From: Jeroen Scheerder <js@phil.uu.nl>
Newsgroups: news.software.readers,comp.os.msdos.mail-news,comp.os.os2.mail-news,comp.sys.mac.comm,comp.os.ms-windows.apps.comm,comp.os.ms-windows.apps.winsock.news,alt.usenet.offline-reader,alt.answers,comp.answers,news.answers
Subject: Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval 2.0 (GNKSA 2.0) for Usenet Software
Followup-To: news.software.readers
Summary: Guidelines for writers of Usenet reading and posting programs.
  If you follow these guidelines,  you'll  make your users and the rest
  of the Usenet community much happier.
X-Note: This is an updated and revised descendant of Ron Newman's GNKSA 1.2

Archive-name: usenet/software/good-netkeeping-seal
Posting-Frequency: monthly (first Sunday)
Last-modified: Apr 23 2001
X-Version: 2.08 ($Id: gnksa.hdr,v 1.5 2001/04/23 09:36:42 js Exp $)
URL: <http://www.xs4all.nl/%7Ejs/gnksa/>
Maintainer: Jeroen Scheerder <js@phil.uu.nl>


            GNKSA * The Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval
            ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There's a general perception that Usenet is becoming "noisier" the more
people join it.  There are more blank articles, more mangled headers,
more "me too" responses accompanying many lines of quoted text, more
followup postings to inappropriate newsgroups, more misattributed
quotes, more followups that really should have been e-mail replies, more
excessive cross- and multi-postings, more unreadibly encoded or
otherwise maimed articles.

This is often blamed on the new users themselves -- they are called
"clueless newbies", unqualified to participate in Usenet because they
don't know Unix, or use a misdesigned graphical user interface (GUI), or
use an off-line news reader, or use a commercial service such as America
Online or Delphi.

I believe most of this anger is misdirected.  The new users aren't
really that different from the old-timers.  What _is_ different is that
many of the old-timers are using relatively well-behaved software,
typically `rn' or one of its offspring, while many of the newbies are
using `tin', `uqwk', `AOL', or various PC newsreaders.  Unfortunately,
these programs frequently violate assumptions that come naturally to
people used to well-behaved readers:

  - The user can see the essential header fields, including "Newsgroups"
    and "Followup-To".
  - The user can edit all header fields when composing a followup.
  - There's a clear difference between `followup' and `reply'.
  - Followups preserve the Subject and References of the original
    article, unless the user explicitly changes them.
  - News software respects "Followup-To" and "Reply-To"
    specifications.
  - What the user writes is what gets posted, as is.

Newer software should be an improvement over an ancient program like
`rn'.  Instead, much of it is crippled or broken in comparison.

The Usenet community can deal with this problem by establishing a "Good
Net-keeping Seal of Approval" for Usenet reading and posting software.
This "Seal" would certify that the software complies with certain
minimal standards, such as those listed below.

A group of volunteers will test all putative Usenet software to
determine whether it qualifies for the "Seal", with the intention to
periodically post a list of all tested software to
news.software.readers, alt.usenet.offline-reader, and other appropriate
newsgroups.  This periodic posting will list both compliant and
non-compliant news programs; for non-compliant programs, it will include
a list of all violations of the standards.  The hope is that this will
encourage the authors of non-compliant software to bring their programs
up to "Good Net-Keeping Seal" standards, eventually.


                              --%-@#@-%--


These are the proposed standards a Usenet news program should meet to
deserve the "Good Net-Keeping Seal":

  1)  Display all essential header information
  2)  Provide clear, separate commands for new posting, followup, and
      e-mail reply
  3)  Provide cross-posting functionality
  4)  Allow users to change essential headers
  5)  Ensure followups and e-mail replies contain a correct Subject
  6)  Direct followups to the correct newsgroups
  7)  Make sure followups contain valid References
  8)  Direct e-mail replies to the correct address
  9)  Allow the user to change her mind about whether to post or mail
  10) Provide adequate quotation and attribution facilities
  11) Provide a user-specified "Subject: " header
  12) Provide a valid "From: " header
  13) Allow users to both cancel and supersede their own articles (and
      _no_ others!)
  14) Try to respect the 80-character line-length conventions
  15) Separate signatures correctly, and don't use excessive ones
  16) Try to prevent obvious user errors
  17) Post human-readable articles unless ordered otherwise
  18) Provide self-protection
  19) Be kind to servers, leave room for others

These requirements are described in more detail below.  In the spirit of
RFC 1123 and Henry Spencer's "son of RFC 1036" proposal, I've
capitalized the words "MUST", "MUST NOT", and "DO NOT" to indicate
absolute requirements, while using the word "SHOULD" for things that are
merely a Very Good Idea, Really.


