Dumped in an inconvenient situation

[Spinball]

Hi guys,
I doubt I will get much help from this, but I feel I need to say it.
I was on holiday when vb.org sent through emails about hacks being moved to the graveyard. When I got back I had something like 1000 emails waiting for me and thinking they were just the usual update subscriptions, I mass deleted a whole bunch from vB.org. Silly, I know, but when you have 2 weeks worth of work to catch up on and an unwell wife, well these things happen.
So it wasn't until weeks later that I discovered that some of the hacks I can't live without have been 'retired'.

Danial Mented's RBL checker cut down our spam threads by over 90%. They went from being a daily pain in the ass to hardly a problem at all. This was an incredibly useful hack. Why has it gone and why isn't there a replacement? No explanation in the thread itself.

EWT Users Registered Today. nice to have hack. Actually pretty important from a marketing point of view. It helps reinforce the impression of activity on the forum and helps persuade advertisers to invest in you. I understand the author requested his hacks be removed. Fine, but what about us people who want to continue using the hack? No explanation in the thread itself.

Moderation Auto-PM was another incredibly useful hack. We have hundreds of moderating actions taken every day and it saves hours of time sending members PMs telling them their posts have been edited/deleted etc. Even though this mod is in the graveyard, I'm still using it. Can't live without it to be honest. No explanation in the thread as to why it's no longer available.

Users in thread is a hack which my members found useful and complained at its removal.

Ok, so what's my point here?
First of all I think that all threads being moved to the graveyard should have a reply at the end explaining why they are there. If coders have gone to the (often considerable) effort of publishing a hack, and (sometimes hundreds of) members have gone to the trouble of evaluating and installing them, then surely it is simple good manners to provide an explanation as to why they are suddenly 'to be avoided like the plague'.

Also not being a good enough coder (and frankly not having enough time) to recreate these hacks myself, when a hack is killed off, don't you think the vB team should do it's utmost to help the community get a replacement hack? Maybe encourage someone else to recode it?
Sorry but the excuse that the hack is copyright is irrelevant when compared to the needs of the community using it. If the original author won't/can't rewrite the hack to comply with the security requirements, then the vB.org team should ask/persuade the original authors to give permission that the hack be adopted by someone else.
Or maybe the vB.org site should state some terms and conditions whereby if an author decides not to update a hack any more, it is automatically handed over to the community.

Why not ask in the hack suggestions forum? Frankly my experience of the response one gets to suggestions in that forum is pretty poor.

I just think the vB.org team could do a little more to help people who are left stranded when hacks are removed. It's the need for these hacks which is the root of this forum's popularity. I think playing down or ignoring that need is a mistake.

Moan over.