Related Groups Feature Test Results
I am sure you will all be happy to learn that we’ve completed the test phase of the Related Groups feature. This means that “Related Groups” are currently no longer appearing in the right hand column of Groups emails.
As mentioned in the original post on this topic, we were testing a concept that we believed would address a concern we have heard from Groups users, members specifically, that while they love the groups they are currently members of, it’s often very difficult to discover other relevant groups that they might also be interested in joining. As Leonard mentioned in his update to my original post, our goal with this test was to learn whether the feature is useful for Yahoo! Groups users. If we found that the feature was useful, we would want to invest more into it. If we found that it was not useful, we would want to remove it or improve it. The results are in and we found that the members who received “Related Groups” in their group emails did indeed discover other relevant groups that they were interested in joining. As a matter of fact, the member uptake of this feature far surpassed our expectations (meaning that an overwhelming number of Groups members subscribed to new groups they learned about in their group emails).
Well, this means that we’ve validated our belief that this would be a great way for Groups users to discover new groups. This also means that we’ll be investing more into this feature. Before you get upset, please hear me out, there were some other learnings that I wish to share as well.
- Reconsider what we call this feature
- Further optimize how groups are selected to appear (attempt to make them more relevant)
- Explore options to allow Groups owners and moderators more granular (detailed) control
- Give you advance notice when we decide to re-launch this feature
Thank you once again for your effort to share your thoughts with us!
Jami
Groups Community Manager
Jan B said,
March 25, 2008 @ 7:23 pm
Thank you Jami for responding with an update this evening – we have been getting very anxious and somewhat frustrated awaiting an update.
You wrote:
“Provide a way for Groups owners and moderators opt out, allowing them to decide what will work for their group, or not”
I for one do not wish to see other groups recommended by yahoo, or otherwise , promoted on my groups – and wonder if the opt out feature will be set up to excluded the ‘recommendations’ on the email messages of groups I own…or is it to be set up only so that I can excluded groups I own from appearing on other group’s messages?
I would much prefer a system of permitting interested group owners to ‘opt in’ to this ‘feature’ rather then the reverse.
If group owners have to instead opt out – then we need a clear definition, are we opting out of permitting recommended groups advertised on our groups,
or are we opting out of permitting our groups to BE advertised on other groups?
I also wonder if this could not be set up in the settings in group management?
Please clarify and thank you in advance for your attention to these issues -
travelqueen821 said,
March 25, 2008 @ 7:31 pm
I feel if this feature is utilized and we have no control to remove it – I will take the 41 groups I own and move them either to Google or MSN as soon as I know this for a fact.
Sharon said,
March 25, 2008 @ 7:34 pm
I am also one that works hard on my groups and one thing we don’t allow unless we are asked first is no links to similar groups. Why have a list of groups onyour post that can sway them to other places. I know they can look it up in the groups section. But I have noticed some groups that were listed? Had nothing to do with a few of my groups I for one, am so glad you will let us opt out. I know many other group owners that did not like this ..so thank you for giving us the opt
Administrator said,
March 25, 2008 @ 7:34 pm
Hello Jan B,
I believe the idea would be to allow moderators to opt out of this feature altogether. Meaning, they can opt out of having “Related Groups” displayed to their members in their group’s emails as well as having their group displayed in other groups’ emails.
We when we are ready to re-launch this feature, we’ll give the community enough lead time in advance to opt out should they choose to.
- Jami
Katherine said,
March 25, 2008 @ 7:44 pm
I thought the feature was rather neat as there are quite a few groups related to ours, but I would ask that we have control over which ones are shown. Even if we have to choose more than three to cycle through on the side-bar, I would prefer that we have the say in which ones are listed. Our organization has several groups and affiliated groups, so I’d rather those were displayed as opposed to ones of the same topic that are unaffiliated. Thanks for your work in improving Yahoo Groups!
Sweetie said,
March 25, 2008 @ 7:47 pm
During the test it also affected my online stored mail searching, which I would imagine will become unwieldy for the search results column.
I’d end up having many times more search results than without the feature, because the searches turn up the text from the Related groups.
With the way I use mail search to find important old info quickly, I anticipate some gnashing of teeth, in contrast to my normal calm.
Thanks Jami, and Team.
Dee said,
March 25, 2008 @ 7:47 pm
Letting the owner/moderators have control of opting out feature will work wonders for my groups. As of now we have control over our groups, the members that joined our groups received a welcome letter detailing the guidelines for the groups, those that choose not to follow the guidelines or don’t like the guidelines leave the group, that is there option those that stay enjoy not being bothered by related groups. Infact they know that we do have a link section for them to use if they want to find other groups to join. Once again giving the owner/moderators the feature to opt out works fine for me.
Jazzy
Chrissy said,
March 25, 2008 @ 7:50 pm
“The results are in and we found that the members who received “Related Groups” in their group emails did indeed discover other relevant groups that they were interested in joining. As a matter of fact, the member uptake of this feature far surpassed our expectations (meaning that an overwhelming number of Groups members subscribed to new groups they learned about in their group emails).”
As said before you could of easily just fixed search results.I’m sorry but this is still basically stealing members from other groups.And allowing ppl to join groups to spam.
“Provide a way for Groups owners and moderators opt out, allowing them to decide what will work for their group, or not” and “Explore options to allow Groups owners and moderators more granular control”
Well thats nice because I don’t want this for my group,thanks for that.
“This includes Groups owners and moderators as well as Groups members and in this case, we saw that group members found value in this feature based on the test results.”
Sorry but did you see all the complaints this is getting ,if ppl were to lazy to search a group none of this would even be needed.
Tracy said,
March 25, 2008 @ 7:51 pm
Thank you for the update. And for getting rid of those horrible related group links. Good Gravy, I’d prefer spam to advertising for my competitors.
I also want to cast my vote for allowing group owners to “opt out” altogether. I work WAY too hard on my group to make it the best to tolerate advertising for my competitors period. I do not want ANY related group links to appear anywhere in posts to my group, or on my homepage. The “Directory” link is right there on the homepage as it is, if people are really curious about related groups, they can just click on that.
