Is your web site banned?

[Sue Light]

Having forgotten a bit of information I needed yesterday at the PRO, I used the Internet Cafe there to find it on my web site. I very soon realised that my site was blocked - obviously full of unwelcome phallic symbols and dead men.

I had a quick flip through, checking some of the other forum members' sites, and it was not good news at all! Strangely I couldn't work out why some were blocked, and others, very similar, were deemed suitable for the NA's visitors. I contacted the IT bods on their hot line, and was informed that 'they were blocked by default to avoid the many unwholesome sites that the users had been accessing.' I did enquire what triggered these default settings, but was left none the wiser, other than feeling rather like a pedlar of pornography.

Anyway, they were willing to examine sites on an individual basis, and unblock them if deemed worthy. I will wait and see!

Sue

[Guest Ian Bowbrick]

Sue,

I am sure that your site will be back and accessible soon. This site was not accessible when they did their first cull so you were in good company. Not sure if it is still on the banned list

Ian

[John_Hartley]

Sue

Assuming mine is also blocked, then I'm not really fussed. I suspect that folk interested in a couple of hundred dead guys in Stockport might have already found the site before they went to kew.. But, then , you never know.

John

[Sue Light]

John

I can totally understand your point, and at first I felt exactly the same. But on thinking about it, the end result is that hundreds of small memorial sites are not available from the very place that keeps the information used to build many of them. And there are also some rather more professional sites missing - Geoff Foster's 'Thin Blue Line', and [sorry Ryan] 'Salient Points' to name two. So not only would a searcher not be able to find details of the Stockport men, but no men at all!

I didn't have long to spend looking, but I feel rather strongly that it's the principle of the thing that's irritating! Although I've been hung for my principles before!

Sue

[salientpoints]

So how does one get anything 'approved' by the archive police?

Ryan

[Sue Light]

Ryan

I gave them my address at the time - they said that for any others, send an email with the URL and they would unblock it.

Mind you, I didn't think to ask who to send the email to. I guess using:

enquiry@nationalarchives.gov.uk

might work.

Sue

[Derek Robertson]

You have created an excellent site Sue, well done indeed.

I'm very impressed, it is something I must get around to.

[Dragon]

I sympathise, Sue. Although my site has little of war interest on it, and therefore isn't in the same category as yours, I found that a

content deleted by me - see below

A quick look at the URLs which they had banned would have shown them that the sites were harmless and in fact educational.

Gwyn

Edited 12 October , 2004 by Dragon

[Dragon]

It's a nice site, Sue. I'll go back and have a proper read this week. It's very dignified and the quotations are apposite.

Gwyn

[Gary Samson]

Hi Gwyn,

Bit of an utterly-butterly in what is otherwise an on-topic area and with no intention of hi-jacking Sue's thread...I'm intrigued by your new avatar. Could you tell us (me) something about it?

Gary

[Dragon]

Sue, I'll reply to Gary and then not hijack your thread any more! Apologies.

When I'm in reflective mood, I sometimes decide to use to use a peace symbol and this is it, enlarged. It's a photo I took in the reconstructed church at Bennwihr, Alsace, the village which was completely obliterated in the fighting for the Colmar Gap.

The image is on the ceiling of the little chapel extension and I'm completely amazed that it worked because it was sunset and the roof rafters were already misting in the dusk gloom.

If ever you are in Haut-Rhin, Alsace, Bennwihr's church and its war memorial are painfully beautiful. I've put the interior of the church and part of the war memorial outside in the Works of Art on my new-look website, 5th and 6th picture in, after the Breitenbach German cemetery, also Alsace.

Gwyn

[NIGEL]

you would never know that was a photo Gwyn

[Nick Cooper]

Having forgotten a bit of information I needed yesterday at the PRO, I used the Internet Cafe there to find it on my web site. I very soon realised that my site was blocked - obviously full of unwelcome phallic symbols and dead men.

I had a quick flip through, checking some of the other forum members' sites, and it was not good news at all! Strangely I couldn't work out why some were blocked, and others, very similar, were deemed suitable for the NA's visitors. I contacted the IT bods on their hot line, and was informed that 'they were blocked by default to avoid the many unwholesome sites that the users had been accessing.' I did enquire what triggered these default settings, but was left none the wiser, other than feeling rather like a pedlar of pornography.

