However, I don’t see any point in simply re-publishing the threads
as-is. If people want to index these, then they can simply keep an archive of
the mails in their mail client or webmail client, in a folder or with a special
tag – and search/browse them as needed.

Where the real value would be, is as you say – a crowd sourced
effort – whereby the genuinely useful information coming through the list can
be condensed and re-published (without all of the noise). I’m not sure whether
something out there exists to do it or not, but in my mind the ideal way of
doing this would be a web application that receives all of the emails from the
list and indexes them into a list of threads, with the messages from each
thread listed in that thread – then through a wiki-style approach allows
members of the list to do a write-up of the useful information from that
thread. The site should provide good searching and browsing functionality, and
preferably some keyword categorisation/tagging system.

In this manner (assuming users actually did write-ups), we’d end
up with a website that publishes all of the useful information from the list in
a useful condensed format, while providing access to all of the context
information of the actual thread – without forcing you to trawl through it. A
community mechanism to tag specific thread posts could also be used to “sticky”
certain particularly popular posts. This approach also had the advantage that
even if no write-up is done, the actual thread is still available.

Does anyone know if such a tool actually exists, or if we wanted
it would we have to build it together? If there’s nothing out there that does
this, I can see it being a useful application with a lot of potential uses for
special-interest communities.

Not sure if this has already been mentioned, or if anyone
can be bothered – but I think its a good idea.

Phillip mentioned a similar concept in a previous mail,
where he’s collated a list of the best places to find icons, as suggested by
this list ( href="http://snagsta.com/people/phillip-hofmeyr/lists/where-to-find-website-icons5264">http://snagsta.com/people/phillip-hofmeyr/lists/where-to-find-website-icons5264)

I read most mails that come through this list, and I’ve seen
an outrageous amount of invaluable content recommended: videos, podcasts, angel
investor networks, funds, events, blogs, sites etc.

So, the question I ask is, do we think it might be a good idea to collate all
this in some sort of searchable area? Might not be a wiki, but I’m going to
have a look anyway.

It’d have to be a crowd sourced [buzz buzz] effort.

Geoff