> Making a nice unified mailing-list/forum hybrid doesn't sound impossible... That's basically what Google Groups used to be (I haven't used them in awhile, so

> Making a nice unified mailing-list/forum hybrid doesn't sound impossible... That's basically what Google Groups used to be (I haven't used them in awhile, so no clue if they've changed significantly since then): at its heart, it's NNTP. You choose to receive messages as they come, or in digest form. You can either reply to the email, or login to the web interface and reply there. The web interface groups discrete email subjects as separate forum posts (with some mild intelligence to lump "some topic" and "re: some topic" together). It's not without its own set of issues, but I found it a good compromise since those who only wanted to interact with the email interface could keep that, while those that wanted a more full-featured forum experience could do so as well.