>>- create a sub-category of Lua, maybe called "Lua-Users Mailing List"
>>- get the UT to subscribe to that mailing list. For example, you could create a mailbox, lua@levelextreme.com, and subscribe to the mailing list using that address.
>>- automatically post messages received in that mailbox, to the new forum/category. The "From" field might have to be a placeholder of some kind ("UT-Lua"), or maybe you could use the e-mail of the originator of the message with an auto-generated primary key/member number.
>>
>>I think that would be a valuable resource for Lua users on this forum. I suppose it would even be possible for users here to respond to each other in that category. It might even be possible to have responses posted to imported messages, be e-mailed back to the original, outside person (?)
>
>The idea is good but we never did anything like that because it would violate some Terms & Conditions that most, if not all, of those sites have. It is ok to subscribe to a mailing list and receive it in your own inbox. But, having a robot to put the content of each incoming messages into a public area is a different ball game.

That surprises me - again, I've seen various 3rd-party sites that basically just repackage mailing list archives and give them a nice interface. Are you saying those sites are violating mailing list T&Cs? Can you give an example? In the FOSS world it's usually encouraged to spread information as far and wide as possible, with a caveat that an "authoritative" list is stored in just one known location.

>Also, on the Universal Thread, each message has an owner. It would be difficult to handle that, even if we would relate that to a dummy account. This would by the same not attract too many replies as the message would not have been created by a member of this site and linked to a dummy account.

Well, you already have e-mail notifications. I don't see any technical limitations that would prevent you from e-mailing a reply from a UT member back to a mailing list member. That's more of a policy decision.

Granted, there may not be many replies, but I imagine most of your current site hits are reads. Having more useful content means more reads, more eyeballs viewing your site. If you can figure out some way to monetize that, it's a good thing :)