                              --%-@#@-%--


1)  Display all essential header information

When displaying a news article, it MUST by default show the user certain
information that is found in the article's header.  The information need
not be displayed as actual RFC-1036 header lines, but it MUST be shown
to the user in some form.

  a) The author of the article (its "From: " header line)

  b) The article's Subject.  At least the first 70 characters
     following the "Subject: " string MUST be displayed.

  c) The list of newsgroups the article was posted to.  This list MUST
     be displayed in full, never truncated.  This list need not be
     displayed if it has only one element, provided that the software
     displays the name of the newsgroup that the user is currently
     reading.

  d) The article's Followup-To list, if this is different from the
     Newsgroups list.  This MUST be displayed in full, never
     truncated.

  e) The article's Reply-To, if this is different from the From
     specification.

If the required information does not fit fully on the display, the
software MAY display only the initial part of the information, provided
that it offers the user a scrollbar or equivalent means of viewing the
remainder.

The software MAY allow the user to re-configure it so as to turn off
these displays, but if the user has not done this, all of the required
information MUST be displayed.

Rationale: Without having to make any special effort the user should see
who sent the article she is reading, how to reply to it via e-mail, what
discussion groups it was posted to, and whether the author of the
message wants to narrow or redirect the location of future discussion.


2)  Provide clear, separate commands for new posting, followup, and
    e-mail reply

The software MUST provide separate, clearly distinguished commands to do
each of the following:

  a) Post a new article, unrelated to any existing one, whose Subject
     is to be supplied by the user, and which has an empty or missing
     References: header line.

  b) Post a followup article, with Subject, Newsgroups, and References
     header lines derived appropriately from the original article.
                                             (see #5, #6, and #7 below)

  c) Reply by e-mail, with "Subject: " and "To: " headers derived
     appropriately from the original article.     (see #5 and #8 below)

Software that uses the English language is strongly encouraged to
include the phrases "Post to newsgroup", "Followup to newsgroup", and
"Reply by e-mail" (or "Reply to sender" or "Reply to author") -- in
menus, on-line help, and written documentation.  It SHOULD avoid using
other verbs such as "Send" or "Respond" whose meaning is not evident to
the user.  An ordinary, untrained user SHOULD be able to easily pick the
correct command.

Rationale: Users who post followups when they should send e-mail
replies, or vice versa, seem to be an endemic problem.  They are almost
always using software that doesn't make the difference clear, or doesn't
even provide both commands.


3)  Provide cross-posting functionality

When creating either a new article or a followup, the user MUST be
allowed to specify multiple newsgroups, and the software MUST cross-post
(not multi-post) to them if more than one is specified.

Posting software SHOULD prevent the user from excessive cross-posting,
or at least warn against it.  If posting to a very large number of
groups, the user SHOULD either be forced or strongly suggested to set a
"Followup-To" header.  Such a header must be subjected to restrictions
that are at least as strict as those imposed on "Newsgroups: ".

Rationale: Cross-posting is an essential feature of Usenet.  If the
software cannot cross-post, then its users will multi-post instead.  A
reasonable attempt should be made, however, to protect the user against
(usually inadvertent; if not, often considered net-abuse) excessive
cross-postings that will only lead to canceling and flame warfare.


4) Allow users to change essential headers

When creating either a new article or a followup, the software MUST
allow the user to edit the Subject, Newsgroups, Followup-To, and
Reply-To specifications.  The user MUST be able to edit these at any
time during composition of the article; she MUST NOT be limited to
specifying them only before, or after, editing the article's text.

The software MUST allow the user to specify a new Subject field of at
least 70 characters, not including the string "Subject: " itself.  It is
better not to impose any limit at all, other than the overall
son-of-1036 limit of 998 characters (see #7) per header line.

