STREK-L

STREK-L was an open membership, unmoderated listserv listserv Star Trek mailing list that began in the late 1980s. Many fans cut their teeth on the mailing list before wandering into the open Internets.
One website described its origins:" Originally set up in the late eighties, Strek-l started on Alt.Net.Star-Trek news group, and then migrated to the ill-fated StarGame Council lists, before through onelist and eGroups, ending up on Yahoo! A list for Trekkers."
By 1996, Sue Clerc estimated that 1/2 of the membership were women compared the to 1/3 membership in Usenet groups..Estrogen Brigades and ‘Big Tits’ Threads. 
In 2021 one fan remembered: 
Another: 
And: 
One of the listservs was based in Australia: strek-l@firestorm.scu.edu.au 
In 1992 it was advertised as:
In 1998 the mailing list migrated to Yahoo Groups. After the Yahoo Groups shut down in December 2019, it migrated to groups.io where it bills itself as the first Star Trek mailing list. 
Their FAQ has been archived at .
List moderators in 1993 were Anthony Giegler and Iris Jefferson. Moderator listed in 2000: Alicia Brown-Ashtianihttp://web.archive.org/web/20000819064857/http://www.stwww.com/ml/
Analysis of the list appeared in Daniel Leonard Bernardi’s Star Trek and History: Race-ing Toward a White Future (1998).
Sample question from July 1993: 
In the Spring of 1993, Robert J. Cameron posted the following announcement in The Debugger:
{{Quotation|Bitnet...the final frontier. These are the communications of the discussion list STREK-L. Its continuing mission: to discuss Star Trek in all its formats, to waste bandwidth space, to boldly flame where no one has flamed before...
What am I talking about in the above cheesy intro? Only STREK-L, one of the most prolific discussion lists in the history of Bitnet. Its server is LISTSERV@PCCVM, and one can subscribe to the list with the following command:
SEND LISTSERV@PCCVM SUB STREK-L
If you do, however, you better absolutely LOVE e-mail, because sometimes there are literally hundreds of posts per day. You must have time to check your mail at least every two days.
Discussion ranges from the original Star Trek series (TOS to listers) to Deep Space Nine (DS9), and everything in-between, including books, films, magazines, parodies, et cetera. List subscribers are all over the world, and are knowledgeable on a wide variety of subjects. Some discuss technical and scientific aspects of Trek, others discuss its literary aspects and character relationships, others discuss moral dilemmas and present-day issues brought up by Star Trek. Then, there are the get-a-lifers, who want to know where they can get an original pair of plastic Spock ears and such.
Although Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future was primarily a peaceful one, fans of his vision are not necessarily as benign. It has been my experience that there is a major flame war about every six weeks. There was a major flame war on homosexuality in mid-December, and the future of the list was for a while in jeopardy. The list has recently skirted wars on male rape and animal rights.
STREK-L offers a chance to discuss a unique form of entertainment with people from around the world with widely-ranging bases of knowledge. If Star Trek in any form strikes your fancy, and you have time to keep up with the extra mail, I highly recommend STREK-L. "Commander, type in the text to subscribe us to STREK-L. Engage..."
==References==