Mailing lists are still the best async method for discussing meta issues with regards to a project, when the people who work on it span the globe.
Basically you post to the list if you have a meta issue and then everyone replies. It can get pretty tough to follow if you're using email, but most of these had (still have?) mail<->news gateways, so you could use a threaded Usenet reader to keep track of all the forks in the threads.
It's sort of a lost art with the news service being mostly gone and with threaded social media.
Thank you for your response. I have a better understanding now. How is spam dealt with? Do people get banned quickly?
Also, who archives these emails. Do they automatically get archived for public viewing?
Most lists require you to subscribe before being able to post. Subscription involves the mailing-list software sending a cookie/none to your e-mail address for authentication. You can either reply directly to the message or, if the mailing-list software supports a web interface, follow an embedded link.
That simple step prevents most bulk spam. For technical lists you can also do things like limit messages to text/plain, reject binary attachments, etc. What little spam remains, if any, can be handled by simple filters. Manual moderation, where posts are queued waiting for approval, is rare but might be necessary if someone is maliciously trying to disrupt the list.
One of the oldest mailing-list archive-to-HTML processors is MHonArc (https://www.mhonarc.org/). Most mailing-list software now supports this feature natively, but the organization of such archives (by date, thread, etc) and the look & feel seem to have been heavily influenced by MHonArc.
Basically you post to the list if you have a meta issue and then everyone replies. It can get pretty tough to follow if you're using email, but most of these had (still have?) mail<->news gateways, so you could use a threaded Usenet reader to keep track of all the forks in the threads.
It's sort of a lost art with the news service being mostly gone and with threaded social media.