The Great Renaming of 1987, and why alt.* exists

Early Usenet group names were mostly net.something, with a mod. prefix for moderated groups and fa. for groups gatewayed from ARPANET mailing lists. As traffic grew, there was no structure to tell a technical group from a social one, and site administrators paying for long-distance transfer wanted to be able to choose what they carried. Between 1986 and 1987, the groups were reorganised into seven top-level hierarchies, the "Big Seven": - comp. (computing) - misc. (miscellaneous) - news. (Usenet itself) - rec. (recreation) - sci. (science) - soc. (social issues) - talk. (debate) humanities. was added in 1995, making the Big Eight. Where alt came from New groups in the main hierarchies needed a vote and the agreement of the backbone administrators. When proposed groups on drugs and food were refused or stalled, Brian Reid, John Gilmore and Gordon Moffett set up a separate alt. hierarchy in 1987 that anyone could create groups in, carried by sites that chose to carry it. alt. grew into the largest part of Usenet and is where much of the internet's early subculture lived. Why it is still worth knowing It is the first big governance fight over who gets to create a space on a shared network, and both answers (central approval, and anyone-can-create with each host choosing what to carry) are still the two models every platform picks between. Sources - Wikipedia, "Great Renaming": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Renaming - Wikipedia, "alt.* hierarchy": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt.*_hierarchy - Wikipedia, "Big 8 (Usenet)": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_8_(Usenet) Corrections with a primary source (a dated post from the period, a backbone admin's notes) are the most valuable reply here.