The Great Renaming (1987)
From Usenet Big-8 Management Board
| Links |
|---|
| Wikipedia article |
| Spaf's post: Comments on Reorganization |
| Lee S. Baumgarner: The Great Renaming FAQ |
| Baumgarner's FAQ in a different style |
Sundry Observations
On Wed, 24 May 2006 05:44:47 GMT, Jim Riley wrote in [jpScg.7062$y4.534@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net]: The main purpose of the Great Renaming was to separate the fluff from the computer and science groups, so that distribution of groups could be better controlled. The fluff groups were categorized as: rec.* Recreational. soc.* Socializing (eg. soc.singles) talk.* Pointless gibberish about politics and religion. misc.* Everything else. Groups for serious topics, such as the law (misc.legal) and parenting (misc.kids) were stuck in misc.* because they were fluff from the perspective of someone interested in discussing Unix, they weren't recreational or socializing, and they were too few in number to identify an organizational theme. Before the Great Renaming, there were some sub-hierarchies in net.* that were moved into rec.* such as net.music.*, net.sport.*, and net.games.*. There was also a net.rec.* sub-hierarchy, but it had no real theme (it included groups for the card game bridge, coin collecting, photography, and skiing, scuba, and skydiving. There were also many net.* groups that were moved into rec.*. Rather than trying to introduce a new second level organization most groups were simply moved from net.* to rec.*, or net.rec.* to rec.*. In many cases, single groups such as rec.audio or rec.auto have spawned whole new hierarchies. An exception was the rec.arts.* hierarchy which collected a number of groups, but that was partly to separate them from the other groups in rec.*. rec.outdoors.fishing was first proposed as rec.fishing. This would have fit the pattern of existing groups, but there was a desire to produce more organizational structure in rec.* rec.sport.fishing was rejected, so the only alternative was to create a new sub-hierarchy and place rec.outdoor.fishing as the initial and only group. "outdoor" was not intended to distinguish it from indoor fishing, but as providing a place for groups that provide a way to enjoy the Great Outdoors. At one time (when the only rec.outdoors.* group was rec.outdoors.fishing), there was a proposal to rename rec.boats, rec.climbing, rec.scuba, rec.skiing, rec.skydiving, and rec.windsurfing into rec.outdoors.* but this apparently never went anywhere. The presence of rec.outdoors.* created by rec.outdoors.fishing may have helped trigger creation of other groups. Most groups are not formed from splitting of a busy main group, but are created by someone who sees another group, and decides they want the same, only different. Who in the hell ever fishes *indoors* ? But our side lost, fishing was put in outdoors and that was that. Until now apparently. I don't see any reason to revisit a 20 year old argument again. rec.outdoors.fishing.tournaments sounds fine to me although I won't vote for it or against it and I have absolutely no interest in ever reading it. ... There is no rec.sports.* hierarchy, but rather a rec.sport.* hierarchy. (The original netnews software required that the entire group name fit in 14 characters. net.sport.base was chosen because it would permit a creation of net.sport.bask). rec.sport.fishing might well be read as "sport fishing" as distinguished from commercial fishing, and wouldn't necessarily provide a meaning different from that of rec.outdoors.fishing. I think you are imparting too much meaning to the root name rec.outdoors.*. It was simply to provide a place for similar types of recreational activities. There would be more groups with less of a "conservation aspect" such as rec.outdoors.skydiving, but that already existed under a different name before rec.outdoors.* was formed by the creation of its initial group, rec.outdoors.fishing. rec.outdoors.* simply separates a meaning of fishing from other fish-related activities such as: Fish as pets: rec.aquaria or rec.pets.fish. Fish as food: rec.food.fish Fish as a subject of scientific study: sci.bio.fisheries Fish production technology: sci.aquaculture Commercial food industry: misc.industry.fishing Fish as political issue: talk.environment.tuna-nets
From: Jim Riley <jimrtex@pipeline.com> Newsgroups: news.groups Message-ID: <e0afh.7303$td2.1446@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net> Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 07:17:30 GMT ... The original idea behind the Great Renaming was to control distribution. Groups that didn't have anything to do with computers or their applications would be moved to a new talk.* hierarchy, that tech companies and the like could choose not to propagate. But the original proposal left many groups that had nothing to do with computers in net.*. It appears that the actual classification was based on topics that weren't too noisy and that those doing the classifying wanted to keep. The second version of the Great Renaming created 7 hierarchies which were primarily based on topic. These could be grouped in 3 classes: news: meta-discussion about the netnews. comp: computers. sci: science and technology. soc: socializing. rec: recreational activities. misc: topics that didn't fit the classification scheme. talk: endless and pointless debate. net.religion.christian avoided placement in talk.* by becoming a moderated soc.religion.christian. Similarly mod.politics became the moderated soc.politics. This wasn't because moderation made them socializing or support groups, but simply that it convinced the PTB to give them a classification that would give them better propagation. mod.politics had been created in the first place because Europeans refused to propagate the unmoderated net.politics. The presence of soc.religion.* and soc.politics.* opened up the hierarchy for groups such as soc.history.* and soc.support.* which converted the hierarchy to a place for socializing, society, and social issuers. ... One of the earliest groups in the soc.religion.* hierarchy was the unmoderated soc.religion.quaker, which was created in a totally unremarkable fashion. About a month later, an unmoderated Unitarian Universalist group was proposed. Tale asserted that he would vote against an unmoderated group, and would have opposed the unmoderated Quaker group if he hadn't been on vacation. This led to soc.religion.unitarian-univ being created with a moderation policy of approving all submissions. This apparently satisfied the demand for moderation, and led to all subsequent groups until soc.religion.satanism being moderated. In some cases, it was demanded that some soc.religion.* groups have neutral moderators. This was countered by a claim that the groups were intended as social groups (or support groups as John Stanley argues). But this was to a certain extent a rationalization to head off anti-religious and irreligious bigots.
