[Mailman-Developers] message board functionality?

[Steven Hazel]

wwwthreads, a web-based threaded message board software, formerly released
under the GPL, is now being released under a non-free license by the original
author.  I'm the administrator of wwwthreads for a user community, and we've
decided to stick with free software.  I suggested to the GNU project that I 
fork the code and work on extending and improving the capabilies of
wwwthreads with the aim of inclusion in GNU.  After a bit of discussion with
RMS, I'm thinking that perhaps the best thing to do is to work on GNU Mailman
to make it capable of doing what wwwthreads does.  Many of the extensions I 
was planning for wwwthreads (for example, integration with email and 
optionalization of the web interface) are already done in Mailman, and I think
that maybe Mailman could benefit from some of the additional functionality I
am proposing.  Besides which, I'd really like to be able to deal with all of
my email in one place, rather than having to zoom off to some web site for
a portion of it.  I think a lot of web-based-forum users feel the same way.

So I'm writing this email to find out what you think -- is this possible?
Is it a good idea?

My current minimum list of features needed to make GNU Mailman useable as a 
replacement for wwwthreads (with the web-based part fully optional) is as 
follows:

- web logins for user accounts
- user option to not actually receive mail from lists (for those who want 
  to read lists purely on the web)
- web interface for posting to mailing lists
- web interface for administrator and moderator functions
- web appearance configurability on both an administrator and user level
- program to convert wwwthreads databases to Mailman configurations

Of course, further features would follow those, based on what users say when
they've switched from other forum software.  I expect that the web frontend
would benefit greatly.

Your comments are appriciated.

-Steven