Just as I was about to graduate from college, discussion arose in the USENET newsgroup rec.arts.startrek about how the group consisted of much noise and little signal, making it difficult for people to just get the facts. The suggestion was made to start a moderated newsgroup devoted to the propagation of Star Trek news and information. This appealed to me, because that was my primary interest in rec.arts.startrek. I volunteered to be moderator, and I had sufficient name recognition (without a sufficiently nasty reputation) to get general readership approval. The newsgroup passed with little difficulty, and it has been going just fine for the past six years. It currently has a readership estimated around 350,000, ranking in the top 25 USENET newsgroups.