Yeah, I'm too bitter, I know. But repetition without the mere courtesy of comprehension becomes very frustrating, over the years. That's what I mean about "blind" and "ignorant" regarding conservativeness. Most objectors (a) don't know they're objecting to a non-issue and (b) refuse to acknowledge it when it's pointed out to them.
I'd show you a screen shot of where, exactly, on Google Groups you'd set your subscription to E-mail, but I can't attach anything to this list. Any link I'd send won't work (being personalized and, thus, requiring you to know my login info). Wait a sec...
http://groups.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=46605There ya go: three clicks to make a Google Group behave like a listserv but with rich text content capabilities (cue complaints about "I want only fixed-width plain text EVAR!"). Yahoo Groups does the same (but you can't control the footer, if that's an issue for ya).
In general, I am not as impressed with the new forum site, mainly because it's only a forum. If folks got really integrated into a groupware site, we could manage a lot of meet-ups and such (Calendar) and provide a repository for various play aids (Files, Pages) and even look to moving the wiki(s) into it (Pages). Of course, ya also got Google Docs, so the IGDC stuff is easier to distribute (spreadsheets, DOC compilations of submissions). And there's the Member pages (not to mention Goggle Profiles) to put all sort of User info--contact, con attendance, etc. My only wish in that GG supported full forum features (Categories, Polls) rather than treat it like Gmail (every topic is a "forum", you roll your own "categories" individually, per personal preference).
Basically, one Google Group could replace all of these listservs, both wikis, my own hosting space (used to distribute IGDC PDFs), and other game designers' hosting space (who seem to want the security of self-hosting rather than wiki; they could do so with Google Docs Published with no Sharing).
Web 2.0... it's fascinating. Listservs are pre-web, for goodness sake (Web 0.0)!