Great Renaming

The Great Renaming was a restructuring of Usenet newsgroups that took place in 1987. The primary reason was said to be due to administrative concerns: the difficulty of maintaining a list of all the existing groups. [1] (http://livinginternet.com/?u/ui_modern.htm) An alternative explanation was that European networks refused to pay for some of the discussion-intensive groups regarding religion and racism; this resulted in a need for categorization of all such newsgroups. [2] (http://www.vrx.net/usenet/history/hardy/), [3] (http://www-cse.stanford.edu/classes/cs201/projects-98-99/controlling-the-virtual-world/history/rename.html) The suggested category for the newsgroups less popular among European networks was talk.* In either account, B News maintainer and UUNET founder Rick Adams is generally considered to be the initiator of the Renaming.

Before the renaming, the newsgroups were categorized into three hierarchies: fa.* for groups gatewayed from ARPANET, mod.* for moderated discussions, and net.* for unmoderated groups. Names of the groups were said to be rather haphazard (see The Great Renaming FAQ (http://usenet.vrx.net/history/rename/)).

While reorganization discussions had taken place earlier, software limitations prevented the adoption of a consistent organization scheme. Improvements introduced by Adams in 1986 with B News 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 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 undertake the effort.

The backbone providers, "the backbone cabal," were instrumental in this reorganization of Usenet since they had a 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, in order that they not to be objected to by their supervisors. [4] (http://livinginternet.com/?u/ui_modern.htm)

A more detailed account of reasons behind the Renaming can also be seen in a Usenet article (http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=4558%40gatech.CSNET) posted by Gene Spafford at net.news and net.news.group.

These newsgroups were categorized into a series of hierarchies, to make it easier for newsgroups to be created and distributed. The original hierarchies were:

comp.* 

Computer-related discussions (comp.software, comp.sys.amiga).

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).

rec.*  

Recreation and entertainment (rec.music, rec.arts.movies).

sci.*  

Science-related discussions (sci.psychology, sci.research).

soc.*  

Social discussions (soc.college.org, soc.culture.african).

talk.* 

Talk about various controversial topics (talk.religion, talk.politics) and discussions with no obvious categorization (talk.bizarre).

These particular hierarchies, known collectively as the "Big Seven," were open and free for anyone to participate (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, schools, and colleges.

An additional hierarchy, alt.*, was also created shortly after the Renaming. The term alt was originally simply meant to mean "alternative" but was popularly taken to stand for "anarchists, lunatics, and terrorists". The alt.* hierarchy was meant to be completely free from centralized control, and it was not subject to the formalities of the Big Seven.

In the mid-1990s, when the Usenet traffic grew significantly, one more hierarchy, humanities.*, was introduced, and with the seven hierarchies created by the Renaming, comprises today's so-called "Big Eight."