Community-based parental controls

1. A computer-implemented method comprising:

maintaining, on one or more computer-readable storage devices, a plurality of different rating groups, each rating group providing a rating that relates to at least one piece of electronic content and that is compiled based on information received from a plurality of guardians evaluating the at least one piece of electronic content;

receiving, from a first guardian, a selection of at least first and second rating groups to apply to a set of users associated with the first guardian to control access to electronic content by the set of users;

receiving a request for a piece of electronic content from a user;

determining whether the user from which the request was received is within the set of users associated with the first guardian;

in response to a determination that the user is within the set of users associated with the first guardian, accessing information associated with the first and second rating groups from the one or more computer-readable storage devices;

determining, using a processor, whether or not to provide access to the requested piece of electronic content to the user based on an indication or absence of a compiled rating for the requested piece of content within the first and second rating groups, whereby access to the requested piece of content is denied based on the compiled rating for the requested piece of content that exists within at least one of the first and second rating groups, the complied rating within the second rating group being applied when there is the absence of a compiled rating for the requested piece of content in the first rating group;

receiving a request to form a new rating group and an identification of required characteristics for the new rating group;

forming the new rating group based on the request;

adding the new rating group to the maintained rating groups;

receiving a request from a second guardian to submit, to the new rating group, information evaluating content to enable control of content accessed by users;

verifying that the second guardian satisfies the required characteristics; and

enabling the second guardian to submit the information evaluating content based on the verification that the second guardian satisfies the required characteristics.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the maintaining of the plurality of rating groups comprises:

receiving, from the plurality of guardians, information evaluating reflecting an evaluation of electronic content; and

compiling ratings for each rating group based on the evaluation information received from the plurality of guardians.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the ratings are compiled based on weighting the information received for a given piece of electronic content.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

receiving evaluation information evaluating the piece of electronic content from the second guardian;

associating the received evaluation information evaluating the piece of electronic content with the new rating group; and

updating at least one compiled rating of the new rating group to reflect the information evaluating the piece of electronic content received from the second guardian.

5. The method of claim 4 , further comprising:

receiving information evaluating the piece of electronic content from a third guardian;

associating the received information evaluating the piece of electronic content from the third guardian with the new rating group; and

updating at least one compiled rating of the new rating group to reflect the information evaluating the piece of electronic content received from the third guardian.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein updating the at least one compiled rating to reflect the evaluation information evaluating the piece of electronic content received from the third guardian comprises weighting the information evaluating the piece of electronic content received from the third guardian differently than the information evaluating the piece of electronic content received from the second guardian.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining whether or not to provide the requested piece of electronic content to the user includes determining to block at least a portion of the requested piece of electronic content to the user based on the compiled rating.

8. The method of claim 1 , further comprising providing the compiled rating to the user.

9. The method of claim 1 , further comprising providing the requested piece of content to the user.

10. The method of claim 1 , further comprising providing an indication to the user that the requested content is blocked.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein accessing information associated with the first rating group includes accessing guardian ratings of the first rating group.

12. A computer-implemented method comprising:

maintaining, on one or more computer-readable storage devices, a plurality of different rating groups, each rating group providing a rating that relates to at least one piece of electronic content and that is compiled based on information received from a plurality of guardians evaluating the at least one piece of electronic content;

receiving, from a first guardian, a selection of a first rating group as a primary rating group and a second rating group as a secondary rating group, from among the plurality of different rating groups, to be applied to control access to electronic content by a set of users associated with the first guardian;

receiving a request for a piece of electronic content from a user;

determining whether the user from which the request was received belongs to the set of users associated with the first guardian;

in response to a determination that the user belongs to the set of users associated with the first guardian, accessing information associated with the first and second rating groups from the one or more computer-readable storage devices;

determining, using a processor, whether or not a compiled rating exists for the requested piece of content within the first rating group;

in response to the determination that there is no compiled rating for the requested piece of content within the first rating group, analyzing information associated with the second rating group and determining whether or not a complied rating exists for the requested piece of content with the second rating group, wherein access to the requested piece of electronic content is denied when the compiled rating for the requested piece of content is determined to exist within the second rating group; and

receiving a request to form a new rating group and an identification of required characteristics for the new rating group;

forming the new rating group based on the request;

adding the new rating group to the maintained plurality of rating groups;

receiving a request from a second guardian to submit, to the new rating group, information evaluating content to enable control of content accessed by a set of users associated with the second guardian;

verifying that the second guardian satisfies the required characteristics; and

enabling the second guardian to submit the information evaluating content based on the verification that the second guardian satisfies the required characteristics.

13. The method of claim 12 , further comprising granting access to the requested piece of electronic content when there is an absence of a guardian rating for the requested piece of content in both the first and second rating groups

14. The method of claim 12 , further comprising blocking access to at least a portion of the requested piece of electronic content based on an indication of the compiled rating in at least one of the first and second rating groups.

15. The method of claim 12 , further comprising providing the compiled rating to the user.

16. The method of claim 12 , further comprising providing an indication to the user that the requested content is blocked.