GNKSA Evaluation Form 2.04 Product Name : America Online (commonly known as AOL) Product Version : 3.0 Tested on platform : Macintosh (online version) Available for platforms: Macintosh, Windows Evaluation date : 1998-02-15 Evaluated by : Edward Reid Conclusion ========== America Online 3.0 fails to satisfy some basic GNKSA requirement(s), hence does NOT qualify for the Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval. Summary ======= Pass Fail Total Pass/Fail% MUSTs 28 11 39 72%/28% SHOULDs 12 15 27 44%/56% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% 72%M %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% 44%S [GNKSA Score-O-Meter] Details ======= Regarding the strict GNKSA requirements (MUSTs), America Online 3.0 FAILS on the following points: 1c Does not show the groups the article was posted to (Newsgroups) 1d Fails to show where to followup to (Followup-To) 1e Does not show where to reply to (Reply-To) 3a Does not allow posting to multiple groups 4c Does not allow setting Followup-To: poster 6a Does not handle Followup-To: poster correctly 6b Does not post followups to groups in Followup-To 6c Fails to use groups in Newsgroups in the absence of Followup-To 7b Fails to include the last three references from the original 10a Cannot include quoted text from original 16c Does not warn when posting quoted text only America Online 3.0 violates `soft' GNKSA requirements (SHOULDs) in the following way: 2d Fails to use standard terminology 2e Uses ambiguous terminology 7d Does not keep as many references as possible 9a Does not support mailing instead after following up 9b Does not support posting instead after replying 9d Mail message not preceded by notification when posted and mailed 13a Does not let users cancel their own articles 13b Does not enable users to supersede their own articles 14a May cause posting mangled articles 14b Fails to warn for excessively long lines 14c Refuses to post articles containing long lines 14d Does not support rewrapping quoted text correctly 15a Does not use or support standard signature delimiter 16d Does not refuse to post quoted text only 18 Does not let the user suppress unwanted messages automatically America Online 3.0 offers the following nice net-keeping features unmentioned by the GNKSA: AOL has a number of pointers to netiquette documents which it displays in the main newsreader page. AOL pre-subscribes new users to several newsgroups appropriate for new users. Versions which do support quoting, do so by quoting the text which the user has selected with the mouse. This is a convenient method and tends to inhibit overquoting. The interface is simple, mostly point and click. Many users can probably learn at least to read news without help. Additional Comments: GENERAL: AOL is very good on issues involving user identification on most aspects of news which resemble email. AOL fails miserably when news differs significantly from email. HISTORY: I reviewed an earlier version of the AOL newsreader about three years ago. Almost nothing has been fixed since then. Some versions now have quoting, and it no longer unconditionally trashes your article because you failed to enter a subject. There's an offline version, but it doesn't work on the Mac. That seems to be the extent of the major changes. VERSIONS: AOL has both an online and an offline newsreader. Unfortunately, the interfaces are quite different. The offline version of the Macintosh AOL 3.0 newsreader is unusable for reasons not addressed by the GNKSA (just plain bugs), so I've reviewed the online version. Although I've reviewed only the Mac version, I expect that most of the review applies to the Windows version as well. AOL attempts to maintain a consistent platform-independent interface. Version 4.0 is apparently near release. The quoting feature currently is missing from the Mac online version. I've indicated that quoting is missing but have given AOL the benefit of the doubt and marked the subsidiary items as though quoting in the online version worked as it does offline. PERSONAL COMMENTS: My regular news server has been flaky or worse for some time. I thought I'd try out AOL via its $10/month by-TCP-only plan. I figured I could put up with AOL's newsreader until my regular server was fixed, especially if I could use AOL offline. I was wrong on both counts -- the offline newsreader didn't work, and the newsreader is so bad that I cannot bear it for more than a few minutes. But by the time I figured that out, I had learned enough that I decided to update my review. GENERAL COMMENTS ON THE IMPLEMENTATION: I could not figure out AOL's threading. I think it's by subject only. It seems to work inconsistently. The AOL newsreader implementation is indirect. Whereas email is a basic part of the AOL client, news is mostly just an area on AOL. As such, the interface is handled by the server using the generic presentation capabilities of the client. This very likely accounts for many of the limitations and for the fact that news is so poorly implemented compared with email. AOL does not honor Supersedes. While this is technically a server issue rather than a newsreader issue, it affects the user by presenting multiple copies of periodic postings, especially FAQs. The AOL editor (on the Mac) cannot display more than 32K in one window. When you open a longer article, AOL asks if you want to download