Stephanie Hunt-Crowley said,
March 25, 2008 @ 7:54 pm
I would be curious to know just what kind of groups benefitted? In what categories did the numbers get boosted? Newcomers to the internet? People that do not yet know how to use a search feature? People that dont have a YID and CANNOT use the web site search? I belong to several “special interest” groups, none are social networking or casual “chat” groups – we all know why we are there and what the posted topics will be about. I have a feeling that the people that have used and responded to this feature because they were unable to find new groups any other way, have been the less computer savvy, and I hate to say it but I have to – not the brightest bulbs on the shelf!
Gil. said,
March 25, 2008 @ 7:58 pm
Excuse me, but what is “granular control”? My dictionary left me in doubt that this means anything at all.
Jan B said,
March 25, 2008 @ 8:00 pm
yeah…..I wondered what that means too……..
granular control?
Gordon Peterson said,
March 25, 2008 @ 8:01 pm
Oftentimes we have created our groups because of a predecessor “orphaned” group, or one which has been overrun by spammers or otherwise very badly moderated. In some cases, a group has split into several new groups due to a bad moderator, and we have carried forward with more responsible moderation and less abusive user policies. In those cases, we have worked hard to migrate users to the new group, and do not want anything in our group to send them back to the group we broke away from. There was a REASON we split from the predecessor group.
Often, the split was acrimonious and the moderators involved do not like each other very much.
In some cases, I have managed to look up old moderators and get them to turn over their orphaned groups to me, after they tired of maintaining them (and usually after the spammers had run wild there). In those cases, I have cleaned up the group, booted the spammers and abusers, and am trying to rebuild the group’s reputation.
What I would like would be the ability to do something more finely-grained than just “opt out” or have “related groups”…. in particular, I would like to have a veto option on a group-by-group basis that each might otherwise appear at each of my groups…. BEFORE it is shown to my subscribers.
On most (but not all) of my groups I have a firm policy of “no shilling for other groups here!”
Sometimes I do make exceptions for well-run groups which do not directly compete with mine, and which I feel might be of interest to the members of my group involved. But I dislike these “drive-by shooting” group promotions of folks who run into my group(s), drop a shill promotion for some other group (or links to some at best only vaguely relevant group or website), and then either go away or go dormant.
Vicki Meldrum said,
March 25, 2008 @ 8:02 pm
Almost all of the feedback I saw in comments was not in favor of this feature from list owners, yet you are telling us that our members were in favor of this feature. I got complaints about this feature showing up on my group and members writing me asking me to remove it. I am struggling to keep my groups active and involved with the invent of Ravelry. Yahoo advertising other groups to water down my active groups even more could be the eventual demise of the group. There is only so much time people have to spend on the computer and with Rivalry sucking everyone into the vortex and now this feature it’s almost a losing battle. I’m very disappointed that Yahoo has made this decision. I’ll want to opt out of my group being shown and other groups being shown on my groups. If that’s not possible and while it’s not something I really want to do, I’ll have to move my groups elsewhere.
Aurora Mathews said,
March 25, 2008 @ 8:03 pm
In regards to providing users better access to related groups – don’t you think it might be nicer for both the members AND the group owners if you SIMPLY put a link at the bottom of the digest page or home page that says
RELATED GROUPS with a place to “Click Here” Then if a member were interested they can go look at the list away from the current group posts and if not, the other members are not distracted with more clutter and junk mail.
Just a really SIMPLE solution!
Aurora
P.S. When do you think yahoo mail will stop putting posts from our yahoogroup members in the SPAM folders??? If it is posted by a yahoogroup member to a yahoogroup – it is not spam – duh!!! By the way – many of my friends who run groups on yahoo have had to turn off their spam feature inside their yahoogroups (as did I) because it has started sticking posts from long time members into spam that must be moderated and released by the owner/moderator before it posts. Why would the yahoo group spam feature suddenly start marking these long time members as spam out of the clear blue ski?
Laci said,
March 25, 2008 @ 8:11 pm
Yahoo is trying to lump all groups into one basket. I feel the owners have put forth all the effort to organize their group in the way they saw fit to set their group apart from others. You know unique? This will do nothing but create hard feelings between groups in the same category and make them feel as rivals or give rival groups a way to steal members. I long for the good old days you know when Groups were then Clubs. One of our members thought we merged with another group. As a group owner I feel we should be given the option to take part or not. I choose not to take part. What ever happen to individuality? If this goes forth I will have no choice but stop all club emails and do club related issues from a personal address book or our club web site address. Everyone has an opinion and this is mine as a group owner going on 9 years.
Shane Jones said,
March 25, 2008 @ 8:14 pm
I have to agree with some of the above sentiments, I dislike seeing links on the groups emails pointing to BDSM Groups or other such things.
It is not what my group is about – nor do I wish new members to get the idea that are in someway associated with such groups.
What else can I say – I also have a firm policy of not allowing advertising for other off topic groups on my list
Administrator said,
March 25, 2008 @ 8:24 pm
Think of ‘granular control’ as more detailed control. We’ll be able to explain this bullet point in more detail when we are ready to re-launch this feature (after giving you plenty of notice).
- Jami
Lou Gastuch said,
March 25, 2008 @ 8:27 pm
Jami,
At the risk of sounding like a broken record:
If you MUST foist this on us, then OPT-IN, not Opt-Out!
Remember the “Answers” fiasco?
Remember the “Spam Trapper”?
Remember setting everyone to Rich-Text Format?
And as I mentioned in the previous blog, Member-matching is NOT the way to go. It WILL get Yahoo in DEEP doo-doo with the FCC on violation of HIPAA and FERPA laws. PLEASE get your corporate attorneys involve in this BEFORE round two!
A much better method would be to provide a “Keywords” section for your group searches, SEPARATE from the group description, and beef up the Group Search.
Finally, I, too, am curious on the statistical analysis of the so-called increased traffic, including how much of the traffic was screaming over the unwanted links, how many of the new joins remain joined in one month, how many of the new joins bounce after a week (spammers), and an explanation of how <2% positive feedback on the blogs constitutes a successful trial. (I took the time to read a lot of the posts.)
N. M. Havewala said,
March 25, 2008 @ 8:29 pm
I think this is breach of trust by yahoogroups.
Would like to link up with folk who think likewise, for exchanging ideas about how to beat this bullying. My email is havewala gmail com please put the appropriate dots and ‘at’s and let’s connect on email.
