You’ve worked hard to build a great group; you want to protect that investment, right? One way to ensure that your group and its members are protected is to assign a co-owner, or two.
Appointing a co-owner is not something you should take lightly, since an owner has access to member information, can change group settings, and can even delete a group. You may decide that just appointing moderators to help with administrative tasks is a better choice for your group. But in cases where you have the trust and fellowship of a moderator or a strong group member, opting to appoint the person co-owner of your group is a natural progression in the person’s relationship to the group. And should a situation arise where you can’t or don’t want to be responsible for your group anymore, the co-owner can easily assume full ownership of it.
To make another member the group co-owner:
- Go to the Members area of your group
- Click the Edit Membership link next to the member you want to promote.
- Click the Change to Owner link.
- Confirm your change by clicking the Make Owner button.
Do you co-own or co-moderate your group? Or have you decided not to share ownership responsibilities? Share with us by commenting below.
Jami Heldt
Groups Community Manager
I am the owner of several group’s & I have had co-owner’s up & either un sub me from my own group & then change the name of my group & I think that Yahoo should add an extra button to all Yahoo group’s Even though we might think we Trust a person enough to make a person a co-owner 9 x’s out of 10 this person may up & kick the original owner out or change the original owner’s status & change the group name!
Co-Owner’s Should not have the privilege of of ever changing a group’s name or un sub the original owner or changing group files made by the Original Owner! We need 3 button’s 1 for Owner then 1 for a co-owner where the owner decides on what privilege’s to allow a co-owner to have co-owner should never have same privileges as The Original Owner then 1 button for a Moderator I myself have had 3 group closed on me from a co-owner just up & taken upon her self to kick me out & change my group name Please add the 3 button for a co-owner Thank You
It depends whether you’re more interested in the group surviving, or staying in control yourself. If you’re more interested in maintaining control, having multiple IDs as owner is practical. But if you want the group to survive, you need actual co-owners. One (large, active, healthy) group I’m a moderator of just had the owner suddenly die. There is apparently no way to get a new owner appointed (Yahoo tech support merely “Contact the owner” but doesn’t provide a Ouija board). The group will slowly die now, despite having five active moderators and thousands of members.
same as with Kayellen’s comments..what if the owner’s account suddenly got deactivated/suspended, it there any way the moderators can take over as “owners in the meantime”.
May I ask you something ? If so I use to be the owner of that yahoo group below . But my last yahoo email address got deleted . And now I can not run that yahoo group . My old yahoo email address was brian_durant2002@yahoo.com but it got deleted . And I’m not sure why . And my new email address is briandurant2002@yahoo.com . I was wondering can you please help me and make me the owner again of that yahoo group again please ?
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/MichaelJacksondownloads3/
Really happy it seems if having the new friend.
And you too was like this?
I had information about people who wanted to search friend.More… http://bluecupid.blogspot.com/Thanks
I agree that there are many dangers in having co-owners, but also that they are necessary, if only for the point that was raised of what if you die suddenly? I do wish that Yahoo Groups had a policy that if a group has no active owner that they will help the group and turn ownership over to a moderator who cannot raise themself to that status.
I am the owner of several PTA groups, and have been helping some school PTAs that have experienced hostile takeovers of their lists by people that were entrusted with ownership, or started the group for the PTA and then when their child moved onto another school, decided to keep the group for their own personal agenda, and not turn it over to the new leadership, or became suddenly anti-PTA and decided to turn the list into their won style of community forum, without changing the name of the list and leaving the pciture of the school on the group website!. For that reason, we are now suggesting that the PTAs have a signed form stating that the owner understands that the list belongs to the PTA, not the person, and will relinquish the list when they leave. Talk about trust issues!
I too have more than one id registered for each list, and actually that is beneficial when direct adding members – if every group were under one id, I would only be able to add 10 people, period. With multiple ids, I can add 10 people per group, which is important during our busy time in the fall when we get a lot of new members joining with the start of the school year.
Just my 2 cents worth!
Except in cases where I’ve worked together with someone to build a group, I will not make someone a co-owner since I don’t necessarily want another to have all the privileges of an owner. I have been content to make one other person a manager though. It’s worked out nicely so far.
