Checkgroups is the canonical list of Big-8 Newsgroups.
A post is made monthly to news.announce.newgroups listing all of the newsgroups in the Big-8 hierarchies.
Those news administrators who wish to do so can use this list to carry the canonical Big-8 groups (those formally endorsed by the news.announce.newgroups moderators in the past or the Big-8 Management Board at present).
The ISC maintains an ftp index--scroll to the bottom of the directory to find the latest list.
