I guess you are using e-mails in a web-based way. Give some Mail User Agents (e-mail clients) a try, such as Thunderbird[1] or Mutt[2], you will find the power of mailing lists:)
Can you enlighten me here? I'm using Thunderbird but see no good way of reading mailing lists that is different from ordinary mail reading.
I'm not sure what the original poster had in mind, but to me the nicest feature of both Thunderbird and Mutt with regard to mailing lists is the ability to sort by thread. That lets you easily go back and forth through a conversation without having to resort to extensive quoting to keep track of what everyone is talking about. Combine that with a filter that puts all your mailing list traffic in a separate folder, and you've got a setup that's easy to read and keeps out the non-list traffic (and spam). In Thunderbird to view messages by thread choose View -> Sort By -> Threaded. -- Owen