One of the important issues for some people regarding "publishing",
(esp. where publishing is part of their work/promotion-related
responsibilities) is _where_ they publish. For them, publishing just
anywhere, e.g., on a discussion list or on the WWW, doesn't "count"
(except in still rare circumstances).

The issue is two-fold, at least. First, for these people, publishing
implies _refereed_ publications -your professional peers, retained by
the particular journal in which you seek to publish, review your
submitted article and recommend to the editor whether or not to publish
it.

Second is probably the technology/political gap. Professional
societies, which are the principal outlets for peer-reviewed journals,
generally haven't caught up with this use of electronic media. There
are many reasons, including inertia, concerns for permanency of access
to the articles, accessibility itself, various technical issues
regarding representation of the information (text, images, graphics,
style, ...) contained in the article, copyright protection, revenue
generation/collection mechanisms, etc.

Some peer-reviewed articles/journals are now being published in
electronic media, so things are progressing. The WWW is one of the
forums in which experimentation in electronic publishing has been
especially active lately.
Peter