The Big 8 (previously the Big 7) are a group of newsgroup hierarchies established after the Great Renaming, a restructuring of Usenet that occurred during 1987. These hierarchies are managed by the Big 8 Management Board. Groups are added by a process of nomination, discussion and voting.
History
The original seven hierarchies were comp.*, misc.*, news.*, rec.*, sci.*, soc.*, and talk.*. They were open and free for anyone to participate with (except for the moderated newsgroups), though they were subject to a few general rules governing their naming and distribution.
alt.* is not part of the original seven but was created separately as a venue with more freedom and fewer rules than the Big 7.
During April 1995, a time when Usenet traffic had increased significantly, humanities.* was introduced and it and the seven hierarchies created by the Renaming comprise the present so-called "Big 8".
Hierarchies Hierarchy Description Examples comp.* Computer-related discussions comp.software, comp.sys.amiga, comp.browsers.www humanities.* Humanities topics humanities.music.composers.wagner misc.* Miscellaneous topics misc.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 particular news.groups, news.admin, news.admin.net-abuse.email, news.announce.groups rec.* Recreation and entertainment rec.music, rec.arts.movies, rec.arts.poetry, rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated sci.* Science-akin discussions sci.physics, sci.research, sci.skeptic soc.* Social discussions soc.college.org, soc.culture.African, soc.history.what-if talk.* Talk about various controversial topics and discussions with no obvious categorization talk.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. The board's mission is to:
create well-named, well-used newsgroups in the Big-8 Usenet hierarchies; make necessary adjustments to existing groups; remove groups that are not well-used; and assist and encourages the support of a canonical Big-8 newsgroup list by Usenet sites.
See also alt.* hierarchy Great Renaming
References
External links The Big-8 Management Board