Wow!

There's a unique and savoury pleasure in being absolutely and totally wrong about something. Apparently, the only (well, not only) part of my message that people were interested in was why I hate mailing lists... Dang...

Ironically, I'm a gmail user who recently migrated from mutt. So, my own mailing-list phobia isn't cured by those. I'm happy they help other, less phobic people though.

In an abstract world, though, forums are superior in every way to mailing lists. Mailing lists started before web forums were around. If they had started at the same time, head to head, there would be no mailing lists.

OR... Maybe the things that irritate me about mailing lists filter out the less dedicated users and produce a higher concentration of quality? EG it takes fewer steps to jump onto a forum and say "Hey, can you do my homework for me?" than on a mailing list.

It sounds like I'm going to have to knuckle down and get into them mailing lists.

Thanks everyone!