Although it's true using h264 in .avi is generally a quite hacky and simply dumb idea, I think it's just even worse disregarding the advantages of softsubs and the .mkv package in general. It's time to move on, leave the old things behind and use more efficient and usefull things instead.
It's kinda demoralizing that we're being held back on an old standard simply because other fansubbing groups are unwilling "to lose their crowd". We've got CCCP already, .mkv works fine by now, let's just let .avi go
.