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Is a_film_by completely finished? I've checked on it a few times in the past weeks, and I see hacked accounts and spam messages that it seems no moderators are around to deal with. I get error messages when I try to search topics. Anyone know more?

Gregory wrote:Off topic, but related to Yahoo message groups and getting hacked:

Is a_film_by completely finished? I've checked on it a few times in the past weeks, and I see hacked accounts and spam messages that it seems no moderators are around to deal with. I get error messages when I try to search topics. Anyone know more?

I suppose it's still going, but it's very slow. The last message I have is from August 30, and the last legit non-spam was Noel Vera on August 22.

film_and_politics is still kinda active though. A lot of the old a_f_b crew seems to have migrated to the comments on Dave Kehr's blog.

I see the same posts, naturally, but it doesn't seem like there's any hope of discussion thriving there again if it's lapsed into unchecked spamming and hacking of accounts. I was just wondering what happened. Did it go onto autopilot at some point after Camper took his leave?

Gregory wrote:I see the same posts, naturally, but it doesn't seem like there's any hope of discussion thriving there again if it's lapsed into unchecked spamming and hacking of accounts. I was just wondering what happened. Did it go onto autopilot at some point after Camper took his leave?

Various infighting eventually led to the more interesting/vocal posters leaving, for the most part.

It's been more or less defunct for ages, to be honest. I still get email updates, but aside from obituary links, Noel Vera's regular stuff and one or two attempts to get conversations going, that's pretty much it.

As Oedipax says, the last really major blowout led to a substantial number of regulars leaving, and it never recovered.

Thanks. I haven't read it regularly in over two years, and in the meantime I've just been going there occasionally to run searches if I'm trying to track down information about something. So I hadn't realized the state of things until just now, and I wondered if anyone was moderating it anymore. Sorry to see this happen. It was one of the few places I knew of on the net where people generally had not only a commitment to film (especially earlier eras of cinema) but also knowledge and insight drawing on many years of viewing.