Yahoo went through a series of purges over the years. They deleted the original After Class group without warning 2 years ago. It's now the Stag and Doe. The groups really had fallen into disuse, but all that history is gone. *sigh* I think the lack of use is less the mods and more that people only have time to post so many places and they just stopped posting at MLs. Especially once journals became popular.
The one thing I don't like about the Yahoo groups is that I can't edit/delete my comments. And if Yahoo is just going to randomly delete groups, I hate investing my energy there.
That's awful about your artwork! I know a lot of the major slash communities deleted art after strikethrough. I didn't realize Smutmas was one of them.