Is this group active?

Excellent! The above message appeared promptly on Eternal-September.

Are people using other NNTP servers seeing this message and using this group?

Eternal-September had a problem not long ago and retained messages were lost. Thy've been doing great with recovery but a.c.b. may have slipped away unnoticed. Noe it's back.

Hey Mike, most NNTP servers have a retention time limit. I've been subscribed to this group for about 20 years. It has been very inactive for at least a decade. Most people transitioned to facebook. Usenet is minimally active, but the infrastructure is there and can be used. The key is getting enough blacksmiths to read and reply here.

Yeah, but E-S had some kind of crash that isn't quite yet completely fixed.

Well, I'm about to tell subscribers to TheForge mailing list that they should come here. Mailing lists are also sort of fading away but there are still a bunch of long-timers on TheForge.

Anvilfire looks to be moribund. Is it no longer a busy site? Operators have further technical problems?

Just so.

Thanks for the prompt reply.

It will be nice to see people here. I don't really smith anymore, but I've still got my forge and anvil and post vise.

I haven't checked Anvilfire recently. I believe Iforgeiron.com is still active. Just checked and it looks like it is. The founder Glenn looks to have passed away last year, but it looks like it got transitioned to someone else and the community is active. Frosty is on there.

No worries. I'm an old usenet user. I actually started back when BBSs would transfer group messages via modem before the internet really got going.