Mozilla is all about the web, except our governance discussions which use something that isn't the web and hasn't been relevant for about 15 years.
The basic problem for me is that Usenet doesn't usually turn up on a vanilla Google search, websites do. If Mozilla really is open it should really use something more appropriate to the 21st century to decide policy and governance.
Mailing lists are essential forums for a huge number of open source projects. We're not the first to use them and we aren't going to be the last. I agree that it's perhaps not "webby" enough but that's what we've been using since the beginning and it's what we're using right now.
How about a plain old online forum? That would certainly be "webby" enough and not require much in the way of extra resources if you're already hosting mailing list archives.
In fact I'd argue that it would probably save bandwidth as then you don't have to mail everyone every time someone posts something which not everyone wants to read.
The basic problem for me is that Usenet doesn't usually turn up on a vanilla Google search, websites do. If Mozilla really is open it should really use something more appropriate to the 21st century to decide policy and governance.