The Regular Cast

[Sebastian Knight]

Since I work at a school, most of the blocking policies are based on the students.  In theory, teachers should have a different set of rules, but every time they make a generic teacher access password, the students find out about it within about two days.  The solution many of us have lobbied for is to simply give individual teachers accounts/passwords that we can use to access more content, and if the students find out one of our passwords, crack down on that ONE while leaving the rest of us free.   This is made a little more awkward because there are federal laws that force the school to filter content, although they start from the minimum amount of federally required blockage.

The blocking is done via a list that the school keeps.  They have a filter service that provides lists of sites fitting certain categories, and can additionally block any individual sites that they want.  That means that if a site has a really low profile it might slip under the radar.

Routinely blocked:
Pornography (sort of obvious.  note that much of Kram's output counts however, as this is pretty much defined loosely as "pictures of naked people").
Chat (including in principle a lot of bbs's, though this hasn't hit the places I chat on -- the principle here is that the content is pretty much open-ended and unmoderated and untrustworthy or something.  I seem to be safe b/c of the obscurity clause here)
Games (and games-related sites like Gamespot, the WoW homepage, etc. -- this is a school editorial decision b/c the students were screwing around too much playing games.  Why this means I can't read reviews of games eludes me)
Myspace, Facebook (there's a lot of good stuff on myspace, and that one bothers me)
Youtube (which pretty much has the teachers gathering with pitchforks and torches outside the IT office.  Note oddly that googlevideo is not strictly blocked, but they are tied together.  If you search for something under google video, the 75% of hits that are hosted on youtube will be unavailable, but some of the others might be ok. Shrug.  Another local decision, which combines bandwidth concern and content concern)
Assorted streaming media (not flitered per se, but the network won't allow you to stream real audio for whatever reason)

My favorite message on the site filter has been "This site has been blocked because it was classified FUN".

[Nadim]

My favorite message on the site filter has been "This site has been blocked because it was classified FUN".

Oy, way for IT to destroy a good day.  What do they do with educational content that is (for whatever reason; gasp!) presented in a fun way?  Did IT provide a reason for not providing individual faculty credentials?  That stuff is pretty easy and cheap to implement... 

I can understand filtering content that can get in productivity's way, but not a wholesale ban on random content.  Granted, my company is pretty small, but we're going the other way: we actually optimize bandwidth for WoW and streaming media--I'm sure someone is sitting in the office right now, watching YouTube videos of something really gross and disturbing.    The only content we filter is dangerous files--obviously, since we're a software company, and executable files and shell scripts are deemed pretty dangerous, our productivity suffers from that more than any fun internet activities.

[owen]

Although she's not exactly a "regular" poster here, I thought it worth mentioning that Robin Slick has posted via facebook that she is unwell with massive protracted headaches and has been in hospital for a spinal tap and other nasty things to try and find out what is wrong. An aneurysm has been at least 90% ruled out. Tests are continuing.

Wishing her all the best from Aus for a speedy recovery!

[Geno]

Yikes! I'm sending good wishes too.

[tgraham]

Yes, Good thoughts your way Robin.

[L.RayRojo]

Yes, healing thoughts your way Robin.