it instead of reading it. If you do, then you must open it in a different application. This means that the AOL newsreader cannot display many FAQs. Also, the downloaded article omits headers, no matter what options are set. Closing a composition window trashes the article without warning. No second chance. The only news search capability on AOL is "find in top window". The only relevant window is the list of subject lines, so the only news search is for a string in the subject. AOL's help files direct users to DejaNews for more complex searching. COMMENTS RELATED TO SPECIFIC SECTIONS OF THE GNKSA: 1) The default state is called "no headers", but in fact displays subject, from, date, and message-id. The only way to display followup-to and reply-to is to display all headers in raw form. 2) AOL's commands for posting, followup and reply are clearly separate. Followup is consistently "reply to group", and reply is consistently "email to author", which meet the GNKSA. Posting a new article is called "send new message". I've given AOL credit for part 2a ("clear, separate command for new posting") since it's a clearly separate command. They lose on 2d (it's nonstandard) and 2e (it's ambiguous), but still pass section 2 because the latter are only SHOULDs. 3) In the past, I've pointed out that crossposting is more often abused than properly used. I still believe this. At least you won't ever see massively crossposted trolls from AOL users -- or even massively crossposted followups to trolls, since AOL users can't crosspost. However, crossposting does have valuable uses for which there is presently no substitute. The fact that crossposting is often abused does not excuse AOL's claim in a help file that crossposting is "often considered poor netiquette and should be avoided". This is at best a misleading attempt at self-exculpation. 5) AOL does recognize the incorrect "RE: " and "re: " in existing articles and treats them as "Re: ". It does not fix them on a new followup. 6) Amazingly, when you post a followup, AOL not only refuses to obey the Followup-To header but also ignores the Newsgroups header of the original article and posts only to the newsgroup in which you read the original! AOL does prevent posting a followup when "Followup-To: poster" appears, by displaying a message "followup is allowed via email only". I almost gave them credit for this -- until I realized that they display the same message any time the Followup-To header appears. It's just part of their failure to implement Followup-To. Even a Followup-To which matches the Newsgroups header exactly elicits the "followup is allowed via email only" message! 9) Although you cannot switch from email to posting or vice versa, you can add the other at any time. You just can't eliminate your original choice. 10d) I gave AOL credit for omitting a correctly delimited signature from a quote, even though they don't recognize the signature delimiter. The way quoting is implemented (in the offline Mac version (and, so I hear, in the Windows version) is that you must always select the text to be quoted before initiating the followup. I use this method in the mailer/newsreader I use regularly and find it very convenient. Since with this method you explicitly indicate what is to be quoted, the software should not attempt to remove a signature. If you fail to select text, AOL quotes nothing, which I believe is the proper choice. 13) AOL offers to cancel articles for you, but you cannot do it via the newsreader. You must contact the postmaster by email. This doesn't cut the mustard in my opinion. 14) AOL rewraps everything, but respects your "hard" line breaks. It does so without showing you the posted form. This is a major cause of much of the worst article formatting seen on Usenet. It works well when you type only plain text with no line breaks inside paragraphs. However, you see the text wrapped to the current window width. If you decide to format it correctly and put in line breaks at just over 80 columns, AOL produces the fine 80/20 format that we all know and love. Maximum line length is 79, no exceptions. If you have quoted text that exceeds 79 columns, you may see it formatted correctly on your screen (if the window you are using is wide enough) yet the lines will be broken when posted, without proper rewrapping. This is a supreme example of the principle behind the GNKSA: you had no idea that you were posting garbage. It looked fine on screen. AOL garbled it after you passed it on; you never saw the result. 15) Maximum signature length is 255 characters. 17) The AOL newsreader has no encoding or encryption capabilities. 