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