Part of it is just how emails work, part of it is how each clients work, part of it is people not knowing/caring.
You'll have:
- the guy that don't use the group email address as recipient, but personal email address
- the guy that change the subject which starts a new thread/discussion
- the guy that include all previous emails in their answer
- the guy with a signature that takes two screens to scroll
- the guy with an awful text font/color
- the guy that CC their whole address book, including the group email address, for personal stuff
- ...
There's always someone mis-using it, and the same applies to every other platform. There's always someone hijacking forum threads, or asking questions in comments instead of starting a new topic. None of this is exclusive to email.
For hackerspaces, tech meetups, book clubs, cycling clubs, city cleanup volunteer groups…
It works fine.
Don’t let your bad experience ruin it for everyone. Especially with an administrative backend, email-based distribution and comms works great for smaller groups!
But because subject lines are more work and people who love sending email tend to love it because it is very low effort, the venn of email senders and those who write subject lines is small.
(¹yes, it seems like you can work around it by going to the URL de novo, … but IDK, doesn't seem worth it.)
Yes, email is the absolute best for opimal reach. All the proprietary platforms are inherently fragmented and gatekeeped by their corporations. Trying to find a common denominator is hard. Email is standard, not owned by anyone and thus universal.
Email is a push technology. And the receiver has to manage their inbox for the sender’s enthusiasm.
2-3 weekly emails
A web page could update in real time. It would be more work for the sender. And less work for everyone else.