N. M. Havewala.
ReduceReuseRecycle said,
March 25, 2008 @ 8:29 pm
Thank you for stopping the “test”.
HOWEVER– so much for “reading” our comments! What part of “we want OPT-IN instead of OPT-OUT” didn’t you understand?
Lewis Rosenfeld said,
March 25, 2008 @ 8:34 pm
Our group is *Private!* We can *not* have our group name in any EMails, as it is *secret!* You should *automatically* exclude this feature from any group that is *secret!* It might be an option, but the group should *always* default to “Off.” Thanks,
concerned user
Lewis Rosenfeld said,
March 25, 2008 @ 8:38 pm
Interesting– didn’t see the comments above were saying the same thing until now!
Lewis Rosenfeld said,
March 25, 2008 @ 8:39 pm
Also, how about giving the *Group* owners or even the *members* a say in whicih links are put in? Membership may be a reason *not* to list something.
N. M. Havewala said,
March 25, 2008 @ 8:46 pm
A very effective ploy by yahoogroups to prevent us angry moderators from linking up with each other : they are concealing our email IDs from this blog.
The “leave a comment” box asks us for email ID, but does not put it up for other readers to see. Why this cheating?
The “leave a comment” box asks us for our URL, but how many people have a personal URL ? Best is to put your email address again as the URL.
N. M. Havewala.
havewala is at gmail dot com
Lou Gastuch said,
March 25, 2008 @ 9:00 pm
Havewala ..
The email addy is a logical requirement for this kind of feedback, as it provides a way for Y! to validate the comments. It would not be a valid feedback method if a question for owners/moderators were bombarded by non-owners/moderators.
And if you’ll notice, Lewis R seems quite fervent about his privacy. So yes, if you WISH contacts, your alternate methods are a valid way to do so.
Pamela said,
March 25, 2008 @ 9:02 pm
Great for members on the basis that they found other groups- was it good for the group that the member was a part of originally? Did it result in new, quality activity for the new group?
This add-on, without the ability to opt out of appearing on anyone else’s lists of related groups, could kill me and the rest of my moderators with the additional spam-oriented requests for memberships. None of the suggestions I’ve seen on the forums, made in the yahoo group meeting at headquarters, or that I’ve personally requested (like 3 security questions, we can create and have someone write in) are being acted upon, but staff want to make it easier for people to harass our group. It’s gotten so bad lately, I’m ignoring nearly every request for membership, even the legit ones, because I don’t have time to deal with it, so my membership roster is going down as I’m booting more bouncing people than accepting new people. So how is this feature going to be something I’m ok with?
I have some groups, and I recruit members for those groups from specific *companies* or specific *message boards elsewhere*, I don’t WANT someone perusing yahoo groups to find it, except perhaps to link groups I own together. If Yahoo staff aren’t taking a single suggestion to help eliminate membership requests that are looking for a place to dump spam, trying to make our groups easier to find when we’ve tried to de-list them from directories already is just going to make us mad. As it is, I’ve hidden my company-specific groups in “adult” categories just to make them harder to find, and having that show up as related groups is not going to work out.
So just to be clear:
**I don’t want my groups listed ANYWHERE as related groups
**I don’t want any groups listed on my group’s website creating clutter unless _I_ as the owner get to select exactly what groups show up, and I want the option of none at all for my company-specific groups.
Randy said,
March 25, 2008 @ 9:06 pm
Granular meaning: Composed or appearing to be composed of granules or grains or Having a grainy texture. Control meaning: To exercise authoritative or dominating influence over or To adjust to a requirement. Sounds to me more of the same logic that brought us CAPTCHA codes and the stupid spam program that bars you till 2021. So if you ask me granular control means large quantities of particles of bull crap and a shovel!!! In other words Yahoo as usual.
Ross said,
March 25, 2008 @ 9:06 pm
I am a member and semi moderator of a yahoo group for almost 9 years now.About 4 yrs ago we had a certain number of our members leave the group and start there own related group which is there option to do. How ever it caused some hard feelings and some harsh things were said and we try not to bother there members and they do the same . Now i get a post from my group With a link to this club on it i was highlyupset and i am very much opposed to this. you say that this was a sucess but all ive seen posted are responses saying they are strongly opposed to this maybe you want it to be a sucess huh .
RS said,
March 25, 2008 @ 9:07 pm
For the sake of user experience it MUST be an an opt IN feature. There are too many dead and spam groups out there that you can join at the click of a mouse that do nothing for you to be part of. I would recommend against this without the added ability of the community to rate groups, so that when someone does use this they have a tool to determine the viability of this supposedly recommended group. Opt out includes everyone, and that leaves every lazy mod and abandon group in the mix.
Nancy J said,
March 25, 2008 @ 9:40 pm
As long as I can opt out, I’m fine. Especially since you’re giving us advanced notice so that we can opt out before it takes effect in our group.
Your Highness said,
March 25, 2008 @ 9:41 pm
I find that most of the new members who joined during a surge in new members February, possibly/probably due to the related groups feature, are now unsubscribing. I was burdened with new members who sent off-topic and messages otherwise inappropriate for the group, which has strict limits as to what is on-topic. I don’t know what they thought they were joining, but from the messages it was clear they never read the group description, and most of the messages were sent before they could possibly have read the Welcome Message or Group Guidelines sent upon subscription.
I never saw the feature myself, as I get all group mail in Plain Text or read messages on websites – did it link users to the home page, or did it enable them to join without bothering to go to the home page?
The Yahoogroups team needs to look at unsubs as well as new subs to see if that feature really accomplished anything beneficial. A survey of the group owner/moderators in affected groups might be instructive!
KT said,
March 25, 2008 @ 9:51 pm
I’m not interested in having my competition promoted to my groups either – I’ll be opting out.
Your Highness said,
March 25, 2008 @ 9:53 pm
Oops. I just looked at other topics and realize now that the related group feature began in March. With so much trouble as a result, I didn’t think it all occurred in this little time!
No matter how short the test was, though, Yahoo needs to look at bans and unsubs to gauge the effectiveness from their point of view, and needs to ask the people who run groups whether it was desirable from their points of view to get so many clueless new members.