19) Since AOL controls both the client and the server, it does not make sense to evaluate the load the client places on the server. The protocol between the news server and the news client is proprietary. You cannot reach the AOL news server using any other client, and you cannot reach any other news server with the AOL client. Checklist ========= (M)UST / (S)HOULD 1) Displays all essential header information Software clearly displays: [Y] a) Article's author (From) M [Y] b) Article's Subject M [N] c) List of groups posted to (Newsgroups) M [N] d) Where (and how) to direct followups (Followup-To) M [N] e) Where to reply to if not the From-address (Reply-To) M [N] PASS: Satisfies all MUSTs M 2) Provides clear, separate commands for new posting, followup, and e-mail reply [Y] a) for posting a new article M [Y] b) for posting a followup article M [Y] c) for replying by e-mail M [N] d) Uses standard terminology S [N] e) Avoids ambiguous terminology S [Y] PASS: Satisfies all MUSTs M 3) Provides cross-posting functionality [N] a) Allows specifying multiple groups M [Y] b) Warns about, or prevents, posting to large numbers of groups S [Y] c) Strongly encourages setting Followup-To: on large crossposts S (`Y' if large crosspostings are disallowed) [N] PASS: Satisfies all MUSTs M 4) Allows users to change essential headers [Y] a) Allows editing Subject at all times during composition M [Y] b) Allows specifying new Subject of at least 70 characters M [N] c) Allows setting "Followup-To: poster" M [N] PASS: Satisfies all MUSTs M 5) Ensures followups and e-mail replies contain a correct Subject [Y] a) Prepends "Re: " if (and only if) not already present M [Y] b) Preserves entire original Subject (modulo minor repairs) M [Y] PASS: Satisfies all MUSTs M 6) Directs followups to the correct newsgroups [N] a) Initiates e-mail reply rather than a followup posting on "Followup-To: poster", clearly informing the user M [N] b) Posts to groups in Followup-To if present M [N] c) Posts to groups in Newsgroups otherwise M [N] PASS: Satisfies all MUSTs M 7) Make sure followups contain valid References [Y] a) Creates References header with Message-ID of original article as the last element M [N] b) Includes last three References from original M [Y] c) Ensures References will fit in 998 characters M [N] d) Keep as many References from original as fit S [Y] e) Does not propagate broken Message-IDs in original References S [N] PASS: Satisfies all MUSTs M 8) Direct e-mail replies to the correct address [Y] a) Uses Reply-To if present M [Y] b) Uses From address otherwise M [Y] PASS: Satisfies all MUSTs M 9) Allow the user to change her mind about whether to post or mail (or do both) and behave if doing both [N] a) Allows users to change their mind and mail rather than post after having initiated a followup message S [N] b) Allows users to change their mind and post rather than mail after having initiated a reply message S [Y] c) Does not offer both posting and mailing as default behaviour M [N] d) Inserts a notification that the message was posted as well as mailed in the e-mail copy when both posting and mailing a followup article S [Y] PASS: Satisfies all MUSTs M 10) Provide adequate quotation and attribution facilities [N] a) Allows including quoted original M [Y] b) Clearly distinguishes quoted material M [Y] c) Prefixes quoted material with `>'/`> ' S [Y] d) Omits correctly delimited signatures from quoted material S [Y] e) Provides a means of indicating which part(s) to followup to S [Y] f) Attribution line containing original author precedes quotes M [N] PASS: Satisfies all MUSTs M 11) Provide a user-specified "Subject: " header [Y] a) Requires non-empty, user-specified Subject for new articles M [Y] b) Refuses posting articles without, or with an empty, Subject M [Y] c) Does not provide default Subject if user did not set one M [Y] d) Allows changing the Subject at any time while editing M [Y] PASS: Satisfies all MUSTs M 12) Provide a valid "From: " header [Y] a) Sets "From: " header to syntactically valid e-mail address M [Y] b) Refuses posting articles without a syntactically valid "From: " header M [Y] c) Uses correct e-mail addresses (valid and belonging to the user) only, as far as it can possibly know S [Y] PASS: Satisfies all MUSTs M 13) Allow users to both cancel and supersede their own articles (and _no_ others!) [N] a) Allows cancelling articles S [N] b) Allows superseding articles S [Y] c) As far as possible, does not allow cancelling or superseding other peoples' articles M [Y] d) Uses standard terminology S [Y] PASS: Satisfies all MUSTs M 14) Try to respect the 80-character line-length convention [N] a) Articles are posted as edited, with linebreaking intact S [N] b) Warns about lines over 80 characters S [N] c) Does not refuse to post articles containing long lines S [N] d) Allows rewrapping quoted text S [Y] e) Enforces formatting requirements on article after external editing (`Y' if there is no support for external editors) S [Y] PASS: Satisfies all MUSTs M 15) Separate signatures correctly, and don't use excessive ones [N] a) Uses (and enforces) standard signature delimiter S [Y] b) Warns against or refuses to use excessive signatures S [Y] PASS: Satisfies all MUSTs M 16) Try to prevent obvious user errors [Y] a) Warns when attempting to post empty articles M [Y] b) Refuses posting empty articles S [N] c) Warns when post articles containing quoted material only M [N] d) Refuses posting quoted-text-only articles S [Y] e) Warns against posting multiple copies (`Y' if impossible) M [Y] f) Prevents multiple posting entirely S [N] PASS: Satisfies all MUSTs M 17) Post human-readable articles unless ordered otherwise [Y] Does not (and can not) encode or encrypt articles unless on explicit user demand M [Y] PASS: Satisfies all MUSTs M 18) Provide self-protection [N] Allows filtering out annoying articles (killing) S [Y] PASS: Satisfies all MUSTs M 19) Be kind to servers, leave room for others [Y] a) Does not unnecessarily open multiple connections M [Y] b) Does not generate excessive server load otherwise M [Y] PASS: Satisfies all MUSTs M