Alt hierarchy

The alt.* hierarchy is one of the major class of newsgroups in Usenet, containing all newsgroups whose name begins with "alt.," organized hierarchically.

The alt hierarchy is not confined to newsgroups of any specific subject or type, although in practice more "formal" groups tend not to occur in alt.

Unlike most other hierarchies there is no centralised control of the hierarchy and anyone who is technically capable of creating a newsgroup can do so. However in practise most newsgroups follow an informal procedure involving a public discussion in alt.config before being created, this procedure is designed to help the potential creator better understand what factors contribute to a newsgroups success.

It is up to each individual news administrator if to add a new newsgroup, and some will not do so if the group has not been discussed in alt.config. As a result groups that do not follow this procedure are usually not well-propagated.

News group removal in theory occurs in much the same way as newsgroup creation, however as a matter of practice most news administrators do not remove newsgroups.

The birth of the alt.* hierarchy is tied to a drastic transformation of the Usenet: the Great Renaming in 1987. The "backbone carriers," or the backbone cabal as they have been referred to by some users of the Usenet, were vital hubs in the distribution chain of most of the newsgroup postings. Their effort to change the way newsgroups are organized led to objections from some vocal Usenet users.

In particular, the creation of the talk.* hierarchy for discussions of controversial or sensitive issues by the Renaming did not go well. As an alternative, the alt.* hierarchy was suggested by one of the cabal members, List of newsgroups