I think Admin is trying to improve the features and performance of the site and for this some work is going on. Some days ago the "online Friends" option was also not working. And yes i am also not receiving any reply to forum thread on my email but we can check this with the notification feature when we login to CCI. Recently another very good feature was introduced by CCI, option of attaching a file with expert reply, but the same was removed. I think admin is taking note of all these and fully aware of it and will be trying their best to sort out these issues.
What we can do is to personally give a feedback to admin via 'PM' regarding the problem we are facing.