I hope I'm not missing something really obvious here, but is there any way to make this forum function a bit more like a regular mailing list with email subscriptions to topics, and replies being redirected back to the forums?

There is a sidefx mailing list which you can subscribe to:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_mailarchive&Itemid=212 [sidefx.com]

Terrific, thanks!

Does the forum have any interaction with the mailing list, or is it an entirely separate thing?

It's separate, unfortunately. You can also add attachments (hip files, images) on the forum, whereas you can't on the list, so many people perfer the forum.

Don't get me wrong – I'm not anti-forum, as there are definite benefits in terms of structure, attachments, better searching, archival, etc.

However, the issue I have is that since I monitor so many different mailing lists/forums/etc, it's very hard to keep up, and if I have to navigate to a web site and browse through topics to see what's going on, I end up just not participating.

In contrast, I've been on a few beta lists that are driven by forums, but publish themselves as a mailing list, so that I can subscribe to the particular topics I'm interested in, and have a “feed” that lets me very quickly see if any topics have come up that are relevant to me. Better yet, there's a link to the forum at the bottom of the email, so if there are aspects of the post that don't get distributed in the email version, such as attachments, I can go back to the forum. If it's just a text conversation, I can reply to that email, and it will track the topic and post back into the right forum.

It wasn't perfect, but I think it stands a MUCH better chance of recreating the vibrance we've had on the Softimage mailing list for so long. Not saying SideFX forums aren't vibrant, of course – I have no opinion on that as of yet. What I've seen in the past, though, is that forums can be extremely active, but are biased toward more junior users who have the time for them.

jonandy
What I've seen in the past, though, is that forums can be extremely active, but are biased toward more junior users who have the time for them.

Not to fear! Leave the bad old days behind - just checkout the forums - they will make you

There is also Odforce, which has many other users too.
http://odforce.net [odforce.net]

However, the issue I have is that since I monitor so many different mailing lists/forums/etc, it's very hard to keep up, and if I have to navigate to a web site and browse through topics to see what's going on, I end up just not participating.

Yep, that's one of the reasons we have both I just wanted to give you the lay of the land in terms of membership & activity on the forums vs. the list. Within this community, you'll receive an answer pretty quickly either way.

Another interesting tibbit although not related to forums. the daily build changelog can be set as an rss feed…!

grayOlorin
Another interesting tibbit although not related to forums. the daily build changelog can be set as an rss feed…!

The link to the journal (to save hunting):
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_journal&Itemid=213&page=index [sidefx.com]

And the link to the RSS feed:
http://www.sidefx.com/journal/rss.php?version=13.0 [sidefx.com]

mark
The link to the journal (to save hunting):
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_journal&Itemid=213&page=index [sidefx.com]

I guess I don't read the journal enough and usually just end up typing the redirected one:

http://sidefx.com/journal [sidefx.com]