i would disagree actually, but that's part of the joy
hl can go very off topic, but what we don't have is flame wars. our mod team take a very firm hand on controlling that kind of aggravation. it's supposed to be a nice place for everyone to 'hang out', as well as a great information resource.
as i see it, one of the primary differences (and one reason why we are so popular with new-comers) is that heartland serves as a searchable archive of previous discussion
people find the forum while searching google for the sisters because of the vast amount of sisters-related discussion
(in theory at least) these people can then search around the forum and latch on to discussions
mailing lists will never have that kind of archive... even if they do have have a searchable archive, it's all a lot more linear and a lot less easy to navigate your way around for all but the most techie people...
way back when i started hl, dominion was at an all time low. as has been hinted at on this thread, there were dozens of long running flame wars, newbies were greeted with groans and "not again.... RTFM!" responses (ironic, when when "TFM" was impossible to find and nearly as hard to read)
it lacked any real sense of community, other than a small group of people who knew each other from travelling to gigs.
its a lot less like that these days, but the sad part of it is that for most web users now a discussion list conducted via email seems so un-interactive. it lacks all those groovy features you get with 2.0 communities like facebook & myspace - avatars, witty comments on your profile, etc
with a band like the sisters, newcomers are what keeps it fresh and alive. otherwise we all get older and the band eventually runs out of people to play to because we're all married with kids and too much full time responsibility to support the band as much as we'd like
areas of HL are intentionally left to 'wander their course', just as other areas are kept on topic. the beauty of the message board format is that it lets you do that (when its done properly
)
or something.