Dee Dee said,
March 25, 2008 @ 10:05 pm
Well I can see I certainly agree with the majority about not automatically adding similiar groups as an advertisement to others. NO WAY…. I’ve worked very hard on my own group for over 10 years on Yahoo and I mean ‘daily’ and of course have done so much in depth research (that I often pay for) and sent information because I wanted to make certain it’s legitimate for my members.
To even suggest another one that I may not agree with at all or I know is absolutely incorrect is ludicrous. I too would move my several groups with over 5,000 members elsewhere. In my welcome letter I even suggest one needs approval before mentioning another one as simple Netiquette and a courtesy first.
If that ever comes to be, I certainly hope that an owner has an option to eliminate that. I rarely write here but had to with that news alert. I’m still in shock…
Charmaine Jensen-Voisine said,
March 25, 2008 @ 10:09 pm
>>- Provide a way for Groups owners and moderators opt out, allowing them to decide what will work for their group, or not<<
You say that us Group owners and moderators will be offered the opt out …
how will we know this. Will there be this particular option on the group?
As I am one Group owner that does not want this new feature for my groups.
Thank you.
Charmaine Jensen Voisine
Group owner of many yahoogroups
Andy Swarbrick said,
March 25, 2008 @ 10:42 pm
I would prefer far more effort going into the groups directory. There is hardly any discernible logic and even less no control on how and where and when your group is displayed. Categories are old-hat and not effective c.f. tags. There is no concept of group quality, though implementing that could be extremely controversial.
I don’t agree with the people who don’t want to see their competitors listed. For me, my groups stand on their quality. If members want to waste time in trashy groups they can jolly well use other groups, that’s fine by me. Quality to me is retention of members who are satisfied with the group, nothing more and nothing less.
Please concentrate on upgrading the groups directory, it is in dire need of complete overhaul. Once overhauled members should easily be able to find similar groups. Right now you put in a keyword and possibly get 10,000 groups returned which you are supposed to page through 10 or so at a time. It’s a bad joke.
Solve the right problem, don’t make new problems.
Barbara D. Brill said,
March 25, 2008 @ 11:06 pm
Hello Jami,
Thanks for communicating with us. I appreciate it.
A peculiar thing happened. When there were four comments, I attempted to add mine, wrote it all out, attempted to send, but it didn’t work for some weird reason. Perhaps a time out??
I truly wanted to ask respectfully, please whenever presenting a new feature at Yahoo Groups, give group owners an “opt in,” out of respect for them. Remember, we all just recently went through quite a mess when Grouply was thrust upon us, without our consent, and we had to “opt out.” That should never have happened. Lesson learned.
Please give your group owners the “opt in” choice. If they don’t choose to opt in, then don’t impose the Related Groups feature upon them.
Another thought. I wonder why so much effort to recycle current members to various additional groups, instead of encouraging many more of the millions of people who use other Yahoo features to join a Y!Group for the very first time.
Lastly, consider revamping the category structure so people would find it easier to use when attemptign to find a gorup of interest. Just as an exercise, guess how many steps one must take to get to “pets.” Currently, one must think of pets under science, then biology. Well, that’s one way, Yahoo’s way, but it may not be the way many kids and their families search to find discussion groups about family pets.
Thanks for listening,
Barbara D.
Disappointed said,
March 26, 2008 @ 12:14 am
Dear Jami,
I cannot believe my eyes. I read lots of comments on the new feature on the interent, most of them were not in favour, on the contrary, and lots of list-owners and users begged to stop this feature and invest in the search facilities on the web or at least to create an opt-in. I just wonder where you have based your decision on. Anyway, it cannot be based the reactions on the internet!!! Where did you find the results on which you based your decision? Give us some statistics, please!
This is what you wrote:
“The results are in and we found that the members who received “Related Groups” in their group emails did indeed discover other relevant groups that they were interested in joining. As a matter of fact, the member uptake of this feature far surpassed our expectations (meaning that an overwhelming number of Groups members subscribed to new groups they learned about in their group emails).”
What does that mean?
Well, this means that we’ve validated our belief that this would be a great way for Groups users to discover new groups.”
BlueGum said,
March 26, 2008 @ 12:27 am
I really did liked this feature.
I own several lists and belong to many many more and as I said I really liked it.
I have no problems with my members seeing others lists MY members also find interesting.
Good Work!
Dolo said,
March 26, 2008 @ 1:01 am
Hi Jami,
Despite the fact that nearly all the Mod/ Owners seem to be strongly against this new feature, it seems to me that you have already decided to go ahead with it .
There are many groups out there that have split away from other groups because of the despotic way in which they were run and will not take kindly to seeing those people advertised on their groups.
Why is so much time and effort being spent on something that people clearly don’t want? Maybe, when its ready, you could just announced your new feature, stating that we could join if we wish. I don’t think that we should have anything ‘forced’ upon us and then have to take the time and trouble of opting out. Who will this feature benefit? Certainly not the Mods/ Owners who put in all the work to make the Yahoo! groups work.
I still think that the search engine is your main problem. If that worked properly there would be no need for any of this.
Noctaire said,
March 26, 2008 @ 3:01 am
Thanks for the update. I must admit, we were a bit surprised when these groups suddenly started popping up in messages. We do not allow advertising on our groups (ESPECIALLY the Freecycle(TM) groups) and this presented a problem.
FWIW, I truly dislike this “feature”. As a group moderator/owner, I work hard to make my group the best it can be and the last thing I wish to do is redirect traffic from my group to another. It defeats the entire purpose of running the group and is a significant DE-incentive to managing a group on Yahoo.
What’s more, some of the groups that were included in these ads were antithetical to our groups. It’s VERY upsetting to open an e-mail and find an advertisement for a group that you’ve broken away from or that represents an opposing ideology to your own.
I sincerely hope that the opt-out feature of this program means I can set my group up to NOT advertise for others. I have no wants or desires to advertise for other groups, much less for those that do not represent an ideological match to my groups.
earthstorm said,
March 26, 2008 @ 3:24 am
Hi Jami~
Thank you for your hard work and for continually keeping us updated. I also appreciate the fact that Yahoo is working towards improvements as well as listening to the groups themselves, that says a lot about your company.
