Whereigo website blocked

[+Scooter Bill]

FYI, the Wherigo website has been tagged as Games and is being blocked by WebSense.

 

There's no specific forum for Wherigo.com so I posted this message here.

 

Maybe there should be Groundspeak Forum categories for Wherigo and Waymarking as well as GC.com. Or am I missing something.

 

(name change. Wherigo had too many e's - J)

Edited February 26, 2008 by Jeremy

[Jeremy]

Thanks. It is a game but an offline one. Not exactly sure how to correct it but we'll see what we can do.

[+SUp3rFM & Cruella]

I've experienced the same thing in my office. Websense is blocking the "games" category.

 

Back in November, Geocaching.com was blocked too, but for another reason.

 

In this post, it's a list of how some of Groundspeak projects are cataloged.

 

I've used the Websense Report Tool (http://www.websense.com/SupportPortal/SiteLookup.aspx) to ask for Wherigo.com be placed under the category of "Hobbies", just like Waymarking.com

 

Maybe, with the input from Groundspeak, they will place it under that category.

[Jeremy]

Great info SUp3rFM & Cruella.

 

After talking with Elias I agree with the approach. The best thing to do is have the site recategorized as a hobby or sport. Since you can't actually play online games on the Wherigo.com web site it is incorrectly categorized anyway. Whoever sees this notice please lobby WebSense to recategorize the site.

[+Sulley_Monster]

I've used the Websense Report Tool (http://www.websense.com/SupportPortal/SiteLookup.aspx) to ask for Wherigo.com be placed under the category of "Hobbies", just like Waymarking.com

 

Maybe, with the input from Groundspeak, they will place it under that category.

Let's not get it moved into the Hobby category. That's blocked by WebSense at my office. I can get to geocaching, but not Waymarking. Wherigo is also currently blocked.

[+SUp3rFM & Cruella]

Let's not get it moved into the Hobby category. That's blocked by WebSense at my office. I can get to geocaching, but not Waymarking. Wherigo is also currently blocked.

 

Geoaching is listed as

 

URL: http://www.geocaching.com

Category: Sports

 

I doubt any reviewing of Waymarking.com and Wherigo.com would put them under the category of "Sports". At least get them on the Hobbies category. Some more extreme settings of Websense will block almost everything, as you know.

[+Too Tall John]

Let's not get it moved into the Hobby category. That's blocked by WebSense at my office. I can get to geocaching, but not Waymarking. Wherigo is also currently blocked.

Don't want to spoil anyone's fun here, but it occurs to me that it's blocked because the network admin in your office has it set up like that to decrease the amount of usage for non-work websites such as geocaching/Waymarking/Wherigo/etc? Or maybe the office manager wants to know the number of websites that have nothing to do with your job are limited, helping to assure you are staying on task.

 

Who do you work for? Are they a publicly traded company? As a stockholder should I worry that your usage of company time and resources is eating into my dividends?

 

My point? If I were an office manager and was reading this thread, I'd be mildly annoyed that there are people here talking about how they can't use my resources (including time I am paying you for) to play a game. Guess which WebSense setting would get tweaked my first time back in the office after reading this?

 

In the interest of full disclosure, I am typing this from my work computer.

 

Of course, I actually get to geocache as part of my work, on occasion.

 

So, I'm doing research.

 

Yeah...

 

Edited March 1, 2008 by Too Tall John

[+Sulley_Monster]

My point? If I were an office manager and was reading this thread, I'd be mildly annoyed that there are people here talking about how they can't use my resources (including time I am paying you for) to play a game. Guess which WebSense setting would get tweaked my first time back in the office after reading this?

So you'd have a problem if I were on non-work related sites during my lunch hour and breaks?

[+Too Tall John]

My point? If I were an office manager and was reading this thread, I'd be mildly annoyed that there are people here talking about how they can't use my resources (including time I am paying you for) to play a game. Guess which WebSense setting would get tweaked my first time back in the office after reading this?

So you'd have a problem if I were on non-work related sites during my lunch hour and breaks?

Nope, but nobody specified this in their posts, so my point still stands:

 

"If I were an office manager and was reading this thread, I'd be mildly annoyed that there are people here talking about how they can't use my resources (including time I am paying you for) to play a game."

 

I'd feel somewhat better if I knew people were only trying to access the sites during their lunch breaks, but would still be concerned, especially having read in other areas about how people are always on the site in a background window.

Edited March 5, 2008 by Too Tall John

[+Trucker Lee]

Just found this thread. Groundspeak is not blocked, Geocaching is at my employer. All sports seem to be blocked.

 

I will be contacting our network administrator and pointing out that several drivers, including self, have began geocaching as a motive to get out of the trucks and get excercise, something we badly need. Blocking Geocaching.com interferes with this pursuit, and discourages us from utilizing company facilities as we have to stop elsewhere to get our cache queries and logging accomplished.

[+5 Caching Campers]

My point? If I were an office manager and was reading this thread, I'd be mildly annoyed that there are people here talking about how they can't use my resources (including time I am paying you for) to play a game. Guess which WebSense setting would get tweaked my first time back in the office after reading this?

So you'd have a problem if I were on non-work related sites during my lunch hour and breaks?

 

FYI: Wherigo.com is in the Hobbies category now (I just looked it up).

 

Websense actually has a decent solution for this "lunch hour and breaks" problem that some of the other filtering software doesn't. They call it quota time. Your IT Dept can set certain categories (such as Game, Hobbies, Sports, etc) to have limited availability throughout the day. IIRC, by default it's 60 minutes that can be used in 10 minute chunks. So, when you try to visit Waymarking.com it says that the site is only available on quota time and asks if you want to use some of your quota time. If you say yes, it deducts 10 minutes from your days total (doesn't matter if you're only on for 1 minute).

 

Anyway, that's a little outside the scope of these forums and really more up to your companies policies. Keep in mind, that generally speaking, the IT Dept doesn't make up these policies but is tasked with setting up the technology and enforcing them. (Yes, I work in IT).