The Good NetKeeping Seal of Approval or GNKSA is a designation that indicates a piece of
Usenet
Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...
newsreader (client)
software
Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications.
The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...
meets a set of usability and formatting standards. The name is a play on the "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval", a set of consumer reports issued by
Good Housekeeping
''Good Housekeeping'' is an American lifestyle media brand that covers a wide range of topics from home decor and renovation, health, beauty and food, to entertainment, pets and gifts. The Good Housekeeping Institute which opened its "Experiment ...
Magazine.
The original GNKSA author thought that many
newbie
''Newbie'' is a slang term for a ''novice'', ''newcomer'', or somebody inexperienced in a given profession or activity. In particular, it may refer to a new user of computers, and often concerns Internet activity, such as online gaming or Li ...
s to Usenet posted malformed or inappropriately-sent articles because their software did not encourage better
netiquette
Etiquette in technology, colloquially referred to as netiquette, is a term used to refer to the unofficial code of policies that encourage good behavior on the Internet which is used to regulate respect and polite behavior on social media platforms ...
. For instance, software which made it easy to confuse ''replying to a sender by email'' with ''posting a followup to a newsgroup'' led to users mistakenly publishing what was intended to be a private response, or vice versa.
Some of the guidelines from GNKSA 2.0 are:
*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 is 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.
Additional requirements concern accurate
From: headers,
signature block
A signature block (often abbreviated as signature, sig block, sig file, .sig, dot sig, siggy, or just sig) is a personalized block of text automatically appended at the bottom of an email message, Usenet article, or Internet forum, forum post.
E ...
formatting, and the ability to cancel and supersede articles.
Further reading
* — version 1.2 of the GNKSA
* — version 2.0 of the GNKSA
* — a proposal for a similar Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval for
Mail User Agent
The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letters, and parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid-19th century, national postal sy ...
s
External links
Official website(site dead
last archived version of the GNKSA rules)
{{web-software-stub
Usenet clients