STREK-L

Mailing List
Name:	STREK-L
Date(s):	Late 1989-present
Moderated:	unmoderated
Type:	discussion mailing list
Fandom:	Star Trek
URL:	A version still exists here: https://groups.io/g/STrek-L
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

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.

astolat: My first discovery of fandom was in the days of reading mailing lists (I think there were maybe 40 to choose from?) on the mutter-cough-uhm Brown VAX/VMS server, where I came across STREK-L and thought "hey!" because my whole dorm hall got together to watch ST:TNG every week, and then amidst all the discussion I realized I was in the middle of seeing this story get posted in segments

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..

In 2021 one fan remembered:

For myself the first thing I ever did on the internet was sign up for the Strek-L Listserv in 1989 which was a hive of activity, when Next Gen hadn't even aired in Ireland and we had to rent it a year behind and two episodes at a time on VHS.

Another:

I remember back in the very early 90's, I was logging on to DECNet at college and subscribed to the “STREK-L” mailing list. The flame wars were intense.

And:

Kirk or Picard? Kirk. Don't get me started. I once started a flame war on STREK-L about why I thought the New Generation was a bunch of NAZIs.

One of the listservs was based in Australia: [email protected]

In 1992 it was advertised as:

STREK-L is a list for the discussion of the many aspects of Star Trek, ranging from discussions about the movies, series, and books; discussions about the characters and/or actors; discussions about Star Trek fan clubs; to anything else dealing with Star Trek. This list is open to anyone with an interest in Star Trek.

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Their FAQ has been archived at STREK-L FAQ August 1994/April 1998, ^{Archived version}.

List moderators in 1993 were Anthony Giegler and Iris Jefferson. Moderator listed in 2000: Alicia Brown-Ashtiani

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:

This question was asked on the STrek-l list. Please post an answer to either me or to the general list, as I would like to know the answer as well, and can just send it to the questioner. Thanks. This is somewhat Trek related, I guess. Any of you Klingon-speaking people out there know how to translate "grey ghost" into Klingon? My SO and I are trying to name a cat, and Grey Ghost would be perfect, but he wants a Klingon name. We checked the Klingon dictionary, but couldn't find grey or ghost...

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..."