Just last month, I posted on how much I hated corporate content filters, specifically for blocking sites such as Scott Hanselman’s site and del.icio.us, labeling them as “personal” sites. I’ve got good news and bad news regarding my rant from earlier. I spoke with some of my supervisors at work and the technology argument won over regarding Scott’s site

• they’ve unblocked it because it is a great technological resource. Unfortunately, del.icio.us does not fall into that category.

Today, I discovered another site that apparently is not a good resource for information: Wikipedia. I guess because users decide on the content of this online encyclopedia, it must be personal. In fact, here is what I see when I attempt to go there at work:

The following error was encountered:

Access Denied by SmartFilter: Forbidden, this page (http://en.wikipedia.org/) is categorized as: Personal.

I would post a screenshot, but it has the phone number for the corporate help desk and other related information. You know, one of the things that is most frustrating of all is that the entire content filtering system has nothing to do with productivity at work. Why? Because ESPN.com isn’t blocked. And no, my company has NOTHING to do with sports. Enough people would complain if ESPN were blocked that they keep it open, while blocking sites that are actually beneficial to work, such as Wikipedia and del.icio.us. Oh, and by the way, Chris Sell’s site is blocked because it is personal, too.

Just another frustration from the life of a programmer I suppose.