10

Due to the questions regarding gaming and consoles on the SuperUser site our corporate firewall just blocked SuperUser as a gaming site and completely blocks access.

How do you convince your IT team to unblock this?

Please note that the value of SuperUser is not always as obvious to others as it is to the existing users, or those with the experience on the Trilogy.

(In my case it's simple, they unblock it solely because I ask them to, but how would others be able to motivate this in their environments?)

0

4 Answers 4

6

Maybe we should disallow gaming questions for this reason, then.

2
  • It's an option. Although troubleshooting games should be allowed. Possibly forcing a gaming tag that can be ignored and managed by moderators would be an option?
    – Diago
    Jul 18, 2009 at 6:59
  • Maybe disallow gaming questions and add a gaming.superuser.com site?
    – John Saunders
    Jul 18, 2009 at 11:46
3

The correct approach would be to contact the firewall vendor and get them to reclassify the site in their blacklists - then it gets fixed for everyone using that firewall. The existing classification may relate to the domain's earlier life.

The blacklists used by these firewalls (and proxies, for that matter) are really quite flawed (For instance, http://www.ipswich.angle.uk.com/ is in a different category to http://www.ipswich-angle.com/ even though they're the same site)

1
  • 1
    In our case the sites are scanned at the time they are visited. We use adaptive filtering, along with the above.
    – Diago
    Jul 16, 2009 at 11:16
1

I actually have this issue (and I'm a moderator!) and it does get rather annoying trying to deal with games questions (only way I can get to them is through the iPhone while I am at work, otherwise they have to wait).

It was rather easy to convince my boss to whitelist stackoverflow because it was actually programming related. I don't think I would have the same luck asking him to whitelist superuser.

1
  • 2
    Tell him you are more productive at work, if you do not have to moderate via iPhone ;-)
    – Ladybug Killer
    Jul 17, 2009 at 20:32
1

You've got it easy: I don't have good access to the main StackOverflow site from work anymore :(

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .