Um…what rules are those?
AFAIK I’m not breaking any laws by asking for a workaround to Websense, and I still don’t see where this breaks an explicitly stated SDMB rule either. The idea that I might turn around and sue the Board because I got myself fired is frankly nonsensical - if I break my company’s rules and get caught, that’s my responsibility.
As a hypothetical exercise, let’s suppose that my company has banned its employees from eating anything at their desks. If I then ask my fellow Dopers for a few sneaky suggestions on surreptitious snacking, would that thread also be closed by the mods? The fact is that some of the rules imposed by private companies will always be arbitrary and some will always be unnecessarily restrictive. It’s not the SDMB’s job to uphold those rules, and I thought it was pretty unfair that I was prevented from even discussing ways to get around one of them.
I’m not engaing in hate speech here, or trolling, or shit-stirring or even flaming anyone. I’m just trying to find a way to access sites like Stephen King’s homepage which is blocked by websense here because it’s listed as “uncategorised”.
Other examples of things that are blocked:
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I can’t see any of the links in any of the gun or pocket-knife threads because all such sites are blocked under the heading “Weapons”.
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I can’t access Terry Pratchett discussion groups or Neil Gaiman’s blog or ANY messageboards except for the SDMB, (and only then because I asked really nicely).
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I can’t access YouTube or Google Videos because anything with “streaming media” is also blocked.
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I can’t access Ebay because anything to do with internet auctions and shopping is also blocked
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I can’t access Photobucket or any of the free image-hosting sites because anything to do with personal storage is also blocked. This means I can’t see about 90% of the pictures linked by Dopers.
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I can’t access Myspace, Flickr or any of the “social” sites because they’re also blocked.
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And last but not least, anything that Websense decides to stick under the infuriatingly vague category of “Uncategorised” is also blocked.
About the only thing I CAN access is various news sites like the BBC or Drudge, and if if wasn’t for the SDMB I’d have gone fucking nuts a long time ago.
I’m not looking to access porn, nor would I be stupid enough to do so at work knowing full well that the system administrator would know - I’m just looking for a little breathing-room here so that I can enjoy a few of the sites most Dopers take for granted and perhaps even participate in a few threads with equal access to the images everyone else can see.
But why don’t you just, you know, do some work?
Don’t you ever do a bit of surfing from work yourself? And What are you, my mother? 
Yes, I do. But I own the company. Well, I sold that interest, but I’m still a senior veep. I worked for decades, took personal financial risks, and invested I don’t know how many vacationless years to earn a position where I can tell the IT guy what to do. You young’uns have no patience.
Sounds like you worked hard to get where you are today, and I certainly respect that. But lest you get the wrong idea about me, I’m certainly not lazy or impatient. It’s just that January is a mighty slow period for us, so once I’ve cleared off all the work on my desk by about mid-morning, there’s often literally nothing for me to do. Once things pick up I probably won’t have time to check out much of anything online, but I’ll always keep an eye on the Dope!
I’m surprised your employer lets you anywhere near this site, to be honest.
Seeing as they consider pocketknives “weapons”, I can’t believe they let you have access to a website called “The Straight Dope” 
Get offa my lawn!
**Martini ** - I’m sure the administrator checked it out before agreeing to give me access, but if they had any idea just how addictive this place was, I’m sure they’d yank me off here faster than a very fast thing on wheels.
This rule makes no sense.
Lets say I start a company, and make it against the rules to make pizza. Now if you start a discussion on SDMB regarding making pizzas, it would violate the rules of my company. Should that thread then be closed?
You could say that the purpose of the pizza making discussion isn’t to break the laws of my particular company. But it’s just as easy to make the same claim with the web blocking software discussion.
I would like Samclem to try to explain his reasoning here.
No dog in this fight, but that analogy fails. The discussion would need to be about making pizzas at your company, not just making pizzas period. Dependent clauses and all that.
I considered that in my post.
If you can make a general pizza making discussion, you can also make a general web blocking software discussion, right?
I see your point, but how does my earlier analogy stack up in that case? If I asked for advice on how to sneak munchies into my *specific * place of work against my employer’s specific rules, should that thread also be closed? My point is that the SDMB’s “rule” here makes no sense. What the reasoning behind it?
I think the reasoning behind it is that plotting ways to circumvent rules is bizarre to the extreme at a place where there are rules. By your analogics, there could be threads like this: How can I get around Giraffe’s rule about hate speech? Anybody got some choice terms that toe the line?
How is this bizarre? What’s wrong with discussing rules we consider unnecessary, draconian, or downright silly?
The SDMB has every right to enforce its own rules, and thank God they do, otherwise the place would be awash with unbanned trolls and would be an awful, chaotic, unusable mess. However it’s not the Mods job to enforce my employer’s rules. I see the Dope as a great mine of expert advice and unbiased opinion that’s there when I need it - it’s a shame to restrict that when I’m clearly not engaging in anything illegal.
Bad example. The rule is “we know it when we see it.” Ain’t no getting around that.
On the other hand, if we start discussing how to get around the rules at your workplace, your employers will probably decide to just block this site entirely. You wouldn’t want that, would you?
How would they know that this is where I’d learned how to circumvent their stupid restrictions? *If * I got caught I’d probably get a warning rather than being summarily sacked. And in any case, I doubt they’d bother tracking me down here and checking all my posts - they’d probably just assume I learned it somewhere on the net - it really wouldn’t matter to them where.
They wouldn’t have to know that you circumvented their rules. All it would have to take for them to block off the site entirely is them doing a spot-check of the site and seeing a thread titled, “How can I circumvent my company’s internet rules?”
Possibly. I still think their rules suck though. 
And BTW, have there ever been any other threads that have been closed because the OP wanted to circumvent their company’s rules, or am I the only one so far? If I am the only one, I think this sets a dangerous precedent. And do I get a plaque of some sort?