One thing that modern tools lack that classic tools had was an index view that allowed you to quickly navigate to the comment/message you wanted to read. They also lack an easy marker to show whether you have already read the message. Both of these features were in the email and new client I used in the mid to late '90s. These features are missing in forums, chats, pull requests, and issue trackers that I have to use today, so I end up having to navigate to pages to see whether they've been updated and I have to spend a lot of time scrolling to find the update within the page.
> They're clunky and hard to use and terrible UX compared to the alternatives.
Having to repeatedly check the same page and scroll a lot to even find what one is looking for is a lot more clunky and more difficult to use compared to the classic interfaces available a quarter century ago.
I agree that requirement to subscribe to a maillist is an entry barrier which doesn't exists for web forums but once you're are subscribed it is faster to skim messages in a mailbox.
1. It's easier to set a mailing list up compared to creating a new newsgroup or setting up an on-premise NNTP server (is NNTP as a service even a thing?)
2. Most people have access to email clients (either web based or local applications) compared to NNTP clients.
Personally, I think it would be much better if people use NNTP instead of mailing lists, but doing so would require somoene to maintain the NNTP server and handle account creation for posting access.