There is a very long story about why members cannot presently make groups, and if you want to hear it, I will gladly explain. The short version is that they cannot be made right now, but you'll be able to add new groups in a couple of weeks again. 

I loved that about EP too.  Someone told me that you had to ask to create a new group here and that the admin of the site had to approve it.  But I'm glad to hear that this will be a feature of this site sometime soon.  That's good to know.  :)

Ok... storytime... :)

Originally anyone on the site could create a group and they'd automatically become an admin in it and this admin role could not be changed. It wasn't a problem until last March/April when an incoming EPer created several groups. That person eventually got mad at me over something unrelated (they wanted to be able to bash certain ethnic/ religious groups). Before that person left, they removed all the content from the groups they created, including content they didn't create. The only way to prevent someone from doing this again was for me to make the groups myself, so I set up a form for people to fill out when they wanted a group and made groups by request. At the same time, I'm managing AM, redesigning the site, and working a full-time job outside AM, so creating groups got to be too much for me. I was letting them pile up for a week and then spending several hours putting them together. It made it hard for me to keep up with the development of the redesign, so I had to stop accepting new requests for a little bit.

The new redesign is almost ready. We're correcting the last few glitches and then it will be good to go, so we're literally only a couple of weeks away from the big refresh.

When the refresh comes, you'll be able to create as many groups as you want, select the features (discussion/ videos/ photos) add a group image and group cover photo, and submit it to the admin for approval. I won't be denying anything unless it's a duplicate or violates the TOS, but as part of the approval process for the group, administration of it is taken over by the site, so it won't bear the original creator's name unless that person somehow integrates it into the group description or something during creation. It will be treated like any other hub around the site.

I understand.  That must have been quite a headache.  I hope that the  new system works out better.  It really is too bad when one bad apple ruins it for everyone else, but it happens sometimes.