I too would prefer an opt-in feature as opposed to opt-out, but I also realize that Yahoo is a business and as a business it sometimes needs to make decisions that are best for itself as well as it’s investors. And being that this is a free service, sometimes we need to be more understanding.
That being said, I am just glad that you are listening and giving us this opt-out option.
Don’t get me wrong, sometimes Yahoo is not always my favorite place to be with it’s occasional “hiccups”, but it is also a great service and I thank you for it!
I think you hit a key point when you mentioned that members found value in this new feature. We mods sometimes only consider what is convenient for ourselves and our group as we see it. I think that if there was more control as to what types of groups were to be in this feature, we may decide to allow it on some of the groups that I run. This would however be put to a vote by the members, because after all, it is really their group. But, for me at least, there would have to be a well defined control to this.
Though I am still hesitant about this feature, I do look forward to hearing more.
Thanks again for all that you and everyone at Yahoo does! Yahoo Groups has definitely come a long way in the last year, especially compared to when I first joined many many moons ago.
Donna said,
March 26, 2008 @ 3:27 am
Will you please place the group recommendations under the footers of our list mail. Placing the recommended groups between the end of a message and the footer causes readers not to see the footer, which we desire placed at the end of every message. This would be a tremendous assistance and asset.
Thank you.
Hal said,
March 26, 2008 @ 3:32 am
I have private groups which only certain organizational members can join. After you started this, I suddenly am spammed with offers to join other groups. Not a single one of the “offers” had anything to do with my groups.
It would be interesting to see where all these people came from who think this is so great. They must have groups that are not much more than BS chatting and one-liners.
I join the majority in protesting this “Feature.” If it interferes with my existing groups, I feel compelled to move to another host.
Karen said,
March 26, 2008 @ 3:58 am
I think you should do an “opt-in” rather than an “opt-out,” to start with. I suspect many group owners had no idea what was going on.
I also think that just because people responded to a novelty doesn’t mean this solves your problems nor that they want that spam in each email. The vast majority of the people in my groups didn’t want it. So let the tiny number of people who want help click on something that says “help me find groups with similar interests.” However, I’m not sure how they got into groups in the first place without searching.
Rob said,
March 26, 2008 @ 4:00 am
I still see it.
Suzy-Q said,
March 26, 2008 @ 4:01 am
Good morning. I really have a problem with this new idea of yours. I will cut and paste something for you to look at, then I will comment.
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BakeryShoppe (6 common members)
Cooking and Recipes/Ethnic and Regional Cuisine: Hello, This list is all about good ol’ American Fo…
To UNSUB just go to the following url, then edit your membership. http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/AWidowsRetreat/
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Comment: I noticed this this morning. My Widows Retreat group is for grieving women. My Bakery Shoppe is a recipe group. AND I can guarantee there are more that 6 members in this group.
People that own recipe groups, most generally, like to keep their members, it’s almost like a popularity contest for some folks. Advertising other groups isn’t being looked on favorably. That’s an opinion I have for recipe groups.
From a member standpoint, it’s a great idea, but it’s causing consternation in certain groups. Plus it adds weight to the digest members. Couldn’t you make up a “like” file instead and then just add a link to it?
Bunny Chaney said,
March 26, 2008 @ 4:32 am
I have to assume that not ALL yahoo groups/members were part of this test program. Our group has over 12,000 members and I know for a fact that not all of them were included and I have to say, I was ever so grateful for that.
Your tests are obviously not accurate or you would not be getting so many people wanting you to stop the madness that seems to be a continuing Yahoo habit.
I am a moderator for the group in the above url. In my mail, with the test portrayed, the groups listed were dating groups. Now tell me, Why would our group, made up of victims of internet scams, be interested in some Asian dating club??? Most of our members want to get out of ALL dating sites because, after all, that is where their scammers found them to start with. The victims come to us so we can help them get past the legalities involved with the scam and to heal. They need a safe haven where they are not going to be bombarded by what YOU think is right for them.
There are people, too many people, who will click on anything just to see what is on the other side. Does that make it right for them and what happens to those of us who has the job of trying to protect them from such problems? We are 10 dedicated people trying to watch over and protect over 12,000 people and here you come to cause us more problems.
I have a friend that every time she talks about you, she calls you YUKHOO. Boy does that fit.
Bunny
Alice said,
March 26, 2008 @ 4:35 am
I am in agreement with just about everyone who has posted about this new option that Yahoo Groups has announced. NO! I can see problems from the onset as even though we are promised the opt out choice, there will no doubt be errors in this option. I do not want this change, had no idea it was being considered and will move my groups if and when it happens.
Dorothy said,
March 26, 2008 @ 4:42 am
Add my voice to those who wonder where Yahoo! gathered its facts… since the OVERWHELMING majority of moderators (who are, incidentally, ALSO MEMBERS) are OPPOSED to this feature – I wonder how Yahoo! discovered that the corresponding percentage of (only) members SUPPORT it?
Jami wrote: “While not everyone may agree, it is the responsibility of the Groups team to take the entire Groups community into consideration when thinking about new product features and solutions. This includes Groups owners and moderators as well as Groups members and in this case, we saw that group members found value in this feature based on the test results.”
Well, AGAIN, Moderators are ALSO members! More importantly, without the moderators/owners taking the initiative and investing the time to create and maintain ANY group… THERE WOULD BE NO GROUPS – ON YAHOO! or anywhere else, so isn’t ignorance of our feedback a case of “biting the hand that feeds you”, Yahoo!??
My first impression upon reading Jami’s comment was “Gee, this is JUST like something our government would do”… introduce a poorly conceived, expensive and ultimately unpopular ’solution’ to a perceived problem, while completely overlooking the more obvious, common sense and least expensive way to fix it.
In this case, why not approach the perceived ‘problem’ (members unable to find complimentary groups ON THEIR OWN, even with the current Yahoo! search feature) by utilizing common sense to attract new members to the GROUPS feature to boost memberships?
How?
1) By making the SEARCH feature much simpler to use (as MANY suggest)
2) By offering an unobtrusive link to the GROUPS search feature – THROUGHOUT the entire Yahoo! portal – to attract users who are NOT currently members of Y! groups. (Isn’t that obvious?)