The software MUST allow the user to specify "Followup-To: poster", which
tells readers of the article that the user prefers e-mail replies rather
than followups to the newsgroup.

This does not mean that the software must present raw RFC-1036 headers
to the user, or that the headers and body must be an indivisible unit of
editable text.  A graphical user interface that presents each of these
as an editable field in a form will meet the requirement.

Rationale: Topics drift as a discussion progresses, and users need the
ability to change the Subject header to reflect the drift. Similarly, a
user may determine that the discussion no longer belongs in some of the
places that it started, or that its continuation needs to go elsewhere.
The software must not impede the user's ability to make these
judgments, possibly during the composition of her followup article.
It's not acceptable to have users who respond to "Please direct
followups appropriately" with "I can't; the software won't let me."


5) Ensure followups and e-mail replies contain a correct Subject

When creating either a followup article or an e-mail reply, the software
MUST create an initial "Subject: " header which

  a) Prepends the four characters "Re: " to the Subject if and only if
     "Re: " is not already present.  Note that this contains an
     upper-case "R", a lower-case "e", and a trailing space.  DO NOT
     prepend non-standard prefixes such as "Re^2: " .

  b) Preserves the *entire* Subject of the original article. DO NOT
     chop it off at 20 or 25 or even 80 characters.  DO NOT append
     spaces or any other characters to the end.  DO NOT change the
     case of any character in the original Subject; in particular, DO
     NOT change the Subject to all-upper-case or all-lower-case.

  (The user may later change the Subject, of course; see #4 above.)

Exception: The software MAY try to compensate for other people's broken
software by replacing non-standard prefixes (such as "Re^2: ", "Re(2):
", "Re:" (no space), "RE: ", "re: " , or "Re: Re: ")  by the standard
prefix "Re: ".

Rationale: These things should be obvious, but many authors of news
software don't seem to understand the relevant sections of RFC 1036.
Truncated "Subject: " headers, especially when gratuitous non-ASCII
characters are also thrown in, are a major annoyance for users and can
make threading difficult or impossible.


6) Direct followups to the correct newsgroups

When creating a followup article, the software MUST create an initial
header in which the Newsgroups field is initialized to the original
article's Followup-To, if one was provided, or Newsgroups, if it wasn't.
(The user may later change this field, of course; see #4 above.)

If the original article's "Followup-To: " header is set to "poster", the
software MUST warn the user that the original poster requested an e-mail
reply, and generate an e-mail reply by default.

Rationale: This is basic RFC 1036 compliance.  Software that fails to
meet this requirement makes its users look at best foolish or
incompetent, and at worst willfully unresponsive to the wishes of other
Usenet users.


7) Make sure followups contain valid References

When creating a followup, the software MUST create a "References: "
header line that contains, as its last element, the Message-ID of the
original article.  An individual Message-ID MUST never be truncated.

The software MUST include at least three additional Message-IDs from
the original article's References header as well, if they are available.
Try to stay as close as possible to the spirit of "son-of-1036", which
states:

        <<Followup agents SHOULD not shorten References  headers.   If
          it  is absolutely necessary to shorten the header, as a des-
          perate last resort, a followup agent MAY do this by deleting
          some  of  the  message IDs.  However, it MUST not delete the
          first message ID, the last three message IDs (including that
          of  the immediate precursor), or any message ID mentioned in
          the body of the followup.>>

However, it also says:

        <<If  it  is  absolutely  necessary  for  an implementation to
          impose a limit on the length of header lines, body lines, or
          header  logical  lines,  that  limit  shall be at least 1000
          octets, including EOL representations.>>

So, bear in mind that news transports are not guaranteed to be able to
handle arbitrary long lines.  Furthermore, keep in mind that some news
transports choke on continued (multi-line) "References: " headers.

Therefore, keep as many Message-IDs as will fit on a line starting with
"References: " with a maximum length of 998 characters.  (An octet is a
byte of 8 bits, EOL representation takes two bytes.)

Exception: Damaged (truncated) Message-IDs SHOULD NOT be included.
Neither should `bogus' Message-IDs -- IDs that somehow got inserted (by
a misguided user, maybe) but don't belong to the thread.

Rationale: Threaded news-readers depend on References to do their magic.
This too is basic RFC compliance.  Be as complete as the line length
limit allows, but do not propagate errors.


