Open letter to the Yale Community from Dean

> In doing so, the developers violated Yale’s appropriate use policy by taking and modifying data without permission, but, more importantly, they encouraged students to select courses on the basis of incomplete information. To claim that Yale’s effort to ensure that students received complete information somehow violated freedom of expression turns that principle on its head.

I think she doesn't really know what free expression means. It does not mean, "you can say what you want as long as we agree with it." That's certainly how I read "more importantly, they encouraged students to select courses on the basis of incomplete information". Free expression means that the administration cannot control the message; people can say what they want. This is OK; win in the marketplace of ideas ("maybe I should evaluate my courses with more contextual information"), not by treating your students as children who can't decide for themselves how to consume information.

Also, this bit about reconsidering whether to provide the data at all is childish. "You're not interpreting our data the way we want so now you can't have any! I'm taking my ball and going home!" It's worth remembering (both here and in the thus-far imprecise and confused discussion of who "owns" the data) that the students are the ones providing the evaluations being aggregated here; at the very least, it's unclear why they'd be expected to continue doing so without getting some quid pro quo benefit from it.

Stop trying to control everything and trust your students to be smart and thoughtful.

Indeed. There seems to be a big disconnect here from Yale. They collected this data and made it available. However the Dean and Yale's main problem seems to be [1] that YBB+ wasn't showing all of the data. That the numerical ratings are some how strongly linked by spooky action to the detailed reviews and that you cannot show one without the other.

This is, of course, crazy.

From simply a UI/design position, you can't easily display/sort on X different professors/courses each of which has 1..N detailed reviews that are blobs of text.

From a broader perspective sometimes you need to decouple data to be able to better process it. In fact, given so many students used YBB+ it is reasonable to conclude that YBB+'s presentation of the data is doing a job informing students than Yale's own systems.

Everything is a remix

[1] From the article: "The tool created by YBB+ set aside the richer body of information available on the Yale website, including student comments, and focused on simple numerical ratings. In doing so, the developers violated Yale’s appropriate use policy by taking and modifying data without permission, but, more importantly, they encouraged students to select courses on the basis of incomplete information."

> Yale dean […] apologizes

Perhaps I'm missing something, but I do not see an apology behind that link. A detail of Yale's reasoning, but not an apology.

> However, I disagree that Yale violated its policies on free expression in this situation.

I'm not sure what "[Yale's] policies on free expression" are, but my understanding here is that Yale blocked the IP address of a site because it was using some data that Yale published, and modifying it in a way Yale disagreed with. There might be an argument to be had under copyright, but I don't think it's important at the moment. Yale states this:

> the developers violated Yale’s appropriate use policy by taking and modifying data without permission, but, more importantly, they encouraged students to select courses on the basis of incomplete information.

Abusing the fact that you have power over the students' access of information to prevent access to information you disagree with is what people have a problem with; this is especially true when you label something like this "malicious activity". These concerns are not addressed by the dean's letter.

Did no one else feel that the biggest issue with the original ip block was not the motivation for the block but rather Yale's blocking of a website on copyright grounds in the first place?

Maybe Yale is indeed in the right to try to control use of this data. But Yale most certainly is not in the right to unilaterally block access, regardless of the reasoning.

(NB., my concern is not with legal rights, but rather a higher standard of moral or ethical rights that Yale, as a purportedly high-minded institution, should hold itself to.)

Yale students write Yale course reviews in order to see their grade. You get an email saying "a new grade has been posted," then you fill out the review form, then you see your grade.