Editing Great Renaming

{{short description|Restructuring of Usenet newsgroups in 1987}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2021}}
The '''Great Renaming''' was a restructuring of [[Usenet newsgroup]]s that took place in 1987. [[B News]] maintainer and [[UUNET]] founder [[Rick Adams (Internet pioneer)|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.<ref name=livinginternet.com>{{cite web |title=Modern Usenet Newsgroup Hierarchies History |url=http://www.livinginternet.com/u/ui_modern.htm |publisher=livinginternet.com |access-date=24 September 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120722000739/http://www.livinginternet.com/u/ui_modern.htm |archive-date=22 July 2012 |url-status=live}}</ref>

An alternative explanation was that [[Europe]]an networks refused to pay for some of the high-volume and low-content groups such as those regarding [[religion]] and [[racism]]; this resulted in a need for categorization of all such newsgroups.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://rs79.vrx.net/works/usenet/hardy/|title=Hardy, History of the Net|publisher=Rs79.vrx.net|date=28 September 1993|access-date=31 August 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110522034806/http://rs79.vrx.net/works/usenet/hardy/|archive-date=22 May 2011|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090527131200/http://www-cse.stanford.edu/classes/cs201/projects-98-99/controlling-the-virtual-world/history/rename.html|archive-date=27 May 2009|url=http://www-cse.stanford.edu/classes/cs201/projects-98-99/controlling-the-virtual-world/history/rename.html |title=Controlling the Virtual World |publisher=Cse.stanford.edu |access-date=31 August 2009}}</ref>
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]], ''mod.*'' for [[moderation system|moderated]] discussions, and ''net.*'' for unmoderated groups. Names of the groups were said to be rather haphazard.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.linux.it/~md/usenet/gr.html |title=The Great Renaming FAQ |publisher=Linux.it |access-date=31 August 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110722041953/http://www.linux.it/~md/usenet/gr.html|archive-date=22 July 2011|url-status=live}}</ref>

While reorganization discussions had occurred earlier, software limitations prevented the adoption of a consistent organizational scheme.  Improvements introduced by Adams during 1986 with [[B News]] version 2.11 removed the requirement for moderated groups to use the "mod." prefix, allowed posting to moderated groups using [[news client|newsreader]]s 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 perform the effort.

===Renaming===
The ''backbone providers'', ''the [[backbone cabal]]'', 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.<ref name="livinginternet.com"/>

These newsgroups were categorized into a series of [[hierarchy|hierarchies]], 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 8 (Usenet)|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]], [[school]]s, and [[college]]s.

===Post-renaming===

An additional hierarchy, ''[[alt.* 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]] for "anarchists, lunatics, and terrorists", though this is actually just a humorous [[backronym]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.faqs.org/faqs/alt-creation-guide/|title=So You Want to Create an Alt Newsgroup|access-date=27 May 2007|date=12 July 2008}}</ref>

In April 1995,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://ftp.isc.org/usenet/news.announce.newgroups/humanities/humanities.misc|title=RESULT: humanities.misc passes 508:97|access-date=6 February 2016|date=11 April 1995}}</ref> 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 (Usenet)|Big 8]]".

== Further reading ==

* {{cite newsgroup
  | title = Comments on Reorganization
  | author = Gene Spafford
  | author-link = Gene Spafford
  | date = 17 September 1986
  | newsgroup = net.news
  | message-id= 4558@gatech.CSNET
  | url = https://groups.google.com/groups?selm=4558@gatech.CSNET
  | access-date =5 December 2014
 }}

==References==
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[[Category:Usenet]]