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JREF website banned

nightwind

Critical Thinker
nightwind
Joined
Apr 16, 2002
Messages
397
Work part time at an educational facility. Students are "protected" from harmful websites by St Bernard Software. Well today after being able to use this site for several months, sadly we lost access to Randi's website, as it has been classified by St Bernard as alt/newage, which is not allowed.

The website was offered as a resource on the website, but evidently they found out that it was being accessed or St Bernard reclassified it.

Unfortunately classifying the JREF site as alt/newage will take it out of the reach of thousands of students.

Just was wondering if anyone else has ever run into the problem of having a good web resource banned or mis-classified under a heading that gets it filtered?

I frankly don't see how anyone can be harmed by this website. Do you?
 
nightwind said:
I frankly don't see how anyone can be harmed by this website. Do you?
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Depends on your definition of harm. Why not write them and ask them why they decided to filter it. Usually such things are done in a documentable fashion...or at least they are with other filter-services I've dealt with. It could be that the traffic alone was causing the problem.

Edit to add: I just visited their website and I think the traffic problem might be the reason.

Increases Employee Productivity
According to recent IDC study, companies lose an average of $3,000 per year per employee due to non-business related Internet activity.
Workers spend an average of 21 hours online at the office vs. an average of 9.5 hours at home (Nielsen/Net Ratings).
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http://www.stbernard.com/products/iprism/products_iprism.asp
 
nightwind said:
Work part time at an educational facility. Students are "protected" from harmful websites by St Bernard Software. Well today after being able to use this site for several months, sadly we lost access to Randi's website, as it has been classified by St Bernard as alt/newage, which is not allowed.

The website was offered as a resource on the website, but evidently they found out that it was being accessed or St Bernard reclassified it.

Unfortunately classifying the JREF site as alt/newage will take it out of the reach of thousands of students.

Just was wondering if anyone else has ever run into the problem of having a good web resource banned or mis-classified under a heading that gets it filtered?

I frankly don't see how anyone can be harmed by this website. Do you?
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alt/newage? hahahahaahahahhahahaahhahahahaahhaaaaaaaahahaahahahahhahaahhahahaha it must be Bush hahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahaha or the Jews hahahahahaha.

Seriously, an interesting attack paradigm.
 
I popped them this note:

I have discovered that the James Randi site (www.randi.org) has been added to your list of "alt/newage" sites and thus filtered. I suggest that someone visit the site since it is a place for debunking the absurd claims of those sites that you state that you wish to filter. I can understand how a lax site identification routine might identify Randi's site as suspect since the concepts typical of alt/newage sites are regularly pilloried. This is a case where you really want to go custom, not automated.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Ed
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ps.. I left off "Idiots". Think that was OK?:D
 
Hmm? Oh don't mind me! I'm just one of those infesting Australians.
 
Bullshido isn't blocked by any filters in the free world that I know of, and we don't moderate for language beyond the front page.

However, the People's Republic of China blocks their citizens from accessing us apparently. (Which probably has more to do with us bashing their national sports of WuShu and state-sponsored WooWoo, than the "naughty" language of us alpha-male martial arts folks).
 
I remember when working in the United Arab Emirates I needed access to a Site for DEfense Supply EXcellence, or DESEX for short. The filter blocked it because it had those magic letters S-E-X in the address. Finally had to have an Emirate LTC write a letter to Etisilat (the sole service provider) to get access to the site.

Didn't find Randi until I got back in the US of A, so not sure if he was blocked or not (given that at least one poster is in Dubai, apparently the Amazing one hasn't been discovered to be an athesist infidel yet....;)
 
Thank you Upchurch, for bringing this to may attention. We'll see if we can contact them and correct it.
 
Luke T. said:
All your efforts to clean up the language here for the sake of schools and libraries is a total waste of time. That is not how filters work.
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To be honest, Luke, I think we've given up on the automated filters a while back. I think we're more worried about the human filters at this point, like the one mentioned above.

Plus, if there are kids reading this forum (and I hope that there are), I don't think it is unreasonable to want this to be a (mostly) kid friendly joint.
 
Hutch said:
apparently the Amazing one hasn't been discovered to be an athesist infidel yet....;)
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Although now, thanks to your post, this will likely be "corected".

:D
 
Upchurch said:

Plus, if there are kids reading this forum (and I hope that there are), I don't think it is unreasonable to want this to be a (mostly) kid friendly joint.
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Which is fair, because it's your forum and you guys could require us to speak in Olde AEnglish if that's how you wanted to run it.

I'm just of a different opinion in that:

A.) Protecting kids has been a "justification" for all kinds of censorship in the recent past.

B.) It's the parent's responsiblity, not the media's (which includes the JREF for its news and commentary) to ensure a child has a proper understanding of when certain words are socially appropriate and when they are not.

C.) Your policy, while well-intentioned, is a reflection of English-speaking society's misguided attachment to Victorian prudery.

Not shooting the messenger, just expressing a viewpoint.
 
Phrost said:
C.) Your policy, while well-intentioned, is a reflection of English-speaking society's misguided attachment to Victorian prudery.
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That may be, as far as the objectionable practices go, but the objection to certain words is an older prejudice than the Victorian era. Some of the "four letter" words considered "bad" today are Anglo-Saxon words that might have gained their "bad" status as a result of post-Conquest Norman prejudice against the natives, although having been perfectly acceptable and "polite" words back in their day.

A good example is "lust". It originally meant "pleasure" or "joy" in Old English, but took on its carnal (and perjorative) cast later. True, words change connotations and meanings over time...but sometimes there are reasons behind the changes.

It's an interesting theory, anyway.

Personally, I like archaic "bad" words. There's not a filter in use that will stop me from saying "futter". (Or buss, but that's a perfectly innocent word that just sounds perverse.)
 
TragicMonkey said:
That may be, as far as the objectionable practices go, but the objection to certain words is an older prejudice than the Victorian era. Some of the "four letter" words considered "bad" today are Anglo-Saxon words that might have gained their "bad" status as a result of post-Conquest Norman prejudice against the natives, although having been perfectly acceptable and "polite" words back in their day.

A good example is "lust". It originally meant "pleasure" or "joy" in Old English, but took on its carnal (and perjorative) cast later. True, words change connotations and meanings over time...but sometimes there are reasons behind the changes.

It's an interesting theory, anyway.

Personally, I like archaic "bad" words. There's not a filter in use that will stop me from saying "futter". (Or buss, but that's a perfectly innocent word that just sounds perverse.)
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Good point, I'd forgotten about the Anglo-Saxon thing.

While I'm on a roll with endearing myself to the admin staff here, I'd also like to suggest reducing the number of posts per page to around 15 or 20 so the threads load faster... especially considering the average post here is several paragraphs.
 
Phrost-

Unfortunately my company's filtering software blocks your website.

"http://bullshido.com/ has been categorized as Pornography. It has been blocked per your organization's Internet Usage Policy for group Public. If you feel you reached this page in error please, contact your System Adminstrator."

I don't know why. Any ideas?
 
Phrost said:
Good point, I'd forgotten about the Anglo-Saxon thing.

While I'm on a roll with endearing myself to the admin staff here, I'd also like to suggest reducing the number of posts per page to around 15 or 20 so the threads load faster... especially considering the average post here is several paragraphs.
Click to expand...

You can ajust this in your user cp under options about halfway down the page.
 
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