> It apparently doesn't present a threaded view like a mail/news client would
Not the same as a mail client, but once you opened an individual email there's threaded structure.
> and downloading the mbox file requires one to authenticate with the server.
It does, but also says “Please authenticate with user archives and password antispam” - it's just to make automated extraction of email addresses a bit more work.
> Not the same as a mail client, but once you opened an individual email there's threaded structure.
Yes, but it's much more cumbersome to navigate the thread compared to using an actual mail client. If web pages of mail archives could present an overview pane for navigating messages, it would go a long way to making them usable in a browser as opposed to just posting links to the immediate parent and the set of children for a given message.
Though I wish that having a NNTP gateway (or using NNTP as a primary method of communication for a project) was the standard as opposed to using a mailing list since it would make viewing past messages before subscribing to a newsgroup trivial.
> Yes, but it's much more cumbersome to navigate the thread compared to using an actual mail client. If web pages of mail archives could present an overview pane for navigating messages, it would go a long way to making them usable in a browser as opposed to just posting links to the immediate parent and the set of children for a given message.
It does, although discovery of the feature as well as the feature itself could use some improvement. In the header there's "Thread:" and the associated button displays the structure. You can also open a whole thread, but I don't find that particularly useful. The download mbox link inside a message will give you the whole thread as well.
Not the same as a mail client, but once you opened an individual email there's threaded structure.
> and downloading the mbox file requires one to authenticate with the server.
It does, but also says “Please authenticate with user archives and password antispam” - it's just to make automated extraction of email addresses a bit more work.