I have to wonder here, because I've never found a list to be as easy to work with as a forum. Could be something I'm doing wrong, maybe I can get some answers here.
I obviously use hotmail for this, so all my mail is done online. I use the digest version, because that actually makes these a bit smaller. Hardly matters, because I would read them all anyway, since I can't tell from a subject line if there's any real content, or some idiot posting "yep" with 95 lines of copied text.
The forums don't have great subject lines either, but an entire conversation thread is on a page, which is great for when you can't remember offhand what started the thread off and don't want to hunt through a hundred e-mails you got that week.
Hotmail, some might know, has a limit to the inbox space. 1 mb. I can't keep these things, unless I go through extra, annoying steps. Forums keep the whole thing in a searchable archive, with all the new posts tagged...
What, exactly, is this mysterious inconvenience these forums pose over e-mail?
I'll grant you, I've got some issues with e-mail. Before this, I did most of mine through a unix system with no GUI. And I was on the Alternity list when that game was about to get published. 150 e-mails a day on a slow terminal plus college classes. Bad combo. Same thing as this list, basically. I find it easy and pleasurable to surf a forum, and a pain to do my e-mail. Spam, annoying relatives, more spam... headaches from trying to translate >s into a coherant timeline after formatting errors have jumbled them. (when enough >s get in to push a word far enough to start a new line... which doesn't have any >s.)
Given all that... the difference, to me, looks like mostly format. Sure, it's another site to hit regularly. I already surf webcomics habitually. Forums update a lot more often. And if my idiot aunt sends another 500kb animated flage and midi music "patriotic" atrocity, I don't have to miss anything when my e-mail bounces.
Sorry if this is a rant, I do this when I write tech support too. ;)