That's because email is STILL the very best collaboration tool available:
nothing else even comes close.
1. It's low-bandwidth.
2. It can be utilized offline.
3. It's asynchronous.
4. It can be used with the UI (mail client) of the participant's choice,
as long as that mail client is reasonably well-behaved.
5. It automatically builds an archive.
6. Individual participants can build their own archives.
7. Which means that they can also search those archives with the
mechanism of THEIR choice rather than one forced on them.
8. Which means that (taken as an aggregate) there are numerous ways
to ensure the completeness and integrity of the archives.
9. It scales magnificently.
10. Privacy/security issues are minimized.
11. Attacks/abuse/etc. against it are well-understood and easy to handle.
12. It's extremely fault- and delay-tolerant.
13. It's push, not pull.
14. It's highly portable, e.g., list-rehosting and list software upgrading
or changing are all relatively painless processes.
15. There are some very good choices for well-supported, mature,
stable, open-source software to manage it.
16. (more which I'll omit for now)
Moving to web-based collaboration would be a massive downgrade: it's
a truly horrible idea.
Absolutely. There’s no way in hell that I’m going to move from email to an
‘improved' system that would require me to have a web browser window open (or,
more accurately, multiple web browser windows open - one for each ‘forum’ that
I’m at least vaguely interested in), and hope that these windows update
properly (without sending my browser’s CPU usage into the stratosphere) so that
I don’t miss any notifications.
Although many ‘hipsters’ these days might not like email, an email address
seems like a very low bar to require for participation in the IETF.
Ross.