[notepad0x90]

Forums are fine.

You understand I'm sure that federated is not the same as decentralized. Mailing lists are moderated, the list is hosted on a specific domain and that domain's owner can do whatever they want with the list. How is that different from a forum or some website? I don't like them but there mastodon,matrix,etc.. all open source and you can host them on a domain like you can a mailing list. They meet all your criteria.

I have an additional criteria to add: Security! I would like to authenticate that someone really said what is on the mailing list or its archives.

But before that, mailing lists are not as accessible as all the other options, because it all comes down to how accessible the email client is. Gmail is wildly different from mutt. Inconsistently accessible is what it is.

how about privacy? I wouldn't want my email and my email's domain published to the world to communicate with the list. And again with integrity, mailing list moderators can do all sorts of stuff (and I've seen plenty of shady and downright questionable practices).

How about we let things built for different times and with different requirements than what we have to day go to sleep quietly?

[whartung]

Mailing list delivery is centralized, but archiving is federated. How many folks have a full copy of, say, the last 1, 2, 5, 10 years of a long running mailing list?

Client accessibility is up to the individual user. They can choose whatever client fits them best.

I don’t know any mailing list software that signs messages as a sort of “yes, this message did travel through the mailing list” verification. Were it that important I’m sure it’s possible. But having identical messages on 1000 subscribers computers has to stand for something.

[notepad0x90]

If the mailing list server tampered with the message, everyone will get the false message. But if it is an encrypted group chat on matrix for example, you can 100% verify that the person posted that message (provided you've verified them, but even if you haven't, your logic of other people having verified it can be used).

As for archiving, you can archive mastodon, lemmy, bluesky, matrix,etc... as you said, if it was important, it can be made so for any open platform. Public archiving services will use APIs instead of mail clients, that's the only difference which shouldn't make a difference to users.

Even on the closed source platform twitter, there are public archives of things. Governments post official communication and records on there. Some governments are experimenting with Git for law publications. Nepal just voted an interim leader over discord!

This nostalgic thinking about mailing lists is incompatible with a technologist's mindset.