Teacher Review Moderation Policy

A review can be unflattering and still stay up — "strict grader," "boring lectures," and "way too much homework" are all fair opinions about a real classroom experience. We remove or edit a review when it:

• Contains harassment, slurs, or a threat directed at a specific person
• Makes a claim about the teacher that's clearly false or defamatory rather than an opinion (e.g. accusing them of a specific crime with no basis)
• Shares someone's private information (home address, personal phone number, etc.)
• Is spam, an ad, or entirely off-topic for a teacher review

Two things can bring a comment to an admin's attention:

1. A student reports it. Any signed-in student can report a comment (not their own) directly from Commons, with an optional reason.
2. Automatic flagging. A comment containing certain severe language or threat patterns is flagged for review the moment it's posted, even before anyone reports it — see "Automatic flagging" below.

Either way, it lands in the admin moderation queue, most-reported (and any auto-flagged item) shown first. An admin reads the comment in context — the teacher it's about, the report reasons, and the flagged keyword/pattern if it was auto-flagged — and either removes it or dismisses the report(s) if the comment doesn't actually violate this policy.

We aim to review every reported or flagged comment within 48 hours. That's also our internal SLA: if anything sits in the queue longer than 48 hours unreviewed, the team is emailed automatically so it doesn't get missed. A comment containing an explicit threat is prioritized well ahead of that window.

Kaddy runs a lightweight, narrow check on every new teacher-review comment for a small set of severe slurs and explicit threat language — separate from (and stricter than) the general profanity filter that just masks mild swearing inline. A match doesn't remove the comment automatically; it puts the comment in front of a human reviewer immediately, without needing a student to report it first. This is a backstop for the worst cases, not a general-purpose content classifier — most moderation still happens through student reports.

When a school has a verified email domain on file, a review is marked Verified if the student's account email matches that domain. Schools without a domain on file just show reviews as unverified — that's a gap in our records, not a claim that the review is fake, and we're filling it in over time.

If a comment of yours is removed for violating this policy, you'll see it's gone the next time you open that teacher's page. We don't currently send a separate removal notice, but you can always ask why.

If you think a review of yours was removed by mistake — or that a review still up should have been removed — email intellibloomapp@gmail.com with the teacher's name and, if you have it, roughly what the comment said. A different admin than whoever made the original call will take a second look and reply with the outcome, generally within a few days.