Big 8 (Usenet)

The Big 8 are a group of newsgroup hierarchies established after the Great Renaming, a restructuring of Usenet that occurred during 1987. These hierarchies are managed by the Big 8 Management Board. Groups are added by a process of nomination, discussion and voting.

History

The original seven hierarchies were comp.*, misc.*, news.*, rec.*, sci.*, soc.*, and talk.*. They were open and free for anyone to participate with, though they were subject to a few general rules governing their naming and distribution.
alt.* is not part of the original seven but was created separately as a venue with more freedom and fewer rules than the Big 7.
During April 1995, a time when Usenet traffic had increased significantly, humanities.* was introduced and it and the seven hierarchies created by the Renaming comprise the present so-called "Big 8".

The Big 8 Management Board

The Big 8 Management Board was originally created in 2005 from former moderators of the news.announce.newgroups. The board's mission is to:

create well-named, well-used newsgroups in the Big-8 Usenet hierarchies;
make necessary adjustments to existing groups;
remove groups that are not well-used; and
assist and encourages the support of a canonical Big-8 newsgroup list by Usenet sites.