Discourse allows to create read-only mailing list mirrors, one per category. These special categories would b silenced by default, so new users wouldn’t not be bothered by them. Users could follow these categories at their will, using Discourse’s different notification levels.
If we would mirror tech mailing lists…
- We would start creating friendly archives for them.
- We would be able to have one search across all of those archives, plus the rest of the Wikimedia Developer Support categories.
- We would probably earn more attention from search engines, and more visitors.
- We would help mailing list users not in love with mailing list workflows to follow those lists here, and use email only when they want to reply.
This would also ease any potential transitions from mailing lists to native Discourse categories that act as mailing lists, where users can follow all their activity via email and start new threads or reply via email. The switch could be done in one go, and the new Discourse category would keep the archive of the old mailing list.