Richard
Quite a bit of good information here.. I especially like the idea of double ID’s for each owner/moderator. In the group I was talking about in the above post, all but one of us had at least 2 ID’s on file.
But, the one point that I see many of you missing is – what the heck are you going to do if you wind up in a car accident and are laid up for 6 months or a year? How about the death of a child or spouse and you NEED an extended break? Or worse yet, your hit by a bus and killed… Can your group survive if no one is at the helm for that period of time or not at all? Granted, more than likely if your dead, you really won’t care about your group, but so many of us have poured our heart and souls into these groups, especially if they are some sort of support group, that they should not end just because you are no longer involved.
There is no doubt that the picking of a co-owner is not easy, and there is always risk when involving others (especially if you have a very strong personality), but can your group really afford to not have such a cheap insurance policy to insure that it will continue on with out you?
The group that I was co-owner of, was started by a man who was in fair health. Within a 3 month time frame, he went from fair health to passing away. In that period of time, he had appointed a co-owner as well as a new moderator (me) as the group was growing rapidly. Upon his death, his co-owner took over, and asked if I would take on the responsibility and then appointed me as her co-owner. As I said in my post above, we worked out a 51 – 49% ownership agreement (actually my idea as she wanted a 50/50 deal at first), and although we “locked horns” more than once, we both kept the best interest of the support group as the main focus and more often than not, she eventually agreed with my point of view on an argued point. When she took her leave of absence, I appointed a co-owner with the agreement that I was owner, the replacement was there “just in case” happened to me and the one on leave was to be appointed as owner again when she was ready and able.
Please don’t keep your head in the sand.. Life happens and if you want to insure that your group will continue on without you, take precautions NOW. Hold regular meetings with your moderators and co-owner, get to really know them, talk on the phone now and then.. Take the input from everyone into consideration before making major decisions (really helps in making everyone feel they are important and making a difference in how the group is run AND helps instill a ‘team’ feeling) even if you decide to go your own direction in the end.. Make decisions that involve the direction of your group with a lot of forethought. do this and your group will continue on even if you can’t be there to guide it on it’s journey.
Just some things to think about…
Ez
What happens when a group is orphaned? Can a moderator somehow be given the ownership so they can manage the group properly?
Yes, I curently have myself as owner and 3 moderators. One moderators’ sole purpose is to keep communication going in the group by creating polls,creating questions for the group, or asking for opinions on certain topics. The other two, and myself concentrate on building membership and monitoring, photos, and other member related activities.
Ms. Jazzy
I am a co-moderator on groups that others own, as well as having co-moderators on some of the more active groups that I own.
I tend to take the co-moderator route when getting others to help me.
That way I can set the level of privilege for the co-moderator, rather than just
giving someone full control.
A number of my groups have started up in a hurry, with a potentially
large number of people wishing to join. In those cases I have asked a number of people to co-moderate, and I can give the ones I trust most (and those with
experience) a large set of privileges, while giving some of the newbies just the ability to moderate messages until they get the hang of things (and I get a feel for how many mistakes I’m going to have to rectify).
Of course, most of my groups have to do with information security, so
you can expect me to be a bit paranoid
Thanx for this info but I think making someone else a co-owner is not a good idea. It has generally been observed that in due course of time, if some differences develop amongst them, then the worst happens.
Instead of this, its better to promote your own 2-3 ids to co-owner level. Even in giving co-owner powers to his own ids, he should be careful that his most active id in public should be demoted to moderator level without the power to delete the group. Reason for this is that, the most vulnerable id for hackers/enemies attack is the publicly known id. Even if someone hacks it, he will not be able to delete the group and through your other owner ids you can always remove this hacker. The real owner powers should be with those ids which are not publicly known.
Power of co-owner should be given to someone else, only in such a case where the original owner wishes to totally absolve himself from the group.
Luv & Regards
Rajesh Kainth
Owner Dil Se Desi Group
One thing Jami forgot to include…
Owners should ALWAYS–no matter what–have a co-owner set up… just in case Yahoo decides to suspend your email account without notice. I’ve seen it happen to people before (and usually with no explanation given, so you don’t even know if you did something wrong).