I worked at a hospital in SW London a couple of years back, with a similarly overzealous IT department, but they weren't quite as clever as they thought. Most sites were blocked either side of 12:00 to 14:00, but Google wasn't, so you could use their cached versions of "blocked" pages most of the time. The same applied to sites that were blocked all the time for no reason other than nobody had got round to checking if they were innocuous or not. Bizarrely, stuff like the National Rail journey planner was off-limits, despite it being useful for work-related journeys. Oh, and while you couldn't get to the top-level of eBay, book-marking the sign-in page meant you could sneak through "under the radar...."

[Sue Light]

Thankyou for comments on my site, although I didn't mean to start the thread to get people rushing to have a look at it. But it does show that even with the technological know-how of a wart hog, you can get something 'up there.' A big thankyou to whoever invented 'drag and drop'!

One weekend this summer I was staying in a rather comfortable hotel in south-east London [rather better than my normal B&Bs], and got so carried away by the breakfasts and the Internet cafe, that I nearly forgot why I was there. When I clicked on this forum, it came up, no problem, but I got to one thread which I was told was blocked. And in addition it flashed up the offending word, which was 'Gestapo.' I was amused by the thought that I might find more offensive words through the blocking software, than by normal surfing!

Sue

[leigh]

Many schools and establishments procure software to control the use of the internet.

This software will block sites based on many factors automatically, and does not discriminate very well.

If your site is not available form the NA it will most probably been blocked just down to this software. If you inform them I am sure they will unblock any sites you ask for that are accidentally blocked.

Regards

LEigh

[Dragon]

Thankyou for comments on my site, although I didn't mean to start the thread to get people rushing to have a look at it.

Sue, your site was well worth visiting!

(There's nothing like knowing there are banned words to get people trying to discover what the offensive words are and how to circumvent the ban. Or even the banned sets of letters. One site I use won't even let you say someone's an, er, er, Londoner.)

Gwyn

[John_Hartley]

One site I use won't even let you say someone's an, er, er, Londoner.)

Quite right, too.

There are limits to one's tolerance, doncha know

[Dragon]

I have edited my post, above and removed most of it, because I know perfectly well what someone 'Asked Jeeves' after reading it. A link to the whole question asked shows up in my site stats, in case the person is unaware. As does the IP.

Sad and pathetic.

Sorry, Sue. I'll send you a private explanation.

Gwyn

[rflory]

I apologize for stealing your thread but the discussion of censoring reminded me that when I first joined this forum I signed my name "Dick Flory" as I do now, and when the message appeared on the forum my name had been changed to "Thingy Flory". As I remember it took two messages to Chris to get it corrected. Regards. Dick Flory

[Stephen Nulty]

Guys

Speaking as one who is currently trying to introduce Internet controls to my place of work, could I add a “professional” angle to this.

When organisations of any sort introduce these controls, for whatever reason, they have two choices. Either they record details of individual web sites which they wish to deny access to, or they deny access to categories of sites. Most use the latter!

All internet sites have a category, of which there are currently 44 (well, that’s what I’m told!). These range from “Education”, through “Health & Medicine” to categories such as “Adult/Sexually Explicit”, “Violence/Offensive” and “Weapons”.

An organisation may block any of these it feels are inappropriate and in addition, some organisations deny access to those which are classified as “Not Categorised”. Also, please remember that one reason for denying access is that the organisation has a duty of care to users of its computers. This is not censorship !!

If you wish to check a site category, I can recommend a visit to www.surfcontrol.com and choose the option “Test A Site”. This will report back to you the category of the site, which MAY explain why access to it was blocked.

But then again, it may not!

SN

[Nick Cooper]

I have edited my post, above and removed most of it, because I know perfectly well what someone 'Asked Jeeves' after reading it. A link to the whole question asked shows up in my site stats, in case the person is unaware. As does the IP.

Sad and pathetic.

Sorry, Sue. I'll send you a private explanation.

Gwyn

Sites logs reveal the funniest things. On one of my sites I have a biography of writer John Mortimer, in which - in the description of one adaptation he scripted - the word "nude appears, while elsewhere the actress Roalayn Landor is mentioned as one of the semi-regulars on Rumpole of the Bailey. I was quite surprised when the access logs showed that some sad person had got to the (pure text) page with the search-string "Rosalyn Landor nude." They must have been really disappointed!