8) Direct e-mail replies to the correct address

When creating an e-mail reply, the software MUST create an initial
header in which the "To: " header is initialized to the original
article's Reply-to, if one was provided, or From if it wasn't.  (The
user may later change this field, of course; see #4 above.)

Rationale: See #6 above.


9) Allow the user to change her mind about whether to post or mail

With any followup or reply message, the software SHOULD offer the user
the option to change her mind about whether to post or to mail, and may
allow doing both.

If the software has the option to post as well as mail a single
response, that option MUST NOT be default behavior, neither by factory
default nor by user-configuration.  Furthermore, when both posting and
mailing a message, the mailed message's body SHOULD be preceded by a
line clearly stating that the message is an email copy of a usenet
posting.

Rationale: People digress when writing, and may find themselves posting
a message that would have been more appropriate for private
communication, or mailing a message that would have been more
appropriately directed to the general audience.  Unsolicited mail
messages are highly unwanted by many users (had they wanted e-mail
replies, they could, should and, for all a reader can assume would, have
requested them).


10) Provide adequate quotation and attribution facilities

When the user requests a followup or an e-mail reply, the software MUST
provide some method for including quoted text from the original article.
This quoted text MUST be clearly set off in some way -- either by
indenting it, or by prepending each line with one or more identifiable
characters.  The quote prefix SHOULD be `>', with optionally a trailing
space (i.e. `> ').

Caveat: with `>', the level of quotation is clearly reflected in the
        number of `>' characters at the start of the line.   However,
        whitespace between quote prefix and quoted material improves
        readability, so it is good practice for newsreaders to use `> '
        as the quote prefix for newly quoted, and `>' for repetitively
        quoted text.

Included text SHOULD NOT contain the original article's signature,
unless by explicit request of the user (under the condition that the
signature can be determined of course, which is to say: if clearly
separated by the standard signature delimiter). (see also #15 below).

As a direct counterpart to this requirement, the software SHOULD offer
the user some means of selecting exactly which part of a Usenet posting
she wishes to followup to, and quote only that part initially.  (A
special case of this is when a user wishes to react to what's in a
signature.)

If it concerns a followup (as opposed to an e-mail reply), the quoted
text MUST be preceded by an "attribution line" identifying the author of
the text that is being quoted.  (The user may decide to delete this
attribution line or to configure it away, but it MUST be there by
default.)

Rationale: The ability to easily quote text is essential for users who
want to provide a proper context for their followups and e-mail replies.
Software that provides attribution lines without quoting ability, or
that fails to distinctively set off quoted text from original text, is a
major cause of "I didn't say that!" misunderstandings.  By convention,
quoted lines start with `>', and much software depends on this do
distinguish quoted material from original lines, for presentation
purposes.  Users can be careless or forgetful occasionally (or often,
even) and neglect to edit out spurious quoted material; the signature,
typically, is such material.  In general, facilitating good quoting
behaviour -- by quoting only a part indicated by the user, for example
- - -- is an area in which software can help users substantially to create
better articles.


11) Provide a user-specified "Subject: " header

When creating a new article, the software MUST require the user to
provide a non-empty Subject.  It MUST NOT post an article without a
"Subject: " header or with an empty "Subject: " header.  It MUST NOT
silently add a default Subject (like "Subject: <None>") if the user
didn't specify one.  It MUST allow the user to change the Subject at any
time while editing the main text of the article (see #4 above).

Rationale: An article without a Subject provides no clues for deciding
to read it or not.  For that reason, it's likely to be widely ignored,
and it's no service to the user to allow posting of such an article;
while other readers may read it, only to find out they needn't have
bothered when it annoyingly turns out to be of no interest.


12) Provide a valid "From: " header

When creating either a new article or a followup, the software MUST
initialize the "From: " header to a syntactically valid e-mail address,
which includes a fully-qualified domain name (FQDN).

This requirement must be met regardless of whether the software

  (a) creates the "From: " header when it first creates the article to
      be edited by the user, or

  (b) adds the "From: " header automatically after the user finishes
      editing the article and requests that it be submitted.

If the software allows the user to edit the "From: " header, it SHOULD
check that the user supplied a syntactically valid address.

