Personally, I process about two or three hundred emails per day (yes per day), so the small amount of noise the Foundation list creates is negligible to me.
If someone is so annoyed by a thread, that they can't even bother to DWR (delete without reading) based merely on the subject title, I would think we need to question whether that person has the right temperament for the internet whatsoever. I delete at least two or three dozen emails every day without reading them, if I already know the subject is not going to be of "interest" to me.
I would submit the real issue here, is not that people are doing that or could, but rather that they have a compulsion to *keep reading* the thread. Sort of a, "I don't want to be left out, or I want to keep watching the train wreck" or something. I'm not a psychologist. I do know however, that the entire issue of "let's close this thread", "let's moderated these people", " this is too noisy" and so on, is endemic to the entire email world. Not merely this list.
I can't think of any list I'm on (and I'm on a few dozen), where the issue does not come up with regularity. It is merely part of the way internetlife is, in my opinion.
Will