I am not a fan of email lists, in particular the newsletter types that seem to just clog my inbox with outdated news. I belong to a couple of mailing lists, such as NBA.com 's to keep me updated with basketball news and results, but by the time it arrives in my inbox I already seem to know everything it includes. This is also the case with a number of music lists that always bring me BREAKING NEWS!!!!, but it is more like YESTERDAY'S BREAKING NEWS!!!!
The whole concept seems so outdated and stilted, especially in light of the manner in which the internet has become much more fluid and reactive. I tend to prefer message boards where people can discuss said news or any other interest that they may share in common. Message boards usually consist of a number of different topics on one main subject area, such as InsideHoop's NBA Forum which allows users to discuss the National Basketball Association and whatever latest saga is going on with their respective clubs.
I also had a browse through some of the discussion lists available on Yahoo's group page such as Your Dallas Mavericks and M.Ward and was left a bit undecided on the merits of email lists. The information on M.Ward's page was scarce and the posts were few and irrelevant, although this wasn't all that surprising as he is not all that well known by mainstream music audiences. The Dallas Mavericks site I expected would be much more active as my beloved Mavs are currently embroiled in a battle for the Western Conference in the playoffs. It was, and while there were quite a few messages regarding the latest victory, I don't know if I am a big fan of the way the messages are delivered to one another. Reading through them it seemed a lot messier and confusing than the same conversation would on a message board. Then I found out you could group messages by topic, making it all a bit more organised, but even then the manner in which threads were organised was less appealing than a message board. The format on Google's Android Developers group was a bit easier to follow than Yahoo's but still not quite as informative as a message board.
However, I can definitely see how they can be useful to some people, the fact each response by each member in the group is emailed to you allows for quick notification on replies to certain posts or threads. This doesnt occur on message boards, where you have to regularly check back to see if anyone has replied to your thread so that is one advantage email lists have over the boards.
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