If the software is unable to create such an address -- maybe because it
was built with incorrect configuration parameters, or some essential
parameter is unavailable at runtime -- then it MUST NOT allow posting at
all, unless it can obtain a syntactically valid e-mail address from the
user.

If feasible, the software SHOULD try to guarantee that this address
actually belongs to the person using the software, and actually accepts
e-mail.

Rationale: Mail and news transport systems and user agents, gateways and
processing software may choke on syntactically invalid headers.  Invalid
e-mail addresses make e-mail replies impossible; see Greg Byshank's
"Help! I've been spammed!" document for an excellent discussion of the
issues involved.


13) Allow users to both cancel and supersede their own articles (and
    _no_ others!)

Any software that posts news SHOULD provide a command that the user can
invoke to cancel her own articles.  It SHOULD also provide the option to
supersede the user's own articles.  The software MUST guarantee that
the user cannot cancel or supersede other people's articles, as far as
possible.

Caveat: since completely reliable authentication can be infeasible, the
        best the software can do is to make a good-faith effort to
        determine whether or not cancelling or superseding is valid:
        i.e. by trusting upon its user configuration and checking it
        against the relevant header(s) in the target article.

If the software uses the English language, the text of the cancel
command SHOULD include the word "cancel", rather than non-standard verbs
such as "delete".  Similarly, in English software, the text of the
supersede command SHOULD include the word "supersede".

Rationale: People make mistakes and need the ability to revoke or
correct them; both `cancel' and `supersede' exist for good reasons.
However, software should not encourage users to abuse the net, either
intentionally or accidentally, by sending unauthorized (`rogue') cancels
or supersedes.  The supersede option is essential: due (a.o.) to
sometimes unpredictable usenet propagation, a "cancel-cum-repost" may
behave very different from a "supersede".  News servers might also have
different acceptance policies for both.


14) Try to respect the 80-character line-length conventions

Any line breaks shown to the user while she is editing her article
SHOULD still be present when the article is actually posted to the Net.
The software SHOULD NOT show the user four 75-character lines while
actually posting a single 300-character line.  Nor should it show the
user a series of 100-character lines while actually posting alternating
lines of 80 and 20 characters each.

It's also a good idea to warn the user if the article she is about to
post contains non-header lines longer than 80 characters.  The software
SHOULD NOT prevent the posting, but SHOULD ask whether the user wants to
re-edit or post anyway.

Caveat: Occasionally, there are very good reasons for posting long lines
        (for example, when posting a source code snippet containing
        something that will break when wrapped, or when there's a need
        to post something "as is", unreformatted -- unaltered and
        completely intact).  For that reason (re)wrapping cannot be a
        MUST: a SHOULD is all it can be.

To get well-readable articles, the user SHOULD be provided with the
possibility to rewrap excessively long lines of quoted text, respecting
quotation -- i.e. have the option to correct `inherited' bad formatting.
Also, tabs SHOULD be expanded to prevent the so-called `tab damage' that
may occur when someone reading your article uses a different tab size.

Caveat: Due to the immense variety in quoting styles, quoted text
        reformatting can be extremely hard, practically impossible even.
        No software can be expected to deal with everything; still,
        since the overwhelming majority can be dealt relatively easily,
        it is not unreasonable to expect it from software, if it is to
        be well-equipped for the task of editing Usenet articles.

If the news software uses an external editor, the default editor SHOULD
conform to the above.

Rationale: Articles with long lines are unreadable to many users.
           Articles with alternating 80/20 lines aren't any better.


15) Separate signatures correctly, and don't use excessive ones

Posting software SHOULD separate any signature appended to outgoing
articles from the main text with a line containing only `-- ' ("dash
dash space"). To quote son-of-rfc1036:

        <<If  a  poster or posting agent does append a signature to an
          article, the signature SHOULD be preceded with  a  delimiter
          line  containing  (only)  two hyphens (ASCII 45) followed by
          one blank (ASCII  32).   Posting  agents  SHOULD  limit  the
          length  of  signatures,  since  verbose  excess bordering on
          abuse is common if no restraint is imposed;  4  lines  is  a
          common limit.>>

Hence, posting software SHOULD prevent the user from using excessively
long signatures, or at least warn the user against it.  A widely
accepted standard is the so-called McQuary limit: up to 4 lines, each up
to a maximum of 80 characters.

