is this site tasteless?
"Web Sense produces Employee Internet Management software, an Internet filtering solution that manages, monitors and reports on employee use of the Internet.
In other words they produce software that allows your company to block you from visiting web sites that they think are "unsuitable".
They do this by "categorising" web sites. They then produce a list of which sites fit into which categories. A company can configure Web Sense software so that it bars access to certain categories of web site at certain times of the day. You can see a list of Web Sense's categories here.
On Jan 14th 2001, I received an email from a friend saying that he could no longer access my web site (this web site) from work. I knew that the company he works for uses Web Sense software, so I went and took a look at their site. Web Sense provide a handy site lookup tool on their web site so it was easy for me to confirm that this site had been categorised as tasteless.
Now I admit to being a little biased, but I really don't see what's tasteless about this site. There's a bit of political comment here and there but I find it difficult to categorise any of that as tasteless. Let's take a look at how Web Sense define "tasteless" on their web site:
- Tasteless
- Sites that cannot be categorized elsewhere but offer offensive, grotesque, frightening, lurid, material with no redeeming value.
Can any of the material on this web site really be described as offensive, grotesque, frightening or lurid? I know that much of it has no redeeming value - but then that's true of 95% of the web!
So anyway, I emailed Web Sense asking what it was they found so tasteless about my site. The reply I got completely sidestepped that question but pointed me at the Suggest A Database Change page on their web site. I went there and suggested they removed this site from the tasteless category, but I'm not sure that's really what I want. What I really want to know is why this site was categorised as tasteless in the first place. Only then can I take an intelligent decision on what to do next. I might consider removing the offending sections, but I might want to add more.
I'll keep this page up to date with any further news, but in the meantime there are a couple of ways that you can help.
- Please see if you can work out what is so tasteless about this site. If you come up with something, please let me know.
- If you can't find anything that offends you on the site, then please consider using the Suggest A Database Change page on Web Sense's web site to suggest that they remove this site from their "tasteless" category.
Thanks for reading.
Dave...
p.s. Oh, and if you want to access this site from a Web Sense-controlled computer, it's worth noting that they've only listed www.dave.org.uk - dave.org.uk still works fine!
Update: The site has now been reclassified as a personal home page. We're no longer tasteless :)
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