Weeks after popular teacher-evaluation website RateMyProfessors.com began allowing students to upload images of their professors, some Boston University faculty say the site is still a waste of cyber space, but are not concerned about the possibility of having their likeliness posted online.

“I’m less concerned with my privacy than the sanctity of the student-professor relationship,” journalism professor Mitchell Zuckoff said. “Thinking about a student snapping a picture while I’m making a face in a moment of a three-hour lecture, it’s potentially going to get in the way.”

International relations professor William Keylor joked about the potential classroom paparazzi.

“Does this mean that students will bring their cell-phone cameras to class and catch the professor in a striking pose?” he asked. “We will have to be sure to wear our best suits and put on makeup before we appear before the class.”

RateMyProfessors lets users flag inappropriate photos and promises a “trusted” RateMyProfessors administrator will review such picture sand decides whether to take them down. But Zuckoff said a professor’s appearance should have no bearing on whether a student chooses a course.

“I guess RateMyProfessors figured that it’d be an added benefit or bonus to their users, but I think it’s inappropriate in any academic setting,” he said. “Judgments based on appearance have no place in that environment.”

The website’s new format also allows users to post professor’s quotations, which worries Keylor.

“I would hope that students who wish to upload quotations from professors take great care to get the quotation right,” he said. “It is a real annoyance to find yourself misquoted in public.”

Faculty have long contested the usefulness of the website. Film professor Robert Arnold said he has seen no correlation between comments on College of Communication student evaluations and those posted on RateMyProfessors, which he said sometimes includes inaccurate information.

“Unlike our internal student evaluations, which are available to students at least within [COM], there is no verification that a submission to [RateMyProfessors] even comes from a student who has taken a course from the professor, nor does it prevent one student from posting several reviews, nor does it prevent a malicious faculty colleague from slandering a fellow professor,” he said in an email.

While internal evaluations may be helpful to faculty, BU no longer provides a way for students to share professor evaluations. The Source Guide, later renamed CourseNet, served as an official university evaluation site but has not been updated since the fall of 2003.

“The demise of The Source Guide was a major loss for students seeking guidance on how courses are taught,” International relations professor William Grimes said. “I think it is up to the university to set up a comprehensive and rational system of teaching evaluation and to make the major results accessible to students.”

Zuckoff said he doubts RateMyProfessors’ usefulness, repeating an analogy he had heard from a colleague.

“Picking a professor based on [RateMyProfessors] is like picking a date based on bathroom graffiti,” he said.

But Keylor said he uses the site himself.

“I consider it a useful supplement to the written student evaluations that students fill out at the end of each course,” he said.