It is less the conversation than the strangely assorted speakers that holds my interest. The main reason I remain on a number of listservs is the intermittent feeling they evoke of being part of a scholarly and human community. Grand Central as a motley community. The World Wide Web is a yet more dubious, unfathomable medium, an ocean full of large and small ships, rafts, and flotsam. Either the address is wrong, Netscape can't reach it, it was announced prematurely and does not yet function, or it has expired.
Many sites are elementary blurbs with information like that on throwaway brochures.
Amidst all the hype, I have located few complete, useful, free texts. However, you must know what you are looking for and hope only a few pages, not many, will turn up, because too much text is as bad as too little. When I first looked, it displayed a flag, a document on George Washington, and a mass of catalog entries, sometimes too many for transmission, sometimes too few to help. The National Digital Library Program ambles along. Faculty and students may not appreciate how much their institution and milieu enhance effective electronic communications.