Rationale: Being confronted with (possibly excessively long) signatures
repetitively is, or can be, annoying to many.  Being able to separate
the main text and the signature clearly is important, not only to
prevent the possible mistake of misinterpreting a signature, but also to
enable automatic signature suppression for those who wish to do so.


16) Try to prevent obvious user errors

* Posting software MUST warn the user for posting empty articles, and
  SHOULD prevent doing so entirely.

* Posting software MUST warn the user about posting articles consisting
  entirely of quoted text, and SHOULD prevent doing so entirely.

* Posting software MUST warn the user severely when attempting to post
  an article over and over again, and SHOULD do everything it can to
  prevent doing so entirely.

  - When posting `asynchronously' (i.e.  when sacrificing knowledge
    about progress, success or failure by handing over the task
    completely to some separate process) it SHOULD NOT allow the user
    to post articles again, once the user issued the final "post"
    command.

  - When posting `synchronously', the software has at least partial
    knowledge about progress, and full knowledge about success or
    failure of an attempt to post.  In this case, it SHOULD inform the
    user clearly that the article is being posted while attempting to
    post it; after the attempt, it MUST unequivocally inform the user
    that posting succeeded if it did, and that it failed otherwise.

Note: So-called `online' newsreaders usually (but not necessarily)
      post synchronously, while a number so-called `offline' newsreading
      methods (especially the scheduled, batch-oriented ones) usually
      employ asynchronous posting.  However, offline newsreaders using
      NNTP for news transport usually post synchronously, i.e.  are in
      direct interaction with the newsserver, hence get immediate
      results, when posting.

Rationale: Users who do any of these things almost never do them on
purpose.  They are usually confused by unfamiliar new software, and
should be offered basic protection.


17) Post human-readable articles unless ordered otherwise

Posting software MUST by default post only legible usenet articles.  In
a different formulation: it MUST NOT encode or encrypt articles, unless
by explicit user demand.  Hence, it MUST NOT even have the option to
encode or encrypt by default.  Whenever some encoding/encryption will be
used, clear feedback showing that it's in effect MUST be provided to the
user, so she is permanently reminded of the fact that her article will
not be posted as composed.  The worst DO NOT is the combination of
allowing default encoding without even taking the trouble of telling
(warning) the user about it.

Note: Common occurrences of this kind of content maiming unasked for,
      and untold to, the user, are HTML- and MIME multi-part
      and/or base64 encodings, as found in newsreaders integrated in
      WWW-browsers better not mentioned.

Rationale: Many users may not be able to read (particular) encoded or
encrypted articles at all, or only at the expense of a considerable
effort: such articles ask to be widely ignored. Encouraging posting
maimed messages is a service neither to the user herself, nor to her
audience.  Keep in mind that not everyone shares your particular setup
(newsreader, configuration, operating system), nor should (and can)
anyone be forced to do so, in order to be able to read your articles.


18) Provide self-protection

News readers SHOULD allow the user to protect herself by filtering out
articles she really does not want to read.  These filtering facilities
SHOULD be sufficiently powerful to enable ignoring postings by
particular persons, about particular subjects, and particular
cross-posts.

Rationale: While it looks as if not having filtering only affects the
user herself, people tend to take it out on the net if they are
repetitively (structurally) annoyed by a particular class of postings,
and will be inclined to start canceling, advocate posting restriction or
engage in flame warfare, all of which is harmful to other users.


19) Be kind to servers, leave room for others

Reading or posting software MUST NOT put excessive demands on news
servers unnecessarily.  The sofware MUST limit itself to 4 simultaneous
connections to a given server.  Spurious connects and unnecessary
traffic MUST be avoided; the software MUST use as few as possible
connections, reusing existing connections whenever possible.

Rationale: News systems are big, resources are scarce, and every
resource claimed is provided at the expense of other users.


                              --%-@#@-%--


Please remember that this is a set of _minimum_ guidelines to guarantee
that a given piece of software interacts properly with the rest of the
Usenet world.  It is not a general "wish list" of everyone's favorite
features.  I have deliberately avoided taking a position on certain
controversial issues -- for example, whether the user should be allowed
to edit the "Sender: " header, whether news software should prohibit
posting an article that has more quoted text than new text, or whether
posting with certain particular Subjects should be prohibited.


