The Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval 2.0

Basic Hygiene for Usenet Software 101

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Home at gnksa.org, NL	Mirror at newsreaders.com, USA
The GNKSA 2.0 document
GNKSA Evaluation Form	Evaluation Archive

History

A few years ago, Ron Newman wrote a document intended to describe minimal standards for decent net-behaviour, in an effort to encourage newsreader authors to write better behaving newsreaders. Thus came the Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval, GNKSA 1.2 in short, into being.

Things changed rapidly, however: a vast army of new users stormed the Internet and Usenet, often using new generations of tools that displayed forms of bad behaviour unimagined before. This called for a serious effort to bring the GNKSA up to date; for that reason, I, Jeroen Scheerder, took the liberty to undertake the venture of revamping GNKSA.

After I asked him, Ron kindly handed the GNKSA off to me. The result of all this: GNKSA 2.0. For brevity's sake I will omit version numbering whenever possible without causing confusion.

GNKSA development

Early 1997, I'd written a first draft. To proceed, I contacted a few people that had dedicated themselves to the GNKSA cause (or strongly related issues) in the past: a mailing list was born. Discussions and revisions followed suit. August 1997 a `final candidate' was posted to a few key newsgroups, after which it turned final. For a short while, the GNKSA went by the name of MANKSA (for `Minimally Adequate Net-Keeping Seal of Approval'), but due to popular demand it was renamed GNKSA once again.

Naturally, development never ceases. Usenet's foundations are being revised, and Usenet is, as always, in permanent flux. Please see the To Do list if you're interested in current issues, and future directions.

GNKSA/2 Evaluation Form

Part of the GNKSA enterprise is collecting evaluations. For this purpose, an evaluation form is provided.

Nice things software can do, but are unmentioned by GNKSA, can be mentioned anyway in reviews. There is a page describing a few of these extra niceties.

Submissions that have not gone final (yet)

To avoid people duplicating each others' efforts unnecessarily, a list of work in progress is available.

GNKSA/2 Evaluations

See the GNKSA Evaluations page.

GNKSA/1 Evaluations

Using GNKSA 2.0's predecessor (Ron Newman's GNKSA 1.2), quite a lot of software has been reviewed. Since GNKSA 2.0 (except in a few small details) is simply an extension to GNKSA 1.2, these reviews are still worth looking into -- especially if you're looking for a newsreader that has not yet been subjected to a GNKSA 2.0-review. A nice collection can be found on Tim Pierce's News Hacking page.

The GNKSA Toolkit (under development)

See the GNKSA Tools page.

References

The References section in the GNKSA itself:

<http://www.gnksa.org/gnksa.txt>
(or by mail: send a message with Subject: send GNKSA to <js@gnksa.org>).

GNKSA Evaluation Archive:

<http://www.gnksa.org/gnksa-evaluations.html>.

GNKSA Evaluation Form:

<http://www.newsreaders.com/gnksa/cgi/gnksa-form.cgi>.

Notes and Help on GNKSA Evaluations:

<http://www.gnksa.org/evaluation-form-help.html>.

GNKSA mailing lists:

• The GNKSA announcement mailing list is <gnksa-announce@babayaga.math.fu-berlin.de>,
  subscribe by sending an empty mail message to <gnksa-announce-subscribe@babayaga.math.fu-berlin.de>.
• The GNKSA workers mailing list is <gnksa-workers@babayaga.math.fu-berlin.de>,
  subscribe by sending an empty mail message to <gnksa-workers-subscribe@babayaga.math.fu-berlin.de>.
• As of May 14, 1998, the GNKSA lists are archived; consult <[listname]-help@babayaga.math.fu-berlin.de> for more information about (un)subscription, archived message retrieval, etc.

The original GNKSA (version 1.2):

<https://web.archive.org/web/20120210214137/http://www2.thecia.net/users/rnewman/Good_Netkeeping_Seal>.

Notes on News by Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen:

<http://quimby.gnus.org/notes/notes.html>.

UseFor Working Group documents:

<http://www.landfield.com/usefor/>, work in progress -- "draft drafts" for a successor to RFC1036. Good progress is being made here; a draft, "Grandson of 1036", has been submitted to the IETF, and the discussion archives (along with the rest of the available information) make this site a genuine powerhouse for Usenet-related issues.

IETF NNTP Working Group:

<http://www.academ.com/academ/nntp/ietf.html>, a project to revise RFC977 (`the NNTP protocol'), including many extensions that have become a de facto standard well after RFC977 first saw the light of day. A set of drafts can be found in the Working Group's mailing list archive.

Brought to you by <js@gnksa.org>.
Last modification: Wed Feb 14 2001 by JS.