Attention everyone! You may or may not know that Yahoo is trying to change Yahoo groups, and we have created a group that dedicated to stop it. Yahoo is destroying our groups, archives are unaccessible, features are gone, and this is making them unuseable so people are leaving in droves.

You can read their comments here:
http://suggestions.y...groups&fid=210745
http://www.ygroupsblog.com/blog/
http://www.yadvertis.../comment-page-1/#

We do not want this remodel to continue to go forward! We want some answers from yahoo about what is going on, and we want the remodel stopped until we have some. And we will continue to lift our voices in protest all over the net, to get our message heard, and others will continue to leave yahoo until we get those answers!

However, Yahoo is not listening to it's group users in the complaint thread. So we have created a group devoted to saving our Classic Yahoo Groups. http://tech.groups.y...up/modsandmembers

We have written the media, the advertisers, commented on every News story we could find about the changes, and written the CEO. We're making good progress, so here's our next step in the movement to save our Groups. We need to give Yahoo's Higher Ups some understanding of the importance of the Groups to us, so please tell us why you care about Yahoo Groups.

Write something that tells us when and why you started using Yahoo Groups, how did you use them, as to what features, etc., did you read in e-mail or use the web interface, and why are you still here today after all this time? And if you are against changing the Classic Yahoo Interface to the New Remodeled Interface, tell us why the new interface doesn't work for you.

If we get enough answers from everyone, we will collect and send your feedback to the Yahoo CEO and company. If you'd rather not reply here, feel free to join the aforementioned group and post it there.

And here's part two of the plan. IF you want to help us gather data, and get the word out, copy and paste this post (or write something very similar) and post it in every Yahoo group, online blog, online site, you can and gather the feedback. When you have gathered the feedback, either post it here for me to collect or join the aforementioned group and post it there. You don't even have to stay in our group, just help us collect the data.

Let's all take a stand and show Yahoo what the Yahoo Classic Groups Mean To Us! Spread the word, collect the data and let's fight for the groups we love! Our new group is dedicated to doing everything it can to save our Groups. One collective voice is louder than 100 individual shouts! Come join in and let's make our message heard!

We deserve better than this treatment from a company that we have been loyal followers of for so long. Stop the remodel and talk to us! That is the only way yahoo can prevent the disaster that is happening.

If you want to know more about what our group's plan to save yahoo groups is, read below:
I realize we've accumulated a lot of posts in the few days we've been up at So if you don't have time to read them all and want to know what we're about, just come check out Post # 211.

Our group is public, you can read it without even joining, so you can get an idea what our strategy is and the things we are trying to do to continue the movement to save our Classic Yahoo Groups.

This might give you a better idea of if you want to join forces with us or not, and also prevent you having to wade through hundreds of messages to find out what we're about. :)
We'd love to have you, come check us out!

Brenda
Nightowl >8#

Backstory:

I am spearheading a movement to save Yahoo's Classic Group Format. I know most of you don't use or care about Yahoo, but I think most of you can understand how important archives and such are, and would understand that Yahoo violating privacy issues, causing the loss of years and years of archives, and losing members and groups faster than it can think, is serious business.

We're trying to get the word out to everyone who is in a Yahoo group or knows anyone else in a Yahoo group, that this mess is coming. It was only done to a few groups over Labor Day Weekend first, and the outcry has been overwhelming.

Essentially, I posted it here so that you could warn anyone you might know in a group or any group you might be part of, to back up their messages and save their archives, photos, etc. etc. now before it's too late to recover them.

And I thought I would also ask if you at IWE might know of a better place to move a group somewhere else off of Yahoo. There are also thousands upon thousands of messages to be archived, for some groups to leave, and I know how technical and informative you all can be, so I thought I'd ask if there is some better piece of software out there to archive Yahoo groups with.

Once a Yahoo group is converted, archiving the files is iffy and tedious, can only be done 1 post at a time, and even if they are accessible, many are often lost.

Anyway, I hope that explains the post. Please warn anyone you might know that this is coming, and it is not a joke, I've already been through it some.

Thanks

Brenda

Folkert wrote:>>to see that we won't probably care about Yahoo Groups and what they change. Not saying SOME of us probably care, but to be honest it is Yahoo Groups... and Yahoo owns it lock stock and barrel.<<

I understand that. Like I said, I just don't want anyone else blindsided and losing their archives, so we are trying to warn everyone everywhere we can. I'm just the messenger.

I understand it is free and you get what you paid for. I also understand that there are serious privacy violations, and at least one person threatening a class action lawsuit for same.

Folkert wrote:>>You are going up a very steep hill and its proven not to work in the past<<

We managed to at least get them to flip the "new" groups back to classic for now, albeit temporarily, but it's enough to try and rescue the archives and other data.

And I get that it's a steep hill and may not work like we hope, but there is a two-sided goal here. One is to get them to stop the remodel and leave Groups as a Classic option. The other is to save and back-up everything successfully, take our files, messages, photos, members and leave.

So either way, one goal will be successful, hopefully.

If anyone has any suggestions for backing up messages in a Yahoo group, please let us know. There are some people trying desperately to archive up to 150,000 messages before they flip the switch on us again.

