In article <u6ni97$1n5g5$
6...@dont-email.me>,
a_...@example.com says...
>
> I have the same kinds of questions. It's unclear to me what the
> relationship between Usenet in general and the Big-8 are.
The "Big 8" are the hierarchies comp, news, misc, rec, sci, soc, talk,
and humanities. They comprise just some of the many groups available on
the Usenet network. However, they're intended to be globally-relevant
groups that most server administrators will want to carry.
> Why is so much under alt?
The alt hierarchy is not restricted to any specific subjects, and the
group creation process is relatively informal. This has led to a vast
and colourful array of groups. The Wikipedia article has a pretty good
overview of how it all works:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt.*_hierarchy
> And is there any way to clean up hierarchies? I see a lot of duplicates
> and it makes it unclear where to post (aside from "go where the people
> are"). And some of the hierarchies that aren't used make more sense to
> me than the ones that are, e.g. alt.startrek is active, but
> alt.tv.star-trek isn't. And why isn't it rec.tv.star-trek?
Managed hierarchies (such as the Big 8) may be able to remove groups if
there's reason to think they're no longer wanted.
alt.*, on the other hand, has no central management. Someone could in
theory try to remove a group by discussing it in alt.config and then
sending the relevant control message, but in practice such a removal
request is likely to be ignored by most server administrators.
There are several rec.arts.startrek.* groups. I don't know the reasoning
for not placing them under rec.arts.tv.*, but I guess it's because Star
Trek movies, novels, games, and so forth also exist and would be
considered on-topic.
Regards,
Rayner