From: ed@titipu.resun.com (Edward Reid)
Newsgroups: news.software.readers,news.admin.misc,news.admin.policy,alt.online-service.america-online
Subject: AOL and the Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval
Date: Mon, 16 Jan 95 21:27:06 EST(-0500)
Organization: Paleolithic Refugia
Message-ID: <01010064.k159at@titipu.resun.com>
Reply-To: ed%blkhole@sdd.hp.com

This is an evaluation of the AOL Usenet interface (aka newsreader) with
respect to

   The "Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval" for Usenet Software
   by Ron Newman   <rnewman@media.mit.edu>
   Revision 1.2 -- January 9, 1995

which I'll refer to as the GNKSA/U. I haven't quoted the text from the Good
Net-Keeping document because that would make this evaluation difficult to
follow and almost impossible to scan quickly. Please refer to the original
document for further explanation. It was posted to these same newsgroups
(except the aol-related newsgroup) on 9 Jan 1995. It can also be obtained
via the WWW (no ftp) at

  http://www.media.mit.edu/people/rnewman/Good_Netkeeping_Seal

and should be posted to news.answers in the near future.

In addition to evaluating the AOL newsreader, I've tried to establish a
concise format which can be used for reporting the results of evaluations of
other newsreaders.

The item numbers are keyed to the GNKSA/U. The first column indicates whether
the item is required (as opposed to merely strongly recommended) by the
GNKSA/U.

The version of the AOL newsreader being evaluated is the one put into
production in mid-December 1994, which was available to AOL users as an
option for some time before that. I did my evaluation using the Macintosh
client. I believe that all the YES/NO evaluations are the same using the DOS
and Windows clients, but some of the notes may apply differently to those
configurations.


Req Itm                                          Sub-    Item
rd? ##  Description                            item OK?   OK?     Notes

Y    1  Display all essential header info                 NO
  Y       default is to display                   NO                1
  Y       a) display author                       YES
  Y       b) display subject                      YES
  Y       c) display newsgroups list              YES
  Y       d) display Followup-To list             YES
  Y       e) display Reply-To if /= From:         YES

Y    2  Provide standard commands                         NO
  Y       clear                                   NO                2
  Y       separate                                YES
  Y       a) post a new article                   YES
  Y       b) post a followup article              YES
  Y       c) reply by email                       YES
  N       use standard terminology                NO                2

Y    3  Implement cross-posting                           NO
  Y       allow user specification                NO
  Y       cross-post (not multi-post)             YES

Y    4  Change essential headers                          NO
  Y       change headers while editing body       YES
  Y       change Subject                          YES
  Y       allow at least 70 chars in subject      YES
  Y       change Newsgroups                       NO                7
  Y       change Followup-To                      NO
  Y       allow followup-to: poster               NO
  Y       change Reply-To                         NO

Y    5  Correct Subject headers in flwup/rply             YES
  Y       a) prepend "Re: " (exactly!)            YES
  Y       b) preserve entire Subject              YES
  Y          even subjects > 80 chars long        YES               8

Y    6  Respect Followup-To                               YES
  Y       use to initialize Newsgroups: in flwup  YES
  Y       recognize and act on 'poster'           YES               8

Y    7  Followups contain References                      YES
  Y       contains message-id of original         YES
  Y       never truncate individual message-id    YES
  N       contains three Refs from original       NO
  N       contains entire Refs of original        NO
  N       contains any id mentioned in body       NO                8

Y    8  Direct email reply to Reply-To                    YES

Y    9  Quotation and attribution                         NO        3
  Y       provide method                          NO
  Y       set off by prepend                      N/A
  Y       attribution line                        N/A
  Y         identifies author                     N/A
  N         gives message-id                      N/A

Y   10  Subject is mandatory                              YES       4
  Y       do not post empty or provide <none>     YES
  Y       allow change while editing body         YES

Y   11  Must provide valid From: header                   YES       5
  Y       syntactically valid                     YES
  N       belongs to the user                     YES

Y   12  Must provide cancel                               NO
  Y       of own articles                         NO
  Y       *not* of others                         YES

N   13  Respect line length, and post WYSIWYG             NO        6
  N       line brks shown are present when posted NO
  N       do *not* post paragraph w/o line brks   YES
  N       warn if body has lines > 80 chars       N/A
  N       external editor conforms                N/A

N   14  Prevent obvious errors                            YES
  N       prevent posting empty article           YES               4
  N       prevent posting only quoted text        N/A               3


Note 1: The AOL newsreader offers the options of displaying all headers at
the top, all headers at the bottom, or no headers. However, the default is no
headers, in violation of the GNKSA/U.