Thanks

Brenda

Just getting the word out about what Yahoo is doing, and giving you a chance to warn anyone you know who does care about Yahoo Groups that they should back things up ASAP.

Thanks

Brenda

Wade: wrote:>>And I realized some time after you first posted that that's all you really wanted to do. No offence, it just wasn't so obvious. :-) <<

And I get that. I was tired, it was late, I had been dealing with 80+ people all stressing about this in the group, and well, I didn't re-vamp the post we had been using to be more suitable for IWT. It hit me later, you know, I should have worded that differently for you guys, but hey, by then it was after 4 a.m. and I was off the computer.

Sorry about that.

Wade wrote:>>I'm on one group that the owner might not be aware of these impending changes. I'll let him know. Thanks.<<

You would be surprised how many groups are out there just completely unaware, and unsuspecting. That's why I'm trying to warn them all. Even though you all aren't on Yahoo, your relatives might be, or a friend, or etc. etc. like Ashton said. I know how important historical archives are to people, and after hearing the anger and anguish of someone whom Yahoo managed to screw up and lose 25 years of family archiving for...well, I took up the cause. And files and photos aren't safe either, one guy lost over 600 photos.

So that's all I'm asking, here guys. Warn people. And tell the owners of the groups to tell everyone else to warn people. Feel free to post the links above or my group link http://tech.groups.y...p/modsandmembers/
to help them understand the situation.

And if anyone has ANY idea how to archive better on a Mac, that's one of our serious technical problems that we haven't got a solution to yet.

Thanks,

Brenda

P.S. Sorry I haven't been around, also. My dad is 87 and stopped driving, and mom never drove in the first place, so well...I'm chief chauffeur and go-for kid now. ;)

P.P.S.S. Scott, if you want, I can revise the initial post to be more suitable for in here. Just let me know. It was just a stock post we were putting everywhere, and I was not thinking by the time I got here.

You'd have to wade through some of the links I posted, or ask more specific questions or read my group (which is public) that I gave the link to, to really know how bad it is. They are making it more like Facebook, and have removed post numbers from view (you have to find it in the URL or hover over them in Firefox to see them), as well as completely screwed up the threading.

An example on the threading is that if for example, you made several post threads with say the title, "Family Update" it would take ALL of them and assume they are one thread and mix them all together into a nice post-margarita and make you dizzy. ;)

And if you decided to say, shorten a post title, because of length, it UNTHREADS that post thread and makes a happy new one...with no direction to it. It is the biggest mess I think I have ever seen. That and the coding screw ups alone, make you wonder where on earth they learned to program! All coding symbols used now, such as the >> and << signs used to quote, act as code instead, and poof, everything between the >> and << is gone. Makes for interesting reading on the site itself, when the post actually shows up!

This has upset so many people from every country imaginable! One member of my group who is an International Author with 50 groups and over 10,000 members, has written the CEO of Yahoo AND the Chairman of the Board of Yahoo, and overnighted it express mail to them. And she was really clever, she wrote the Chairman Of The Board at his real job, where he is the CEO, not at Yahoo. ;)

Another technical engineer type, took his 500 groups and 50,000+ membership and left.

We have made progress, but I don't know if we can win. But if we lose, at least we hopefully can warn everyone who has anything saved on Yahoo's site to get it off fast before they are blindsided with this, and it's gone forever. We basically had no warning, one announcement it was coming for some groups, and ZAP, we were "remodeled" before we knew it. I was lucky we managed to upset them enough that Friday that they "flipped us back" temporarily and people ran for their archives.

Note: We really embarrassed them on Friday, because they had just put out a huge press release ALL over the net Thursday night about how wonderful their new "re-model" roll-out was going to be..."great new features, awesome updated interface, etc." complete with a huge purple (not red) carpet, and all...and here came thousands and thousands of disgruntled Yahoo Group users, attacking EVERY article we could, and posting comment after comment on each one about how Yahoo was destroying Groups and people were leaving in droves. ;)

Members in the group collected the site URLS for us and we went on the attack. In many of those comment threads, (the ones I didn't have to register to comment on), you'll find a crusading Owl, on the warpath. ;)

And I'm amazed at the status of the people who have joined my group...everything from authors to doctors to professors, etc. These are not kids stressing over losing their chats from over the years, trust me. These are mature adults, who use their groups for Aids patients, or Abused women, (that one is a story in itself that might become grounds for a class action lawsuit), their jobs, even their educational studies.

All of these people, suddenly looking to me to "lead them", what's our next step Owl?, etc. man, it just awes me. I hope I'm worthy of their trust, I'm sure trying to be, without promising anything I can't accomplish. And if we fail, we all stand ready to help one another perform the mass exodus from Y. That is, those who haven't already done so...and believe me, they are leaving in the tens of thousands.

So Ashton, I'm giving it the old College try. I got them organized, and mobilized. We brainstormed, and strategized, and we've been hitting everywhere we can post to with everything we have. If we can get our story out, past the comment barrier on the news sites, and into the NEWS itself, we might have a fighting chance.

Thanks for the luck!

Brenda