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To: NYer
As the person responsible for the content filter at our very large school district, I can tell you that the vendor is not the problem. Yes, sites can be placed in incorrect categories sometimes, but the choices of which categories get blocked and which do not is made by the school district. And the district has the ability to either unblock the whole category, or unblock (or block) specific sites.

The web page for this particular product states the following:

"Granular content filtering capabilities allow administrators to block all predefined categories or any combination of categories. Filtering can be scheduled by time of day, such as during school or business hours. Dell SonicWALL content filtering solutions also enhance performance by filtering out IM, MP3s, streaming media, freeware and other files that drain bandwidth... Administrators can enforce multiple custom policies for individual users, groups or specific category types. Local URL filtering controls can allow or deny specific domains or hosts. To block objectionable material more effectively, administrators can also create or customize filtering databases."

So regardless of their protestations, someone at the school district is responsible for deciding to block those site or that category of sites. If the Vatican web site was being blocked under the category of "Violence/Hate speech", someone at the district had to deliberately put it in that category, because no content filter vendor I have seen (and I have evaluated many over the years in the course of my job) would ever categorize it as such - they would risk losing too much business, especially from parochial/Christian schools.

12 posted on 06/20/2014 4:27:22 PM PDT by CA Conservative (Texan by birth, Californian by circumstance)
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To: CA Conservative; NYer

>> “someone at the district had to deliberately put it in that category” <<

.
Yup!

And school districts are lefty hate central.
.


13 posted on 06/20/2014 4:31:00 PM PDT by editor-surveyor (Freepers: Not as smart as I'd hoped they'd be)
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