Usenet Hierarchy

The Usenet hierarchy is the system used in naming newsgroups. Usenet (user network) was an early UNIX-based computer network based on modems connected via periodic POTS telephone calls.

Initially UNIX supported only e-mail and file transfers between machines over telephone lines. Steve Bellovin, Jim Ellis, Tom Truscott, and Steve Daniel at Duke University wrote a distributed bulletin board system which ran on UNIX over the Usenet network. This system (in many ways the spiritual mother of the Internet) has evolved to run over the Internet and include over 7,000 different newsgroups.

In order to provide some organization, the Usenet naming hierarchy was introduced. The naming hierarchy consists of "." separated names of increasing specificity from left to right. The most general parts of the names are standardized to names such as:

• alt (alternative)
• bit (bitnet mailing lists)
• biz (business)
• comp (computer)
• misc (miscellaneous)
• news
• rec (recreation)
• sci (science)
• soc (society)
• talk (discussion groups)

Institution or place names are often used first to distinguish newsgroups of local interest, as in the newsgroup, "austin.general"

URLs:

Documents on Usenet News

This site is a great introduction to the Usenet hierarchy, it links to introductory information, netiquette, style guides, and even a few useful emoticons or smileys such as,

 :-b  tongue-in-cheek comment

 :-/  skepticism

 :-|  indifference

W3E References:

netiquette

Usenet

Print References:

• The Online User's Encyclopedia by Bernard Aboba. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA. 1993. (ISBN: 0-201-62214-9)
• Que's Computer and Internet Dictionary by Brian Pfaffenberger with David Wall. Que, Indianapolis, IN. 1995. (ISBN: 0-7897-0356-4)