So...the community I am looking into creating has been on a list server for quite some time. Over a decade. For the uninitiated, a list-serv is like a forum that broadcasts every single post to its members as email. You can then reply to a post by simply replying to the email in question. A lot of people prefer this mode of operation, rather than having to browse a website, because it is convenient. There are a lot of advantages to a web interface, but old timers that are set in their ways tend to resist change.
Another interesting twist is that some companies block access to online forums. However, no such blocking is applied to a list-serv service (well, they could). So a lot of people simply don't like the idea of a web interface because it would mean that they could not access the forum from work.
Is there a way to setup SMF to operate in list-serv mode for, say, a particular sub-forum? I wouldn't want the entire site to work this way, but maybe a sub-forum could be setup to broadcast new posts to members who choose to subscribe?
As a corollary to that, they'd also need to be able to reply to the email and have the reply post to the corresponding thread on the aforementioned sub-forum.
Possible?
No, there is no current feature or mod to do that.