My hope is that a voluntary committee can be formed, respected by many
people on the Net, that reviews Usenet software and decides whether it
deserves the "Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval." People who use broken
software that does not have the Seal should then be strongly encouraged
to switch to software that does.


References and additional reading
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The current GNKSA, an evaluation form and an archive of software
evaluations can be found at:

  <http://www.xs4all.nl/%7Ejs/gnksa/>
  <http://newsreaders.com/gnksa/> (Mirror)
  <http://newsreaders.com/misc/twpierce/news/> (GNKSA 1.2)

The GNKSA page also contains a pointer to a library that newsreader
developers can freely make use of, providing basic `sanitary' functions.

In addition to the Seal, anyone writing Usenet software should pay
careful attention to the following documents:

  RFC 977, "Network News Transfer Protocol -- A Proposed Standard for
  the Stream-Based Transmission of News", by Brian Kantor and Phil
  Lapsley.
        <ftp://ftp.internic.net/rfc/rfc977.txt>

  RFC 1036, "Standard for Interchange of USENET Messages", by
  M. Horton and R. Adams.
        <ftp://ftp.internic.net/rfc/rfc1036.txt>

  The proposed "Son of 1036", "News Article Format and Transmission",
  by Henry Spencer.
        <ftp://ftp.zoo.toronto.edu/pub/news.txt.Z>    (also news.ps.Z)

  "The UseFor Working Group Documents" (under development: Internet
  Drafts describing the minimal standards for a Usenet article, and
  the minimum features all Usenet software should have), by Simon
  Lyall (et al.).
        <http://www.landfield.com/usefor/>

  "Read This Before You Write a Newsreader, News Transport
  System, etc.", by Tom Limoncelli.
        <http://www.xs4all.nl/%7Ejs/gnksa/read-before.txt>

  "The "Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval", revision 1.2, by Ron
  Newman; the previous version of this document, published in
  January, 1995.
        <http://www2.thecia.net/users/rnewman/Good-Netkeeping-Seal>

Excellent collections of things well worth reading in this context can
be found at:

  "News Hacking", by Tim Pierce.
        <http://newsreaders.com/misc/twpierce/news/>

  "Notes on News", by Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen.
        <http://quimby.gnus.org/notes/notes.html>

A very informative overview of the issues concerning some forms of net
abuse, and how and how not to deal with it, is:

  "Help! I've been Spammed! What do I do?", by Greg Byshenk, based in
  part on an original by Chris Lewis, Posted weekly to news.answers,
  news.newusers.questions, and news.admin.net-abuse.misc.
        <http://www.byshenk.net/ive.been.spammed.html>
  The part that explicitly deals with the issues of messing up
  "From: "-headers is:
        <http://www.byshenk.net/ive.been.spammed.html#2.3>

Of related interest -- if you're willing to contribute, or are just
interested in the way things are developing -- could also be the IETF
NNTP Working Group's "attempt to revise NNTP and bring it into the
1990s".
        <http://www.academ.com/academ/nntp/ietf.html>


Acknowledgements
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Simon Lyall c.s., for the praiseworthy UseFor (Usenet Format) Working
Group initiative (and its derivatives).

Ron Newman <rnewman@theCIA.net>, of course, for writing the first
version of the GNKSA, of which this document descends, and for
fruitful discussions during revision.

Sven Guckes <guckes@math.fu-berlin.de> for providing mailing list
resources (among other things).

Tim Pierce <twpierce@midway.uchicago.edu> for scrutinous examination,
useful hints, and previous GNKSA support.

Larry Wall <lwall@netlabs.com>, Stefan Haller <stk@berlin.snafu.de>,
John E. Davis <davis@space.mit.edu>, John Norstad <j-norstad@nwu.edu>,
Karl-Johan Johnsson <su95-kjo@nada.kth.se>, Brian Clark <baclark@nwu.edu>,
Simon Fraser <smfr@best.com> for showing inspiring examples of the spirit
of good net keeping in the form of exceptionally well-designed usenet
reading programs.

The kind folks of news.software.readers (you know who you are) that
have helped discussing the issues that pertain to the GNSKA cause.
