The Great Renaming was a restructuring of

Usenet newsgroup A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are discussion groups and are not devoted to publishing news. Newsgroups are technically distin ...

s that took place in 1987.

B News B News was a Usenet news server developed at the University of California, Berkeley by Matt Glickman and Mary Ann Horton as a replacement for A News. It was used on Unix systems from 1981 into the 1990s and is the reference implementation for ...

maintainer and

UUNET UUNET, founded in 1987, was one of the largest Internet service providers and one of the early Tier 1 networks. It was based in Northern Virginia and was one of the first commercial Internet service providers. Today, UUNET is an internal brand ...

founder Rick Adams is generally considered to be the initiator of the Renaming.

Motivation

The primary reason for the Great Renaming was said to be the difficulty of maintaining a list of all the existing groups. An alternative explanation was that

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

an networks refused to pay for some of the high-volume and low-content groups such as those regarding

religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...

and

racism Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonis ...

; this resulted in a need for categorization of all such newsgroups. The suggested category for the newsgroups less popular among European networks was ''talk.*''

History

Pre-Renaming

Before the Renaming, the newsgroups were categorized into three hierarchies: ''fa.*'' for groups gatewayed from

ARPANET The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical fou ...

, ''mod.*'' for

moderated Moderation is the process of eliminating or lessening extremes. It is used to ensure normality throughout the medium on which it is being conducted. Common uses of moderation include: *Ensuring consistency and accuracy in the marking of stud ...

discussions, and ''net.*'' for unmoderated groups. Names of the groups were said to be rather haphazard. While reorganization discussions had occurred earlier, software limitations prevented the adoption of a consistent organizational scheme. Improvements introduced by Adams during 1986 with

version 2.11 removed the requirement for moderated groups to use the "mod." prefix, allowed posting to moderated groups using newsreaders rather than separate

e-mail Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic (digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

programs, and eliminated the flat storage method, which required that the first 14 characters of all newsgroups be unique. With this added flexibility and transparency, it became practical to perform the effort.

Renaming

The ''backbone providers'', ''the

backbone cabal The backbone cabal was an informal organization of large-site news server administrators of the worldwide distributed newsgroup-based discussion system Usenet. It existed from about 1983 at least into the 2000s. The cabal was created in an effort ...

'', were instrumental in this reorganization of Usenet since they had great influence with respect to supporting a new newsgroup. Some suggest that members of the cabal had interests in bundling certain newsgroups into the ''talk.*'' hierarchy, so that they would not be objected to by their supervisors. These newsgroups were categorized into a series of

hierarchies A hierarchy (from Greek: , from , 'president of sacred rites') is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another. Hierarchy is an important ...

, to make it easier for newsgroups to be created and distributed. The original hierarchies were ''comp.*'', ''misc.*'', ''news.*'', ''rec.*'', ''sci.*'', ''soc.*'', and ''talk.*''. These hierarchies, known collectively as the " Big Seven", 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. Several other popular hierarchies remained on Usenet as well, such as the ''k12.*'' hierarchy, which covers topics especially relating to

education Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty ...

school A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes comp ...

s, and

college A college (Latin: ''collegium'') is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, an institution offerin ...

Post-Renaming

An additional hierarchy, '' alt.*'', was also created soon after the Renaming. The ''alt.*'' hierarchy was meant to be completely free from centralized control, and it was not subject to the formalities of the Big Seven. The prefix "alt" designated a hierarchy that is ''alternative'' to the ''mainstream'' (comp, misc, news, rec, soc, sci, talk) hierarchies. As free form discussion on alt.* contrasted with the more academic tending formal hierarchies, the "So You Want to Create an Alt Newsgroup" FAQ jokes that the name "alt" is an

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

for "anarchists, lunatics, and terrorists", though this is actually just a humorous

backronym A backronym is an acronym formed from an already existing word by expanding its letters into the words of a phrase. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology. The ...

. In April 1995, when Usenet traffic grew significantly, particularly in academia, the ''humanities.*'' hierarchy was introduced to better cover the additional kinds of topics being discussed, and with the seven hierarchies created by the Renaming, compose today's so-called " Big 8".

References