Mailing lists are funneled into news groups. Gmane does spam detection, cross-post handling, has a TMDA-fueled encryption/forwarding service, a web interface, respects X-No-Archive, supplies RSS feeds, uses SPF, features user-defined filters, more...
this search engine monitors 3,649 IRC networks, IRC channels, more active IRC users, and of course, over 5,000 pages of information on IRC networks, their services, and their servers!