Where are the whacks of yesteryear?

My question is twofold:

  1. I have noticed that all the threads in the whack forum have disappeared a couple of days ago. Is this an error or a sign of further deprioritizing of the whack project?

  2. I am designing a component that would act as a proxy between the Wildfire server and a set of mobile clients communicating through a proprietary lightweight protocol. I thought I would use the external component model, whereby my component would establish a JEP-0114 connection to the server on behalf of the clients using the whack API. Is this a good idea? I am most interested in knowing whether my component would only have to be tasked with translating the protocols and not with management of persistent info, like users, rosters, subscriptions, etc. Any input would be greatly appreciated.