Well, I do have to log in with my google account to read it...
Not if you had signed up for the mailing list, which is how mailing lists are supposed to work.
And I'll note that from what I can tell, forum software predates mailing list software. LISTSERV only goes back to 1986. [2] Forum software goes back to the mid-1970s [3], and the WELL was started in 1985 [4]. So I think it's reasonable to argue that online forums are the "real" experience, and mailing lists were more an implementation constraint for the decade or so that email popularity outstripped the richer interfaces of the terminal era and the web era.
[1] http://www.lsoft.com/corporate/history-listserv.asp
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISTSERV