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. [1] Groups are added by a process of nomination, discussion and voting. [2]
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, [3] 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".
| 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.announce.groups |
| rec.* | Recreation and entertainment | rec.music, rec.arts.movies, rec.arts.poetry |
| 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 was originally created in 2005 from former moderators of the news.announce.newgroups. [4] The board's mission is to: