Heh, Would that all the world had a .el interface!!! I generally use what's at hand. The context switch is too great when I'm reviewing a set of posts to switch over to emacs and then back to the web browser.
Forums are nice as a record of a specific conversation. Email lists are better transport mechanisms for those conversations, I think.
I'd propose a solution, but you beat me to it in this message: http://www.openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=389793
And very nicely, too.
Cheers!