[mycroft]

Thanks barmar. RSS has always been to me a solution looking for a problem, and in my "I'm a tech geek but that doesn't equate to 'cool' or 'new' = 'good'" attitude to life I've never bothered to learn about them. "Be notified when someone adds to this"? Do I *need* another distraction? No, I'll just go when I have some time, and see what's changed. So I got that very wrong. Sorry.

As a old net.newser (not quite old enough to have lived through the Great Renaming, but the fallout was still happening), online forums (sorry to say) suck. Royally. Partner-passed-an-SOS-XX level suck. Threads fork, and on news or in MLs the forks thread themselves. On online forums, you can't tell which sub-conversation you're discussing. Oh and killfiles. MISS KILLFILES. Killfiles lower blood pressure (and thread heat), they do. Plus, my mail/news reader tells me which articles in the thread I've read/not read, and I don't have to find it (something that no "go to first unread message" has ever managed to do on a forum) - and, of course, if I don't have enough context in the message, I can just "go back one message in thread" and work it out (see above).

Also: private mailing lists. So-called "flocked" or "members-only" web forums are so not the same thing.