> I use procmail to filter incoming mail, and each mailing list is sent to
its own mailbox. That alone is enough to make it more convenient than a
forum.
This is automatically done in a newsreader: e.g. left pane is hierachically
structured (in tree view) with news servers and subscribed forums under each
server. The right pane is split into two: top part lists threads and - in
tree view - messages in correct nesting under each thread. Right-bottom pane
displays the selected message in the right-top pane. Just like a pop3 email
client.
One major drawback of using email lists is that, all the messages in all the
threads get accumulated in your hard disk. Whereas with a news reader only
the headers accumulate, and just the read messages are fetched and stored in
hard disk (they can be set to expire after a given period). Also, with a mail
list, each new message in subscribed forums are read one by one as separate
emails. Whereas with NNTP (news reader), not the messages themselves but
their headers (shorter than a typical email header) are fetched in one lump
as a digest. The savings on bandwidth and hard disk usage can be enormous
(depending on your subscription scope).
> It's true that I don't need to see every thread, but I can easily remove
the unread flags from a thread that is unimportant to me.
In a news reader it is also possible to prioritize individual threads (even
messages) in various ways. E.g. you can assign different importance levels to
threads, "watch" them, etc. I have never used such features (seem to recall
toying with them, but forgot what the effects were) but they can be useful in
this regard.
> I understand that there are plans to improve the Trisquel forum/mailing
list, but I would imagine that wrapping up Trisquel 8 is more of a priority
at the moment.
Actually it is rather easy and straightforward to set up a news server. But
integrating it with the web-forum is another story, of course.
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/LG/issue09/newsserver.html
