Big 8 (Usenet)

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The Big 7 (later the Big 8) are a group of newsgroup hierarchies established after the Great Renaming, a restructuring of Usenet that took place in 1987. These heirarchies are managed by the [Big 8 Management Board]. Groups are added through a process of [nomination, discussion, and voting].

The original seven hierarchies were comp.*, misc.*, news.*, rec.*, sci.*, soc.*, and talk.*. They 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.

In the mid-1990s, when Usenet traffic grew significantly, humanities.* was introduced, and with the seven hierarchies created by the Renaming, comprises today's so-called "Big 8".

Hierarchies

Hierarchy	Description	Examples
comp.*	Computer-related discussions	comp.software, comp.sys.amiga
humanities.*	Humanities topics
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, soc.sexuality.spanking
talk.*	Talk about various controversial topics and discussions with no obvious categorization	talk.religion, talk.politics, talk.bizarre

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