The last update was not years ago, and the project is not dead. Take a look at the commits! There's a new one roughly every week or so. Glacially slow for the scale of the project - yes. Dead - no.
Also, the spam is not the only thing around here. It's bad, but it's manageable, it's not like it drowns out everything else.
You only mention that you've been trying to contact the devs a large number of times, but have you given it time? They could just be a little slow to respond. They have lives too, you know!

P.S. I should also add that no, this forum isn't used as much as some other communication channels. As it seems, development is on SF, devtalk is on devel mailing list, user talk on user mailing list (and here sometimes).