That's the nature of the Internet and Usenet News. Every newsgroup has a distinct and fairly understood name. The naming convention creates the newsgroup names in a hierarchical fashion. Each subsequent word clarifies or narrows the subject matter represented in the previous words. If the news administrators felt that an existing newsgroup was encompassing too broad a subject matter, they could subdivide it into smaller newsgroups.
Users can also vote to have a new newsgroup formed.
For example, look again at the comp.periphs.printers newsgroup. The administrators could divide the newsgroup further by the type of printer, for example dot matrix, laser, and ink jet. One of the new newsgroup names could be comp.periph.printers.laser, for example. Major Newsgroup Categories Usenet News divides the newsgroups into major categories by the first word or level in the newsgroup names. Canadian discussions k12.