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And now a thing someone mentioned that you can't do with a mailing-list: ignoring a thread. I mute it now in gmail (or would set-up a rule in a mail-client of my choice) and therefore it moves directly to the archive.
Btw. imap can be low-bandwidth. I don't know what kind of mailing-client you are using but any client i saw 'til now can only download the headers of mails and you download only more if you open a mail.
Btw. forum -1 (that would be a second one from me) I have to use for some things in my life forum's and everytime I think it sucks because even with good mobile interfaces they usually suck on mobile browsers (like blackberry or opera) and mail clients work. On stationary machines it's just a website more I have to go to check if there's new information because I've never seen a forum with a good rss-feed.
Niels