It probably doesn't really change that much in this scenario but with a forum or any other topics-based platform you can at least just close and ignore these things without it affecting everyone else.
> It probably doesn't really change that much in this scenario but with a forum or any other topics-based platform you can at least just close and ignore these things without it affecting everyone else.
True, external moderation is a benefit of centralized platforms, but a mailclient allows personalized moderation, which allows with a well organized list to only filter out anything you are not interested in. Usenet had the benefit of both, a centralized platform with moderation, and powerful clients for further personalization. Too bad it died for most usages.
The people who have this preference are processing the mailing lists with a highly specialized mailtool, not a web browser.
If you have only ever accessed email with a web browser it is not surprising that you find the mailing list format weird.
Mailing lists allow people to use threads if they want (assuming nobody thrashes the threads headers by using terrible email software from Microsoft/Google), and also allows people to read from the firehose if the want. And there's plenty of threaded web views of mailing lists available for lurkers.
I remember when it was popular, computers had limited storage and bandwidth, and you had to "sip" usenet articles because it was a giant firehose of data, mostly hand-typed text. (excepting alt.binaries.*)
Local filtering is the key to ignoring threads you are not interested in. Depending on the client with 2 or 3 keystrokes you are ignoring the whole thread or this particular sub branch of it and automatically jumping to the next interesting, unread message.
They are simply more efficient and more importantly censoring is done by the user themselves, not by politically motivated admins who ban discussions based on their ideologies and whims.
"I like it this way because it's always been this way and once you change your entire email workflow and customize your email client, it's almost as good as PHPbb"
Forums are built for threads and are immediately visible and accessible for everyone, not just people who want to spend their limited time dicking with email clients.
Mailing lists are the proto-discord: knowledge locked away from the public behind a special frontend and elitist attitudes. It's only better because the list is technically visible, but only in the worst, most low-effort way possible. You dump a raw txt copy of the entire thread unstructured onto the user and make it their problem to figure out. After all, your email client makes it easy to read, so why should you care about what anyone else needs?
This discussion has been happening since forever. And also the idea that it serves anyone to complain how others are obviously doing it wrong, without even attempting to understand why they’re doing it a certain way. And then be irritated when the response is negative, and labeling others as elitist for using and providing open platforms over decades and not silos.
If you don’t know, feel free to ask. And then suggest (or provide!) improvements that factor in current requirements and goals instead of dismissing them as stupid.
Life advice: if you want anybody to change what they do, you need to first understand why they’re doing it, and then offer suggestions based on that understanding that improve it with them. Otherwise you’re going to continue to recreate your own victim position, and an “elite” position that you will never belong to.
Today's preteens will be pining for Discord in the 2050s era of AI Neuralink vibe-telepathy. They'll say once you change your entire workflow and customize your client, phpBB is almost as good as Roblox chat or TikTok comments.
I prefer people to email me because half of the time they figure out their problems while writing them.
it's not an absolute rule but people who don't do their homework gravitate towards calls and messaging because they just don't prepare their questions.
asynchronous communication puts the burden on the sender, where it belongs.
At the same time, it's often technically true, but for a good reason that you neglected to mention:
Those old tools tend to be very capable email clients, not web apps with their awkward attempts to simplify complex conversation structure. A good email client can handle large, high-traffic, frequently branching, long-lived threads with ease. All the web forums I've ever used fail miserably here.
The people who are tasked with participating in large scale discussion groups (like the LKML) know this through experience. They prefer email because it works better. It makes their lives easier. It helps them to be more efficient, which is absolutely necessary given the sheer volume of messaging that they handle.
Yes, a specialized tool is required to get these benefits, just as a specialized tool is required to make web server output easily readable. Thankfully, these tools have existed for decades.
would you give up text messages or email?
Many "new" tools are basically the old tools with a few additions like emojis and pictures.
I do think upvoting was one "technology" that did make discussion forums different than mailing lists, but that put them under control of someone and had different drawbacks. hn is a good example, reddit is one devolving example
easy to archive and open format too