LOL. a form accessible? OK. this one is, but not all forms are. I also seen some that didn't look as nice. A group on google seems to have a nice balance between the two. I don't know if all groups are like that though. As for wich one is better, I couldn't tell you. It all depends on what you were trying to do. I don't mind either, because of the fact I filter all of my mail in to folders. As for mailing list, you can download the messages with the rest of your mail and se what is being talked about while on the road. High traffic of some mailing list can be a problem at times.

i like forums more than mailing lists. i hate dileeting loads of mesages.

And given that a lot of mobile devices these days don't let you sort messages into folders automatically.

Also for some reason I've found in the past that a fair few of the mailing lists I tried tended to get quite argumentative, though this could of course be bad luck. You do get people complaining about whether to leave the quote from the message you're replying to and stuff like that which isn't an issue on forums as much.

There's also the issue with mailing lists where you read one message and reply, then it turns out three or four people on have also replied. On a forum you get to read all the messages up to the point in time you check before you have chance to reply.

I personally think there are advantages to both systems.

Mailing lists are far better for sendng long messages, matters just intended for circulation, or messages on many different subjects. It's also far easier to change subject mid discussion than in a forum where a person might have to read a large topic to realize what is going on rather than just a single message.

As for behaviour, well like forums that depends upon moderation, I've met some pretty scummy people on forums too.

How are you navigating mailing lists? using outlook express or a similar client, there shouldn't be a problem at all.

Online list views can be irritating simply because of the amount of text, but then again, i always find web mail annoying for some reason..

I equally tend to find forums easier to handle, this is personal preference though. Naturally when it comes to circulation of important messages mailing lists are the natural way to go. To me these are different from discussion mailing lists though, being more of an announcement system to my mind.