genman99 wrote:Seems like Websense is saying they can add URLs to their master database, but they also say that "your organization's local administrator" can make a "category or specific URL be custom-permitted". But it sounds like WE are saying that our "local administrator" (i.e. I assume that means the Global Service Center?) is NOT setup to do this tailoring, even though most of Websense clients can. In any case, Websense has added
http://indexing.familysearch.org (and hopefully also the https version of the URL) to the list of allowable URLs. Somebody who has LDS Restricted Access or LDS Extetnded Access filter level in their meetinghouse can test this out after 72 hours (i.e. after Thursday) and see if it now works. If not, we need to figure out what additional server URL needs to be forwarded to Websense to be added to their master database.
You are combining two distinct elements of the filtering, which I think is leading to some confusion.
- Websense is responsible only for categorizing websites. They have a whole list of their standard categories, which you can see here. You can ask Websense to categorize uncategorized sites, or to change the category of a particular site, by sending a request to suggest@websense.com, as you have done in this case.
- The Church-managed firewalls then use these categories to decide whether to allow access to a particular site. There are different sets of categories allowed for the three filtering levels (LDS Restricted Access, LDS Extended Access, and General Access).
The Church doesn't get in the business of categorizing sites, and Websense doesn't get in the business of deciding which categories are allowed on Church-managed firewalls for particular filtering levels.
So just because Websense has assigned a category to a particular site, you can't then assume that that site will be unblocked for any particular filtering level. Uncategorized sites are always blocked (I'm pretty sure this is true), so it may well help to categorize an uncategorized site. But there's no guarantee that it will then be allowed.
Unfortunately, there is no way that I know of to determine which of Websense's categories are blocked or allowed by each of the three firewall filtering levels. That would be nice to know, but it may be that the Church has good reasons for not publishing that list.
genman99 wrote:So, I'll go back to my original question. Why can't the Global Service Center, or whoever has responsibility for tailoring the filter levels (LDS Restricted, LDS Extended, and General Access) fix/tweak the filter setting levels to also allow access to the Church's indexing server? Who is the contact person for that? Does anybody know? Does anybody know who would know?
The filtering is done on a category basis. So if a particular site, such as familysearchindexing.org, is in category X, then it would be allowed for a particular filtering level only by allowing
all sites in category X. There may be reasons why the Church chooses to block category X for a particular filtering level.
Of course you could game the system by saying that category Y is allowed for a particular filtering level, so familysearchindexing.org should be in category Y, but that's not how Websense works -- they use their guidelines to put each site in what they consider to be the correct category.
I suppose it's possible that the Church can make exceptions for sites in the filtering profiles that would allow some sites, even though their category is blocked. But if that were the case, it seems to me that they would have allowed all Church-owned sites long ago. Since they haven't done that, I suspect that the current system requires them to work with categories determined by Websense.
The Global Service Center either can make the changes in what categories are allowed for each filtering level, or would know who would be able to do so. I'm sure it would require some authorization higher than just the GSC.