Mailing List Use – Web Interfaces
Many mailing lists have web archive interfaces which enable you to search and sort the messages for historical research, investigation, and entertainment. This interface is usually described in the list welcome message that you received when you first joined the list, and are sometimes also included with the list description in a mailing list index.
Always check out the web interface if it exists, since this type of interface can make following threads of the conversations much easier through a graphical interface.