FWIW, show respect to the group owners and moderators responsible for bringing (and maintaining) sizable memberships to Yahoo! – as suggested and seconded many times over, make your “improvements” available via OPT-IN; remove the ‘members in common’ notice if you MUST force this upon us; and don’t penalize those who have built the Yahoo! Groups membership to its substantial (and financially lucrative for Y!) point by forcing us to unlist our groups from the directory OR migrate them to another host!
A FEW quality members is definitely preferable to MANY lurkers, flamers, spammers and time consuming transients.
Finally, THANK YOU to the Y! Groups programming team for giving us many tools we ARE happy to make use of! Yahoo! Groups is far superior to the competitor’s offerings… generally easy to use, *usually* logical and user friendly, and with a very generous selection of FREE features. I am thankful for the service!
I hope the powers that be will clearly see that the brains behind the various groups are an extremely valuable resource to cultivate… and deserve to be shown both deference and respect.
Forevr said,
March 26, 2008 @ 4:50 am
I would have weighed in on this subject before, but did not realize the “Related Groups” was a test.
I own three Yahoogroup lists. I personally did not like the fact that other lists were being advertised on my own groups and I had no control over what group was being advertised. In my little “yahoogroup” world, not all related Papillon groups are our friends. So, … why would we want non friendly groups to win over our listers? We already fight a battle on cross topics and cross posting why add to the problem. Besides, yahoo groups has a search, are people so lazy they now can’t go search for similar groups to join?
I know I am a little fish in a big pond, I request to NOT bring back this feature.
cocallag said,
March 26, 2008 @ 4:59 am
I agree with the idea that if moderators want this they should be able to opt-in, definitely. Also, if people want to find another group they can just click, e.g., the category under Group Information which is provided on the left of the homepage.
Opt-in, not out.
C said,
March 26, 2008 @ 5:02 am
Unbelievable. Over 99% of the comments on your previous post were against this ‘feature’ – yet you are going to implement it whether we like it or not. IMO Yahoo was going to do it no matter what the owners/mods thought.
It definitely should be an opt-in instead of opt-out, and you really should re-visit how you decide which groups to include. It might be better just to include some groups in the same category, instead of ‘commonality of members’. There really is a privacy issue there.
Also, in the group I saw this the most in – the links were super-long and took up way too much footer space. Do TinyURLs, limit the number of links displayed (did you really need to do 6 or more links???) – MAKE IT SMALLER. And definitely put it below the group’s footer, which contains very important info for the group member.
Better yet – FIX THE GROUP SEARCH FUNCTION AND LEAVE OUR GROUPS ALONE.
Steve Brewer Toronto said,
March 26, 2008 @ 5:03 am
WOW ! lots of participation. Thanks for the update Jami. Like some of the others, I would pprefer if the owner could make the decision for his group(s) as to whether to offer the members the option.
If not, could you atleast leave it as an option for the members to opt IN, rather than out. The one thing all members DISlike about Yahooo is any new features they didn’t specifically request.
Thanks ….I appreciate your good intentions….. and I know it is impossible to get concensus on these things so good luck.
GroupOwner said,
March 26, 2008 @ 5:33 am
One of my groups might accept affinity group links, but four would not. The members select the groups because of very narrow focus and highly focused content value. Distractions are very much discouraged and usually result in membership loss.
Elsa Haas said,
March 26, 2008 @ 5:47 am
Question: If a group is NOT listed in the Yahoogroups directory, will it be visible to someone using the feature you are describing? If so, this would pose a safety risk for certain groups – I will explain more after you answer this question. (If it has already been answered, please excuse me for missing that.)
Shelly said,
March 26, 2008 @ 5:52 am
I want to know if group owners will be opting out of having the spam sent to our group OR are we opting out of having our group sent to others?
Bruce Wilson said,
March 26, 2008 @ 5:53 am
Jami wrote
“This includes Groups owners and moderators as well as Groups members and in this case, we saw that group members found value in this feature based on the test results.”
I have yet to hear from any group member that they liked this feature. Any replies I had were 100% against having more crap to sift through. I wonder who she was hearing from.
Also if for some unknown and unfathomable reason this idea is implemented it must definitely be something to opt into instead of having to opt out. I think all of the comment received should make this obvious.
And put all the crap no one wants at the bottom of the message if you have to implement this so the important stuff about contacting the Group is readily available.
Finally, do something useful FIX the Search Engine.
Kim said,
March 26, 2008 @ 6:39 am
Another “terrific” idea for feline groups to drive wedges between members and harvest yahoo groups which are more interested in other topics.
:(
Truly, truly sad and biased
Mara said,
March 26, 2008 @ 6:58 am
I consider myself a moderator, not an owner, of my Yahoo group. So I would ask my group members if they are interested in this feature or not and act accordingly. Since we are an alumni group, I don’t know what other groups would be considered “related.”
I appreciate the effort to improve the YahooGroups experiene and also am delighted to have the opportunity to listen to other moderators’ views and experiences.
Mara
Mary said,
March 26, 2008 @ 7:20 am
How do you decide what is a related group? I believe that many of the recent advertising types of spam that we were getting on some groups, were a result of this feature you have been testing.
This “spam” got so bad that we had to put all new members on moderated status. On one group we rarely had the experience with the spammer type of ADs, but with the start of this “related groups” feature in emails that “rarely” soon became “often”.
So you have a group that is for knitting and because they use a “needle” suddenly your group is being sent to all the cross stitch group emails, or to all the embroidery groups. Why not they both use “needles”, despite the fact that those “needles” are totally unrelated in shape, size, and use. A needle for a knitting machine is nothing like a needle for embroidery, cross stitch or even regular knitting and all are un-related to each other.
So who is making the decisions on which groups are related and therefore should be promoted to the members of others? Do you knit, loom knit, machine knit, embroidery, cross stitch, and can your person who does the picking (or is it a computer bot), tell how these are related or not? Just because there is something similar in the postings, such as the word “needle”, or “knitting” does not make them “related groups”.
I never clicked on any of the groups being promoted in email messages because none of them were related to the groups the messages were coming from. Just because you think they are doesn’t make it so. It was more like being spammed with each email I opened.
I really agree that a simple link at the bottom of emails to a decent search engine would work better then the mess I saw coming through my emails.
