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Also known as: the Great Renaming
The reorganization of Usenet newsgroups across 1986 and 1987, moving them from the net, mod, and fa prefixes into the topical hierarchies comp, misc, news, rec, sci, soc, and talk. Backbone administrators drove it, partly to make feed selection manageable and partly to exclude controversial groups. The alt hierarchy was created immediately afterwards in reaction, and humanities was added later to complete the Big 8.
Browse all terms in Culture & History, or see the full Usenet glossary.