This actually argues well for the Yahoogroups approach, where users can select their own means of participating: individual e-mails of all posts, a daily e-mail digest of all posts, or no e-mail at all/web access only.
The downside is, I'm not sure what can be done to attain search engine listings for a Yahoo group, because all the text is buried in data libraries and search engines mostly browse HTML docs. Peraps something could be done with meta-tags in an framed portal page. That's how "fusor.net" works presently, but I don't see it in a Google search, either.
If we found way to set up our own site, it could have its own index.html front page that could be registered with search engines, even if the disucssion boards are data-generated.
--PS
Created on Thursday, June 07, 2001 12:57 PM EDT by The Perfesser