly built up traffic by offering good information about schools and recruiters. No other site in the TEFL world has the same pro-teacher features as we do. We are not in bed with schools or TEFL institutes that feed on ignorance.

The biggest surprise is that most of the traffic to the main page does not come for Thailand information. People come for information on teaching all around the world. How we compete with Ajarn Forum, I do not know. Ajarn Forum has nothing to fear from our little old site.

Mr Ajarn claims he removed the link to our site because it looked like we were starting to compete with him. Wrong. Mr Ajarn removed the link because he was irritated that every time he posted a job ad, people would post here about the job and give negative feedback. Which schools? It's anybody's guess, but I'll bet Pibthong could tell us one of them. It's Mr Ajarn's right to link or not link to any site on the net, it's not his right to lie. He removed the link for purely economic reasons, but it's his right. 

TEFLWatch started out and is today, not Thailand centric. It's worldwide. Mr Ajarn likes to say that it's impossible to run a site like this out of Thailand, maybe so if it was Thailand centric, but we are TEFL centric. All of our mod team except one(who is a former teacher) is currently teaching. No university students, no armchair warriors back in the blighty, nope we are all honest to goodness teachers. Our mod team believes in teachers because we are teachers.

And we are not perfect. We make mistakes, we have opinions, but everyone of us mods have had a negative teaching experience where we were taken advantage of by a school. Sometimes we make a bad decision when we mod, we ask for each other's advice with one thought in mind: Ensuring that teachers are able to talk about their good and bad experiences. That is a freedom that Ajarn Forum denies you. We do not deny that to you.

Now, there are those that do not appreciate this. They do not want you to have freedom, these people are not pro-teacher and if anything are anti-teacher. As long as I am a mod on this board, I will not let them run wild on this board. Maybe I will be wrong in thread and posts I delete in the coming days, but one thing is certain, no one will lose their freedom to talk about good and bad teaching experiences.

It's time to play by the rules.

 

[Mods-Rockers]

Nemesis also refers to contacts between schools and the Ajarn site managers. Allegations on this site have been made that there are links between at least one of the managers here and a HoS school. I dont know and cannot judge if this is true but it should be seriously investigated because if so, then the site cannot possibly provide the kind of credibility which I and (I am sure) other teachers look to it for. Certainly these allegations cannot be ignored no matter what the personal opinion of accuser and accused may be. Teachers will place no faith in a site which claims to protect teachers from bad schools and yet allows one or more managers to collude with such a school to discredit a poster against whom there appears to be a grudge. So it is alleged in the posts here and if true, it is not a laughing matter. Nothing less than the credibiltity of the site is at stake.

I have to fully agree with you here, it will be nice to prove that this constant allegation against not only myself when I was a mod but other mods as well, along with many others who disagreed with the accuser were in fact the delusions of a troubled mind!

[los_teacher]

And we are not perfect. We make mistakes, we have opinions, but everyone of us mods have delete in the coming days, but one thing is certain, no one will lose their freedom to talk about good and bad teaching experiences.

It's time to play by the rules.

While I wholeheartedly agree with this philosophy it seems that it is not really practiced.  I write this with growing concern, based on what I have experience myself, and in seeing the treatment of other teachers on this forum.

In particular, any person that dares to say anything positive about certain schools is immediately attacked, often brutally.  Accusations and personal insults are hurled at these posters with lightning quickness.  Many of the attackers also happen to be TEFLWatch moderators.  This unfortunate situation significantly impacts a teacher's willingness to report honestly, or even report at all about their schools. 

[Nemesis]

And that's why I am taking a stronger presence on this forum. I wanna hear about the good experiences as well as the bad experience. Got something to report? I am there to protect your right to say you like a school or don't like a school.

Truth be told though, if you got positive experiences to say about a school, you are more than welcome on Ajarn Forum to tell all about them. Hell, Mr Ajarn will even give you a Hot Seat interview. I know what school you were talking about los_teacher and I am in your corner, I honestly think the school is making a positive change. It don't do away with the past hurt they caused, but if they are finally on the right road, that's all that really matters.

[los_teacher]

Thanks Nemesis, Andy, and also M-R and a few others for your hard work and dedication to your efforts in cleaning up some of the negative aspects of this site.  You are all duly acknowledged and appreciated.

[ajarnnormal]

I think M has put down what I have been saying on several posts recently. Well done man and well done Teflwatch and long may you be here.

[snottgoblin]

As someone who has used this forum to publicise one of the less desirables schools in Bangkok I too have suffered the slings and arrows of others insults for my comments .

However that has not hurt me nor made my stance change in any way, on the contrary my resolve has hardened .

I note after talking with an old fellow teacher that someone who attacked me and my status was in fact shafted by the very person who owned the school he so stoutly defended and the actons of the school owner .

Said person departed back to New Zealand with his eyes opened as to the virtues of our ex employer .

No,this forum serves a purpose that ajarn com cannot do or will not do due to their vested interests .

If one is making comments one indeed must be willing to take the consequences of any actions and comments that arise from your viewpoint .

Keep this site going, indeed it is a glimpse of sanoty in our crazy world of teaching in Bangkok and indeed everywhere else too .

Thank you Andy .

[ajarnnormal]

Snottgoblin. Good thinking and I applaud your sentiments. I have had the mud slingers and the laurels but still believe that this site does what it is supposed to do. 

[Speaksoftly]

I still wonder what happens over at Ajarn when people want to complain about schools... interesting cul-de-sac they've got themselves in.

As long as I'm around, I doubt that this website is in any danger of collapse.  Interesting as Nemesis says how many people seem to be here just to raise buzz about how "endangered" the site is.

I think it's a sign of success that all the info about all the schools is still out there!  That's what the schools don't want.  These squabbles will calm down (that's not a prediction, that's a promise).

[ajarnnormal]

Nice one Speaksoftly. The squabbles will calm down and I hope that anybody that wants this site closed down gets the message that this site it's here to stay. Schools may be multi million baht businesses but they can not prosper further without teachers. If they treat their staff correctly they will have no problem but if they don't they will. Ajarn has no place for the complaints about bad schools, in fact no place for any complaints. Talk of squabbling, take a look over there. there is thread after thread torn apart by backstabbing and insults. Nearly every thread goes off topic and stays off. For me I get pissed off with that and bored with it. What does anyone gain from that?

[anyonefortennis]

yep, I agree.

People writing about the demise of tw are grinding axes for whatever reason, probably the same people who would be the first to spit their dummy when a school does a sly one on them.

I've heard a lot about ajarn.com and how grand a site it is, let's not forget it is nigh on 10 years old, tw will be fine and in ten years it will be the definitive record of shitty schools and dodgy agencies.