A personal opinion: I think the GNKSA/U should recommend (not require) that
a "smart header" display be included, which displays the essential headers
but does not waste screen real estate with others.

Note 2: All the commands exist as separate functions, but those functions are
not clear. One function is an icon at the top of the window, while the other
functions are buttons at the bottom of the window. The new-article function
is labelled "Send new message", which is nonstandard terminology. Followup is
labelled "Reply", which is nonstandard and misleading.

In addition, the command to post a completed article is labelled "Send",
which is nonstandard and possibly confusing.

Note 3: AOL has stated that a quotation and attribution function is being
designed. Since no function exists at present, the second part of item 14 is
not applicable and I've considered item 14 to conform. It could be argued
that since quoting must be done manually, the newsreader cannot possibly
detect the condition and therefore does not conform. I think the intent of
the recommendation was to avoid the situation in which a user initiates a
followup and does not wish to complete it, but cannot figure out how to avoid
posting it. This situation is not a problem in the current AOL newsreader.

A personal opinion: I don't think the lack of a quoting feature is any worse
than the common situation in which newsreaders encourage the entire text to
be quoted. At the very least, I think that if quoting is to be a required
feature, then the newsreader SHOULD force the user to take positive action to
select or mark text to be quoted, and SHOULD never quote the entire text
without such active selection.

In fact, the behavior of AOL users in debates is often much better than the
behavior of users of other newsreaders. AOL users get into point-by-point
nitpicking far less often, and don't get into silly word by word analysis as
often. This is a good indication to me that the quoting features as
implemented in most other newsreaders are detrimental to Usenet.

Note 4: The AOL newsreader prevents posting articles with empty subjects or
empty bodies, but the method is extraordinarily unfriendly. When the user
clicks on the "Send" button and either subject or body is empty, the
newsreader displays a dialog box with the text 

       Unable to process that action.
       Please try again.

and *discards* the user's efforts, which could include a large amount of body
text. Technically this passes the GNKSA/U. Since it's only a problem (however
severe) to the poster and not to the rest of the net, it is proper that the
newsreader should be treated as conforming.

Note 5: The From: header will always be syntactically valid, and will be an
address of the user at the time of posting.

As is well known, AOL users can set up alternate identities ("screen names")
under their accounts. When they send email or post articles from these
"screen names", they are identified only by those screen names. The user can
immediately delete the screen name, after which any email sent to that
address bounces as "is not a known user". The email is not forwarded to the
master account and the bounce does not identify the master account in any way
or indicate that the name was previously valid. In effect, AOL operates an
anonymous posting service. This is especially obnoxious since AOL keeps a
record of deleted screen names (the name may not be reused, by any user, for
a long period of time) and thus could easily forward email to the master
account. While this article is not the place to discuss the politics of
anonymous posting, I find it necessary to point out that the AOL newsreader
only assures that the From: header is valid at the time of posting and not
for any length of time afterward.

Note 6: The editor wraps text to the width of the current window. However,
when the article is posted, text is re-wrapped (with hard line-ends as
required) at 74 characters. Since the user can resize the window at will,
this means that the user seldoms sees what is actually posted. This doesn't
matter much for normal paragraphs, but if a user carefully formats text using
the return key at the end of each line of 75-80 characters, the article is
posted in the long/short style we all love. This is much worse when users cut
and paste text from original articles in order to quote it in followups,
since such text will always have hard line-ends and will often exceed 74
characters per line. The user does not see the long/short wrapping that will
occur on posting.

Note 7: AOL adminstrators want to avoid excessive cross-posting, and have
delayed this capability as a result. Abuse of cross-posting is a valid
concern, and I don't think anyone has proposed a uniformly acceptable
solution. The AOL newsreader does not meet the GNKSA/U in this respect, but
the reasons are related to important concerns.

Note 8: I realized after terminating my AOL access that I was not sure whether
I had checked these features. I think that the AOL newsreader does as I say,
but I'm not certain. If anyone checks, I'd appreciate a confirmation. Or even
a dis-confirmation.

Edward Reid  reide@freenet.tlh.fl.us