Mailing list archives – design ideas

Hi there,

Recently, Oleg Bartunov got quite a lot of likes and attention on a
tweet[1] which asked whether we should create a better interface for the
mailing list archives.

I was unsure if he meant the look and feel, the functionality, or both, but
I thought it wouldn't hurt to have a think about both. I am a user of the
mailing lists and also do a bit of design work, so thought I might be able
to help.

After a brief discussion on Twitter[1] and in a Google doc[2], I was
encouraged to email this list to get more people's thoughts and
gauge interest in the ideas.

In short, the bigger ideas I tried were:
1) Reversed the chronology, to start each view with the recent emails
2) Grouped by thread (per day)
3) Considered narrower screens

I've attached a screenshot with an example of the current vs these ideas,
and there is more detail and thinking in the Google doc[2]. These designs
were done in Figma, rather than HTML.

A question of what to do with threads across days/months has come up twice
already, but I think limiting the grouping per day avoids that issue,
whilst not making anything worse. I also have ideas for a better (new) view
for each thread, but haven't mocked that up yet.

Looking forward to hearing what people think.

Cheers,
Michael

[1]: https://twitter.com/obartunov/status/1331259617461096451
[2]:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JEWU-zvtt1O-EWKYXUiSb90yKDVVNxDsjAtG-d3rV7E/edit#