The
alt.* hierarchy is a major class of
newsgroups in
Usenet, containing all newsgroups whose name begins with "
alt.", organized hierarchically. The
alt.* hierarchy is not confined to newsgroups of any specific subject or type, although in practice more formally organised groups tend not to occur in alt. The alt.* hierarchy was created by
John Gilmore.
Unlike most of the other hierarchies, there is no centralised control of the hierarchy and anyone who is technically capable of creating a newsgroup can do so. In practice, however, most newsgroups follow an informal procedure involving a public discussion in
alt.config before being created. This procedure is designed to help the potential creator better understand what factors contribute to a newsgroup's success.
It is up to each individual
news administrator whether to add a new newsgroup, and some will not do so if the group has not been discussed in
alt.config. As a result groups that do not follow this procedure are usually not well-propagated. News group removal in theory occurs in much the same way as newsgroup creation, however as a matter of practice most news administrators do not remove newsgroups.
Origin
The birth of the
alt.* hierarchy is tied to a drastic transformation of the Usenet, the
Great Renaming of 1987. The "backbone carriers", or the
backbone cabal as they have been referred to by some users of the
Usenet, were vital hubs in the distribution chain of most of the newsgroup postings. Their effort to change the way newsgroups are organized led to objections from some vocal Usenet users.
In particular, the creation of the
talk.* hierarchy for discussions of controversial or sensitive issues by the renaming did not go well. The
alt.* hierarchy was suggested as an alternative to
talk.* by
Brian Reid. It would be a
network without the backbones, thereby free from backbones' influences on creating or not creating a new newsgroup. The first newsgroup on alt hierarchy was his
alt.gourmand.
The prefix "alt" refers to the fact that it is a "hierarchy that is 'alternative' to the 'mainstream' (comp,misc,news, rec,soc,sci,talk) hierarchies. The "So You Want to Create an Alt Newsgroup" FAQ repeats a common joke that the name "alt" is an acronym for "Anarchists, Lunatics, and Terrorists". ".
Alt has since become home for a wide variety of things that did not fit elsewhere. In particular, there are many
alt.fan newsgroups, mostly devoted to discussions of the work and life of famous people:
writers,
musicians,
actors and
athletes have
alt.fan groups. This sub-hierarchy has also been used for self-promotion by otherwise unknown people. During the notorious
trial of
Karla Homolka,
alt.fan.karla-homolka was created to get around the
Canadian news blackout on the case.
Two major sections of the
alt.* hierarchy, the
alt.sex.* and
alt.binaries.* hierarchies, have been found to fit better in the
alt.* hierarchy than the
Big Seven. Because of the inevitably lurid and sometimes offensive subjects that it would cover, newsgroup administrators objected to the inclusion of one or more newsgroups covering
sexual topics in the Big Seven (including the existing
rec.arts.erotica), fearing that they may prevent the major news hierarchies from being widely distributed. News administrators are free to add any or all of the
alt.sex.* newsgroups without having to worry about conflicting with the Big Seven. Likewise, any and all of the
alt.binaries.* newsgroups can be accepted or rejected by administrators if they choose.
Binaries are often of extremely large size, which is why administrators may choose to exclude them.
Several extensions of the
alt.* hierarchy have become quite successful on their own. A number of newsgroups have taken advantage of the freedom of the
alt.* hierarchy to create a number of newsgroups that specialize on certain topics, as opposed to the broader "generic" discussions of the Big Seven hierarchy. For instance, the
rec.* hierarchy may be home to the
movie discussion newsgroups
rec.arts.movies.current-films,
rec.arts.movies.past-films, and
rec.arts.movies.reviews; but the
alt.movies.* hierarchy contains more focused discussion groups including
alt.movies.silent,
alt.movies.hitchcock,
alt.movies.kubrick, and
alt.movies.visual-effects.
The
language of preference in the "original" Usenet hierarchies, including
alt.*, is
English, which implies that the preferred character set encoding for these newsgroups is
ASCII. Other language hierarchies have later been created in parallel to the existing English ones, for example
de.* for
German,
fr.* for
French, etc. Some access providers also created their own versions, prefixing the newsgroups names with their own name in a similar way. Messages posted in these "private" groups are generally not passed to other providers or the internet in general.
Censorship
In June 2008, it was announced that
Sprint and
Verizon would be cutting off access to the alt.* hierarchy to their subscribers, citing
child pornography as the number one reason. New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo claimed his office found child porn in 88 of the 100,000 groups that exist on alt.*.
It should be noted that Verizon has not blocked alt.* from users, they have simply stopped maintaining the alt.* hierarchy on their own servers. Verizon subscribers can still access the alt.* hierarchy through a third party usenet service.
See also
