You will get better results from the mailing lists by following the etiquette guidlines: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/mailing-list-faq/etiquette.html.
Its really not necessary to subscribe to the lists to post a question. For this reason, people will cc you on any responses to your question (or should). It might be wise to request that you be copied if you don't subscribe as a reminder for those that might forget.
If you reply to a list post, the threading of the articles will be broken unless the email contains the message threading information. Its can be maintained with a little effort.
There is a "Raw E-Mail" link on each message which contains the same information as if you would have received the email. The raw email can be downloaded and placed in one of your email client's mail directories.
There are many kinds of email storage methods and the method used to add raw email will vary slightly depending on the client. In this example, the MH mailbox format is used by the Sylpheed email client.
The MH format stores each email in a mailbox in separate files which are given numerical identities, for example:
% ls ~/Mail/inbox 1 11 120 131 142 153 164 175 22 33 44 55 66 77 88 99 10 110 121 132 143 154 165 176 23 34 45 56 67 78 89 100 111 122 133 144 155 166 177 24 35 46 57 68 79 9 101 112 123 134 145 156 167 178 25 36 47 58 69 8 90 102 113 124 135 146 157 168 179 26 37 48 59 7 80 91 103 114 125 136 147 158 169 18 27 38 49 6 70 81 92 104 115 126 137 148 159 17 180 28 39 5 60 71 82 93 105 116 127 138 149 16 170 181 29 4 50 61 72 83 94 106 117 128 139 15 160 171 19 3 40 51 62 73 84 95 107 118 129 14 150 161 172 2 30 41 52 63 74 85 96 108 119 13 140 151 162 173 20 31 42 53 64 75 86 97 109 12 130 141 152 163 174 21 32 43 54 65 76 87 98
Obviously you would not want to just arbitrarily start adding new entries manually. You can create a new mailbox expressly for manually adding list mail. A new mailbox named "web-lists" was created for this purpose using Sylpheed's menus.
WarningIt is recommended that a back up of your mail be made. There exists the possiblity of loss of data
You can then use fetch to add a web mailing list post to your mailbox by using the raw email link:
% cd ~/Mail/web-lists fetch -o 1 http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=1845381+0+current/freebsd-questions+raw fetch: http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=1845381+0+current/freebsd-questions+raw: size of remote file is not known Receiving 1: 3237 bytes 3237 bytes transferred in 0.1 seconds (23.36 kBps)
The email will be added and will have the filename 1. If you want multiple email messages, be sure to increment the number. Whenthe "web-lists" mailbox is opened, the message(s) will appear. They can then be moved to the normal inbox and you can reply as usual.