Marines chime in on MOL

I've consistently railed against the US Army's knowledge management website, Army Knowledge Online (AKO).  That should come as no surprise to anyone.  But AKO-style sites don't just frustrate the Army.  The Marines are perturbed at the ineffectiveness of AKO's sister site, Marine Online (MOL).  Terminal Lance reports with an amusing cartoon:

I'm tired of bashing AKO.  I bet Reach 364, my Air Force comrade, is pretty fed up with it as well.

Instead, I'll just include some choice commentary from Max at Terminal Lance:

I think I speak for all Marines when I say one simple truth: I despise MOL.

In all honesty, I sort of wonder how the Corps functioned before MOL. It seems like everything we do revolves around what gets updated on this anciently designed website. If it doesn’t happen on MOL, it didn’t happen. In reality though, MOL is a great device for keeping the Marine Corps interconnected in every aspect, keeping the admin side of things available to the average grunt is a wonderful idea.

The worst part about MOL isn’t the system itself though, it’s just how dated the website really is. It feels like some relic of the 90′s, back when the internet was shiny and new in all it’s 56k glory, and email and Facebook weren’t requirements for daily functioning. The password system being the worst part of it all. How many times have you forgotten your MOL password? I know I have just about every time I use it. Really, there’s only so many different combinations of characters I can think of that actually contain the ridiculous password requirements to access the site. Even if the requirements weren’t as stiff as they were, the fact that it makes you change your password every week adds tremendously to the problem.

Seriously, as evidence that this system is stuck in the 90s, just consider that the network is called "MOL".

n00bs