@lovlas But is this policy stated up front so that prospective students are aware there exists other reviews besides positive endorsements?
The reason the coaches need to approve reviews is that many users are randomly reviewing coaches they have never had a session with. There is no way for lichess to check wether or not a student has had a lesson with the coach he is reviewing.
I understand that is a problem. But would not the solution be to make the review process available to only those who have completed a course?
An example is Apps for devices. They can only be reviewed after downloading. I'm not aware of any situation where a review can be written Before a product is bought or tried. Apparently, it is possible here and may need reviewing for changes.
My criticisms were made with the assumption that the reviews were written by students who had taken a course. It seems illogical that reviews can be made at random, that include anyone searching the page. Does this mean positive reviews are permitted, by those having never taken the course? A coach could simply instruct friends to write positive reviews. Since you have no way of knowing who took the courses, this opens a door for possible self promotion that borders on misconduct.
We do monitor the reviews and remove reviews that aren't legit. Coaches that intentionally fake reviews are removed from the list.
Hi, I just posted a (positive) review on a coach and was quite surprised to see that it went to them for approval - as others have noted this clearly shouldn't be the process. I've had a much less satisfactory experience with another coach who had a number of good reviews but disappeared from the coaches list just after I started lessons with him. I'm now wondering if it was because he was getting bad reviews from other people but they just weren't showing up? As others have said, it makes the review system completely untrustworthy if coaches can reject any reviews they don't like, and poor reviews simply aren't shown. I see he's now back on the list again - I'd submit a negative review but wonder if there's any point if nobody will see it? Does the coach see the review first even if it's a low score?