RS said,
March 26, 2008 @ 7:23 am
Don’t forget the user, by the way. (Rule number one, Evil Leonard!)
What if I join what appears to be a great Group, but the mod is lazy, or even more odd, actually intentionally likes the feature, and I’m contending with it every day in my e-mail from the group, but can’t stand it? I’d be reconsidering my use of the group. The user also needs an option of some sort to keep the junk out of his or her e-mails, as well as the group mod. Not every cotton-pickin’ member wants to see the message intended only for a certain type of member. Another huge reason for IN rather than OUT. No disruption of existing good things.
RS said,
March 26, 2008 @ 7:30 am
There’s one other importnat thing that you ar eforgetting by making this an opt out default. Your opt out features reset themselves periodically. I have had to reset my membership to Traditional format on my groups every few months. I never join a group using this format yet, lo and behold, suddenly one day I am on Fully Featured again. As a mod, will I be required to run back and set this to ‘off’ every few months too?
Dewitt Gimblet said,
March 26, 2008 @ 7:55 am
“As a matter of fact, the member uptake of this feature far surpassed our expectations (meaning that an overwhelming number of Groups members subscribed to new groups they learned about in their group emails).”
I presume that you don’t mean that an overwhelming percentage (i.e., well over half) of Group members subscribed to groups they learned about through this “feature”, but that the number of new subscriptions was in excess of your expectations. That doesn’t mean that an overwhelming percentage, or even a majority, or even a significant fraction, of group members like the “feature”.
While it is true that group owners / moderators represent a subset of group members, we are still group members. I find it impossible to believe that a “feature” almost universally disdained by the group owners and moderators that have commented on it is is widely applauded by the majority of other group members. Give us a little credit for being able to put aside our biases and view things from a typical group member’s perspective. While a small percentage of group members might use and like the “feature” as implemented, a far higher percentage would hate it.
I hope the management at Yahoo! Groups realizes how big of a fiasco this has been. If the test had been announced in advanced and an opt-out feature available when the test started, much of this rancor could likely have been eliminated. And this isn’t the first time a new, “hated by many” feature has been put in place without prior notification and an opt-out feature. Can Yahoo! Groups at least admit they handled this situation badly and promise you’ll try to do better in the future?
deg
Andy I said,
March 26, 2008 @ 8:12 am
I was surprised to see this in my mail inbox this morning, as I had completely missed the “original post on this topic”. Why? Because the original post did not mention the words “Related Groups”. Please use consistent terms!
I should mention that this feature does NOT show the Related Groups in the right hand column of Group emails like the description says. Not a big deal, but, they appear down at the bottom. That’s where they are anytime I see them in my emails; never on the right. The web interface may show them on the right column, but we’re not talking about a group’s web interface.
I was puzzled by their appearance in recent weeks, somewhat annoyed because they appeared in only a small number of Group emails so it looked like this was something those particular individuals had added to their emails.
After a while it became obvious that this must be some sort of new Yahoogroups feature. The next question was, why those particular emails, and not all of them? It wasn’t group-related, it seemed to be just random.
I mostly ignored them because I either belonged to the suggested groups already, or knew about them.
But what puzzled me was the low number of “common members”. Were those groups really that small? I went to some of them and checked the membership numbers and they were much higher. So I wondered, what makes someone a “common member”? Did it mean non-bouncing, non-moderators? Members who are currently active (have posted in recent months)? The meaning was totally unclear … until it finally dawned on me that, of course, it meant members in common to both groups.
Maybe it’s just dumb me, but it took me several days to realize that!
(Hint: Perhaps you should word it that way!)
I do have some concern about privacy issues. What if a group is listed that the owner/moderators of that group do not wish to publicize in that way? What if the members of a group see it as an invasion of their privacy? (Even though their names/emails are not shown.) Some groups hide the member listing, and could this be a way of getting around that, by finding a related group with a high percentage of common membership, that doesn’t block the member listing?
What if related groups are at odds with one another? It would not exactly be a pleasant thing to see in your Inbox that someone you know has effectively recommended a rival group.
And, I wonder, do we really need to add another 2KB to EACH AND EVERY group email message that Yahoo sends out? While that may be small change compared to actual spam, it adds up too and it’s not necessarily desirable to add another megabyte per day to someone’s incoming e-mails either.
Maybe, if this feature is so desirable and it proves workable, there is a better place to put it than in each email. Perhaps a link on the group’s homepage where you could learn about related groups (that have approved to advertise themselves in this manner).
Otherwise, I’d have to say, kill this feature before it multiplies.
Andy
Patricia Smith said,
March 26, 2008 @ 8:25 am
I also think that it would be great to have it set up so the group owners can opt out if they desire. I also think it would be a good idea for anyone involved in yahoo groups to have the option of opting out. I am concerned that some people may consider it an invasion of their privacy if a list of all their groups is available for others to see. I personally would opt out as I do not believe the full scope of my groups is everyones business. If it was done where no members names were included I might reconsider it.
Pat S.
tj saunders said,
March 26, 2008 @ 8:39 am
Google have been doing this for quite some time, the group owner can opt out if they choose to. Most Google owners find it useful, and it seems to increase everyones membership. When are you guys going to do it? I’m sure it would all groups a boost…
tjs
Tom Rindfleisch said,
March 26, 2008 @ 9:32 am
Dear Jami, thanks for your efforts and this forum on group features. I just want to cast a strong vote for an OPT-IN control by group owners for enabling this “related groups” feature.
Regards, Tom R.
Deidre said,
March 26, 2008 @ 11:09 am
As a list owner & moderator, I would prefer that this be opt-in, not opt-out. More polite that way.
Also, if you guys are dead set on these Group Recommendations, please do it by recommending groups with the same interest, not by what lists members share in common.
Please remember that most people on YGs still want these to be EMAIL LIST-SERVES, not a social networking platform. It’s great to socially networking with people on a list, as that’s why many people join email lists (for discussion *and* socializing), but we don’t want to socialize with people that we don’t know on other lists that we aren’t a member of! If we did, we would join those lists already!
Your best bet is to improve the Yahoogroups SEARCH function, so that people could find the lists that they are interested in more readily. As for the cross-group social networking thing, if people on Yahoogroups email lists wanted that, they would be on LiveJournal or some other similar social networking/blogging site already.
