I once had a game on my Mac called "Victory at Sea" (pre-OSX days). The game was buggy as hell, but the game was researched by Jim Dunnigan and Albert Nofi. They created a book of the same name from the research they had assembled.

Great research, crappy game (because it was unplayable).

Ahhh, Usenet...

I remember when someone spammed ads in the groups. There was a huge uproar over the notion that someone would attempt to use the Internet for commercial purposes.