I've done that with Stack Overflow; I'll ask a highly-specialized question that would be best answered by the actual mailing list, often because I'm already on SO and I am too lazy to go sign up for the mailing list.
In my defense, two days ago I tried to post to the git mailing list and it took many, many minutes to do, because:
* the git web site does not actually tell you the mailing list subscribe address; it links to GMANE and shows the post-to-the-list address
* GMANE has a subscribe option, but of course, they mean subscribe through GMANE
I finally found the master list of lists at vger.kernel.org (one giant unreadable page), which lists the unsubscribe command, which can of course be reverse-engineered into the subscribe command for that majordomo server.
And I freaking wrote a major mail server. No wonder people just post to "that place where you ask questions".
In my defense, two days ago I tried to post to the git mailing list and it took many, many minutes to do, because:
* the git web site does not actually tell you the mailing list subscribe address; it links to GMANE and shows the post-to-the-list address * GMANE has a subscribe option, but of course, they mean subscribe through GMANE
I finally found the master list of lists at vger.kernel.org (one giant unreadable page), which lists the unsubscribe command, which can of course be reverse-engineered into the subscribe command for that majordomo server.
And I freaking wrote a major mail server. No wonder people just post to "that place where you ask questions".