In my experience, group owners should AT THE BARE MINIMUM have a secondary email address set up (preferably with a completely separate email host) and have 2 different logins for the same owner. This will prevent any access problems should the unspeakable actually occur.
~Sc’Eric
I own several yahoo groups and a couple are reasonably active while others are in spurts. I have appointed co-owners in all of them. The way I come to choose my moderators is by how much they participate in the group. I carefully choose co-owners from the moderators that are the most competent in the subject matter that we are dealing with in the group. So far, I have chosen good people. I travel a lot with my job and my co-owners have stepped up to the plate and delivered for me time after time. I consider them to be very important assetts to our groups.
In the past I have gone thru 2 co-owners and numerous moderators…..all of which did not do my group justice. I turned the ownership over to the last co-owner but after awhile she decided she no longer wanted it, I remained as a reg. member so I took ownership of it again. This time around I am not going thru the hassles of moderators.
Someone from the Yahoo group Blog should send a message to every group owner using the default group owner email address( group_owner@somegroup…. By doing this they will be able to find out which groups have an active owner by having the owners reply to some web page. If the message is a hard bounce then send a message to the group address advising the owner has not answered and the group is open for a new owner. If someone on the group which has been a member for over one year replies then yahoo can turn the ownership over to that person on a first reply first get ownership. If no one replies then Yahoo deletes the group. After the frist go around to clean up the groups ownership Yahoo can send a message once a year to verifiy the owner is active…
Donald
Its a good point Jami.
However with points of trust and future probable group politics, one has to be very careful on who is chosen.
This is VERY useful to retain control of a group if your yahoo ID gets hijacked. I have seen many examples of groups that have become orphaned. I suggest that you create a second Yahoo ID and subscribe yourself to the group and make yourself the co-owner. In case of hijack of Yahoo account, you can simply regain control back with your secondary ID.
A back door key:
I would suggest in the future that Yahoo introduce a secondary back door ID and machine generated password for owners to regain control. This could be sent to the first founder owner every month as a reminder or just maybe when the group was first founded. This would reduce load on the customer care also.
Regards
Raj, Bangalore
Jami, you bring up a very good point.
If your group is sizeable and/or active, having a co-owner is very important.
I was a co-owner of a rare disease support group that has 700+ members that get very active at times (some months over 2000 posts), many of which require research before a proper reply could be made. We had 2 owners, 4 moderators and all of us were very active in trying to answer questions, do research, offer support etc… We even started our own private ‘mod squad’ yahoo group so we could keep up with everything that was going on, which helped in making some life long friends out of us all.
My co-owner had a family emergency and had to leave her responsibilities up to us for 6 months. A group of that size, would have been in ruin if there wasn’t 2 owners at that time. Shortly after her return, we had a fire and lost a family member, so I left the group with all but the standard membership status. I still help out with questions and research now and then, but I am still not ‘up’ for taking on the stress of running a group of ‘that’ size at this point… One of the moderators has now taken over as co-owner and 2 more mods have been added.. The group is as strong as ever and still growing.
The two of us co-owners were lucky enough to think very much alike and we agreed on almost everything as far as the group was concerned. But to ensure there was no issue with ‘locking horns’ one owner was given a 51% share, the other a 49% share.. and all of the moderators had their say in any changes or problems that arose. Input was taken from all (often the group members included), and a decision was made by the co-owners on how to handle the situation, either in the ‘mod squad’ group or privately via emails. It worked very well for us all.
Point being, if you do have a group that is active, get yourself some insurance. Set up a chain of command and appoint a co-owner to insure the group will continue on ‘just in case’…… You have put way too much heart and soul into your group to see it fizzle away if something keeps you away for any length of time. Sometimes ‘life’ does happen – like it or not.
Just one person’s input on the subject..
Ez
Great advice.
Leadership is always a matter of trust. As an owner, you are also a leader. And to give other the chance to be co-owners is a gift to them…it is your way of saying that you trust them to be leaders of the group too.
Thank you.
A co-owner you appointed can demote you to ordinary member, then unsub you. In such setup you have to be very careful choosing whom to trust.