Alt.* Hierarchy

Alt.* Hierarchy

The alt.* hierarchy is a 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 formally organized groups tend not to occur in alt. The alt.* hierarchy was created by John Gilmore and Brian Reid.

Unlike most of the other hierarchies, there is no centralized control of the hierarchy and anyone who is technically capable of creating a newsgroup can do so. In practice, however, 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 newsgroup's success.

It is up to each individual news administrator whether 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.