Why does bionet have a top-level hierarchy?

[Dan Zabetakis]

In article <332i2h$aiu at linus.mitre.org>,
Peter Trei <ptrei at bistromath.mitre.org> wrote:
>
>     Following the recent flap over us.*, and the hopes of some people
>I know to create a new top level hierarchy, I'm trying to research the
>origin of current top-level groups ouside of the big-7 + alt.

   There are tons of top level hierarchies. Local groups will be top level,
but not propagated. So you have ny.* (New York), nyc.* (New York City),
and even cu.* and cubs.* (Columbia University Biological Sciences; now
defunct). Other specialized organizations will also be top level. There
is an ieee.* set I think, and many others. There are fj.* (japanese), and
de.* (German) groups.
   The Big-7 have thier own special set of rules, and other top level
hierarchies can make up whatever rules they want. Alt.* exists pretty
much without rules, and that's why I spend most of my time there. No
site is required to get any group, although in theory you are supposed
to get all the Big-7 groups if you get any of them.
  You can create a top level hierarchy if you want. The difficulty is
to get people to listen to you. You need to get the respect of system
administrators so that they will take control messages only from people
within your organized authority, and not from without. Create a Big-7
group (anyone can), and you'll find that noone listens to you, and a
lot of people complain to your admins and you neighbors admins. A rouge
site sending control messages will very shortly cease to be on the net.

DanZ

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