Several communities which function online use the mailing list as the
primary source of communication and coordination. Ideally, the Wiki
talk/coordination pages could/should be used for such activities but
the downside is that a person has to be subscribed to individual page
updates to be able to know that some discrete activity has happened
and this is feasible for only expert wiki contributors and I am not
sure if we are yet at that ideal level of expertise.

Isn't English Wikipedia the most sophisticated and evolved one?  Hint: Watch list.
 
If someone is not actively following a project, then how is he fit to coordinate it?

Further, Wikipedia works on the community model and as you have
acknowledged most wikipedians on this list are not averse to such
mails.  There is also a delete option in our email clients which allow
us to delete mails which we do not want to read.  I hope you can
appreciate this and take a decision which is best suited for your
interests.

I wouldn't have brought up this conversation if this was just a spam issue. I simply felt that coordinating an on-wiki task through mailing list is not a best practice.