Big 8 (Usenet) Explained

The Big 8 (previously the Big 7) are a group of newsgroup hierarchies established after the Great Renaming, a restructuring of Usenet that took place in 1987. These hierarchies are managed by the Big 8 Management Board.[1] Groups are added through a process of nomination, discussion and voting.[2]

History

The original seven hierarchies were comp.*, misc.*, news.*, rec.*, sci.*, soc.*, and talk.*. They were open and free for anyone to participate in (except for the moderated newsgroups), though they were subject to a few general rules governing their naming and distribution.

alt.* was not part of the original seven but created separately as a place with more freedom and fewer rules than the Big 7.

In April 1995,[3] when Usenet traffic grew significantly, humanities.* was introduced and it and the seven hierarchies created by the Renaming make up today's so-called "Big 8".

Hierarchies

HierarchyDescriptionExamples
comp.*Computer-related discussionscomp.software, comp.sys.amiga, comp.browsers.www
humanities.*Humanities topicshumanities.music.composers.wagner
misc.*Miscellaneous topicsmisc.education, misc.forsale, misc.kids
news.*Newsgroup-related matters. This hierarchy was not originally intended for reporting news events. It was meant to deal with matters of Usenet in particularnews.groups, news.admin, news.announce.groups
rec.*rec.music, rec.arts.movies, rec.arts.poetry
sci.*Science-related discussionssci.physics, sci.research, sci.skeptic
soc.*Social discussionssoc.college.org, soc.culture.African, soc.history.what-if
talk.*Talk about various controversial topics and discussions with no obvious categorizationtalk.religion, talk.politics, talk.bizarre, talk.origins

The Big 8 Management Board

The Big 8 Management Board was originally created in 2005 from former moderators of the news.announce.newgroups.[4] The board's mission is to:

See also

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Big-8 Usenet - Big-8 Usenet . Big-8.org . 2010-07-26 . 2011-01-08.
  2. Web site: How to Create a New Big-8 Newsgroup - Big-8 Usenet . Big-8.org . 2010-07-07 . 2011-01-08 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20080103091457/http://www.big-8.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=policies%3Acreation . 2008-01-03 .
  3. Web site: RESULT: humanities.misc passes 508:97. 6 February 2016. 11 April 1995.
  4. Web site: News.announce.newgroups - Big-8 Usenet. 2020-05-05. Big-8 Management Board.
  5. Web site: Big-8 Management Board. 2020-05-05. Big-8 Management Board.