Hi, mine was just a question.... I agree with you for the bandwidth and for the necessity of a live connetion, but i'm not advocating for a web forum only. My point is that, for example, for new users is a LOT easier to go to a web forum and ask something there instead of a mailing lists, because there exists sections. In mailing list you receive (is unavoidable) a lot of unrequested and non necessary threads that may be scaring for a linux newbie...
I can only answer based on my experience.If I were to focus entirely on only my questions, there is a lot of information that I would have missed on how to do things. As for the newbie unwilling to take on a list like debian-users, I'm not sure what to say other than seek out a local LUG and see if they are more their speed.
Forums can be just as bad, if not worse.But the prospect of having to log in, find the right page and go through all that forum nonsense is more cost than return. Being familiar with newsgroups and email since the beginning I see no advantage to having a forum.