Amusingly, "listserv" was the name of one of the original email implementations on IBM Mainframes on BITNET. Names were limited to eight characters, hence that particular abbreviation. (JUGGLE-L was one of my first subscriptions back then.)
Many modern conversation systems use both email and web interfaces. For example, Google Groups is usable by both (and I use an email client almost exclusively to send/receive messages). One relatively well known public list is spatialite-users. Another combo system would be Fossil which runs the web/email discussion for sqlite. Sometimes the combo systems can be a bit more difficult to figure out how to use with plain email. I wonder if the "mailing list" solution really does have an email option. But, since as you already noted, "unusable", it is just darned difficult to find. (Or worse, the solution does offer email, but they explicitly disabled it.) mrc
