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The Good NetKeeping Seal of Approval or GNKSA is a designation that indicates a piece of
Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...
newsreader (client)
software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consist ...
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 women's magazine featuring articles about women's interests, product testing by The Good Housekeeping Institute, recipes, diet, and health, as well as literary articles. It is well known for the "Good Hous ...
Magazine. The original GNKSA author thought that many
newbie Newbie, newb, noob, noobie, n00b or nub is a slang term for a novice or newcomer, or somebody inexperienced in a profession or activity. Contemporary use can particularly refer to a beginner or new user of computers, often concerning Internet ...
s to Usenet posted malformed or inappropriately-sent articles because their software did not encourage better netiquette. 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 *The user can see the essential header fields, including "Newsgroups" and "
Followup-To Crossposting is the act of posting the same message to multiple information channels; forums, mailing lists, or newsgroups. This is distinct from multiposting, which is the posting of separate identical messages, individually, to each channel, ...
". *The user can edit all header fields when composing a follow up. *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 forum post. Email and Usenet ...
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 syst ...
s


External links


Official website
(site dead
last archived version of the GNKSA rules) {{web-software-stub Usenet clients