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 . Groups are added through a process of .
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 the mid-1990s, when Usenet traffic grew significantly,
humanities.* was introduced, and with the seven hierarchies created by the Renaming, comprises today's so-called "Big 8".
Hierarchies
See also