Please keep Yahoogroups *unique* as a place where people can find email lists! There isn’t anything else like it on the Interwebs–MSN groups and Google Groups just can’t compete. Topica, Smartgroups, and the rest have fallen by the wayside, because Yahoogroups is so much better. Again, please remember that Yahoogroups were originally once OneList (the former MakeList) and Egroups, and those of us who have been around a long time liked their set-ups, layouts, list commands, and displays. Frankly, the second-best thing that you guys could do is to go back to the OneList format.
Marie_in_Florida said,
March 26, 2008 @ 11:19 am
I see where we are going to be allowed to opt out – BUT – I see no comment on whether we can opt out and STUILL REMAIN IN THE DIRECTORY. I think you had better address this issue as well. If you plan to remove our group from the directory if we opt out, then that is highly unethical and unfair. At first that was the idea…………Sooo What’s the idea now? Do we stay in the directory if we opt out or does that remove our name.
By the way I am going to poll my group and see how many of them actually found another group they liked that was equal to ours, I do know they did not like the links and while the group is small around 180 that tells me something – I know we have had two new members (not unusual for our group in that time span) and both of them were via e-mail, neither mentioned finding our site on another’s post.
I of coure will do what my owner wants after contacting him but I am still
Marie_in_Florida said,
March 26, 2008 @ 11:20 am
I see where we are going to be allowed to opt out – BUT – I see no comment on whether we can opt out and STUILL REMAIN IN THE DIRECTORY. I think you had better address this issue as well. If you plan to remove our group from the directory if we opt out, then that is highly unethical and unfair. At first that was the idea…………Sooo What’s the idea now? Do we stay in the directory if we opt out or does that remove our name.
By the way I am going to poll my group and see how many of them actually found another group they liked that was equal to ours, I do know they did not like the links and while the group is small around 180 that tells me something – I know we have had two new members (not unusual for our group in that time span) and both of them were via e-mail, neither mentioned finding our site on another’s post.
I of coure will do what my owner wants after contacting him but I am still STRONGLY OPPOSED TO THIS IDEA.
May I again suggest FIX THE DARN SEARCH ENGINE
Marie_in_Florida said,
March 26, 2008 @ 11:31 am
LOL – I knew that “testing” would mean IMPLEMENTATION no matter what we owners and monitors wanted or said…………it always does. When I see people with 40 groups and more threatening to head to another site such as Google then I think Yahoo may be in trouble with their groups. I wish I could switch ours but the ones mentioned can’t take pictures all they can take is test as I read the information.
I am extremely glad you are going to allow us to opt out of this. HOWEVER, you did not address the fact that when we first heard of this the idea, opt out would also be removed our name from the Directory. You have not addressed this in your long dissertation above. .
Can we stay in the Directory and still opt out of the links being on our posts – you need to address this before you decide to tell us we can do it. If we are still going to loose the directory listing of we do the opt out, then this is akin to blackmail on Yahoo’s part.
I am going to poll my group and see if any of them found a new group, I doubt they did since the groups were no where near ours, another reason I don’t want those links. We have under age people and I saw links that I do not want them going too. I do know my people were less then happy with the extra junk on the bottom of the posts and yep I figured a way to put it on the bottom of 90% of them. I had thate that could switch to HTML isterad of Plain Text, that got rid of the side bar and they could actually read and see what was sent.
I want to be sure that we stay in the directory and yet are able to opt out of this link business, please address. Better yet go fix the real problem which is the Search Engine operations.
Marie_in_Florida said,
March 26, 2008 @ 11:41 am
Anyone wants to link up with me on ideas on this via private e-mail here’s my address hlocklin@cfl.rr.com
Patty said,
March 26, 2008 @ 1:01 pm
Jami, thank you so much for listening and finally informing us of something. RS is right about this: “Your opt out features reset themselves periodically. I have had to reset my membership to Traditional format on my groups every few months.” In fact I had to set myself to traditional format in every single group the minute you did this. I think we need more communication and I’m so glad you’re reading. Perhaps you can explain this. And I bet most of us feel it’s got to be opt-in, not opt out. Maybe you can run a vote.
Ben Young said,
March 26, 2008 @ 1:44 pm
I am happy to hear that there will be an opt out feature coming soon as the feedback from the members of my clubs are not good about having other clubs mentioned in their mail. They feel it is an invasion of their privacy…
Joan said,
March 26, 2008 @ 1:57 pm
I think while this may have assisted some, IMO if I am adamant about researching a topic or entering a group, I will have done the “homeworkZ” myself.
since it sounds as though you at Yahoo intend to relaunch this anyway, Why ask for input at all?
GRRRRRR!!
jonathon said,
March 26, 2008 @ 2:27 pm
Maria wrote:
> When I see people with 40 groups and more threatening to head to another site such as Google then I think Yahoo may be in trouble with their groups. I wish I could switch ours but the ones mentioned can’t take pictures all they can take is test as I read the information.
I’ve been toying with switching locations for some lists I won for a couple of months. The two major reasons I haven’t are: a) I don’t like the mailing list management software; b) the US$600 per list fee; What I do like about it, is that I have _total_ control of everything but the mailing list manager.(If I could talk the vendor into allowing MailMan, I’d probably move everything, and worry about the finances later.) It would be trivial to migrate all of the data (files, databases, calendar, messages, photo galleries) on my lists at YG to that site.
xan
jonathon
Walter said,
March 26, 2008 @ 2:42 pm
Another ‘feature’ being implemented instead of fixing what’s still broke.
FIX THE DIRECTORY SEARCH.
That will drive more ad views, not by adding more c… to the emails.
That just pi…’s people off. Remember the ads?
If you’re going to have this forum to ‘listen’ to the owner/moderators, then LISTEN.
And stop shoving stuff down our throats.
Like the ‘Fully Featured’ format.
It’s awful.
I am ‘Traditional’ on all 130 groups I belong to.
And Rich Text. Terrible idea.
You have the attention of a huge number of people that have put Billions of hours into these Groups. Maybe having conversations with them BEFORE fiascos like this would make a better product that will drive revenues up instead of causing hate and discontent.
I’ve been around since eGroups. Then OneList. