As a student gossip website causes controversy in the US, Jamie O'Connell from The Student Room, explains why such catty comments won't catch on in the UK.
Jamie will be a guest on Sky.Com News tonight at 7.30pm. Click here to find out more about what will be discussed.
The website Juicy Campus gives American students the chance to anonymously bitch about their fellow students, teachers or whoever they want in an uncensored environment.
The reason the site has hit the headlines is that the people being bitched about are named for the world to see.
It's an unhealthy trend that it's now ok to go online and rip the hell out of anyone you like, whether they are a celebrity on a site like Perez Hilton, or an average Joe at university in this instance.
On this site you can view gossip from certain universities but really the site is only tenuously linked to student life, a cynical site like this could be based around any group of people, what about Juicy Workplace, or Juicy Women's Institutute? It's human nature that people are fascinated by gossip, the juicier the better and that's what the makers of this site are exploiting.
A healthy community encourages positive friendly contributions and discourages negative, which is why The Student Room is such a great success. It's a social and academic resource, a place for students to go for help with their assignments, with their boyfriend/girlfriend problems or to waste a few hours talking about something topical with other students.
Our terms and conditions state that bullying isn't permitted and every site user signs up to that. The site has clear posting rules, there is no swearing and it is moderated by a dedicated team of about 16 students.
A healthy community naturally doesn't condone bullying or offensive contributions, our site users either reply directly to inappropriate content or they report it to our moderator team.
I'm not sure a site like Juicy Campus would be as popular in the UK. I'd like to think students here would rather know where to get cheaper pints than know all about tutor X at uni Y.
Everyone knows who celebs like Britney Spears are and so are interested in gossip about them. But I don't know who anyone is on this site so why do i care less if they are promiscuous or not?
My university is really big and I have a decent sized group of friends. We use Facebook to stay in touch and gossip and that works very well. Outside of my group of friends I haven't a clue who anyone is and I don't care what they get up to.
I think this site might be interesting for a short time but it would get very boring.
Posted by: Jim, London 8 Feb 2008 11:26:08
I've been using The Student Room for a couple of years and yes there are some bad comments posted on there from time to time, but they are removed if you let the people who can do something about them know. The site is so big you can't expect everything to be picked up without the help of the whole userbase. Normally though things get done really quickly.
I don't think something Juicy Campus would take of in the UK either - I'm sure people would be worried over being identified by naming real people.
Posted by: Robert, London 7 Feb 2008 19:02:34
You obviously didn't report the posts then. There's only a handful of moderators on TSR and thousands of users, they can't remove what they don't read and they can't read everything. You can report stuff that's against the rules with a single button click and a couple words in a the comment box.
Posted by: James 7 Feb 2008 17:05:19
Who are you trying to kid? I went to a UK university, and I don't doubt for a second that university students there would be disinterested in gossip about their fellow students and tutors. I'm not saying it's ethically right, but I think it would be incredibly popular.
Posted by: emma, milano 6 Feb 2008 21:36:28
I've been on 'The Student Room' website and received offensive comments, without them being removed. There's also a poster who waxes lyrical about the joys of cannabis!, so don't play the holier than thou routine.
Posted by: Rachel 6 Feb 2008 19:49:27