Prof. Pottah submits some info.

Hello,

Here’s a potential post for Zooze:

You’ve just been Reddited! Not by me, but by someone whose Reddit posts I follow. He sang the praises of “Rate Your Students” and its descendants, College Misery and Zooze the Horse. Whether the post gets any traction, we’ll see, but the writer seems to pine for the RMS family of websites.

And I do, too. I’ve posted on Zooze before, and a few of the comments I received have remained withme, much like how I kept a wonderful little note my from high school English teacher safely in my wallet until after I became a father. It finally disintegrated (believe it or not, I saw one of its electrons whiz past me the other day, and even that felt good), but I would dig through my wallet for that piece of paper (covered with transparent tape to persevere its life) in order to read it when I needed it most, when things were bleak, when I doubted my own agency. The Zooze comments worked—work—the same way for me.

OP says that the posts on the RYS Family were “despondent” but humorous. Yeah, there were some “despondent” posts, but most that dealt with students were despondently hilarious. I always felt that these sites were places professors could go to without worrying about being zapped for being “anti-student.” We could complain, we could exaggerate, we could kvetch. But underlying everything, we (usually) seemed to know that the posters were people who cared about their students. Some would disagree over political matters, but it never seemed personal. It never seemed to derail conversations. Or if it did, those differences didn’t prevent people from posting and reading.

But getting back to my other point, the posts (and comments) were funny. They were entertaining. And they usually provided more context, more voice, than you see on Reddit. Maybe it was the awesome graphics?  I don’t know, but these posts always seemed more human, funnier, more relatable—somehow more pleasant. It felt like I was listening to someone speak, not reading a post. The posts were more inviting. More supportive. Better.

I guess that was the old Internet. Reddit and Twitter “rolled” (as the Reddit OP says) over the RYS family like Walmart rolling over Ma and Pa Kettle's Bargain Food and Sundries. Something was lost. 

I know this site will never get revved up again. But as I said, something was lost.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/13eqzdt/old_professor_websites/

—Prof. Pottah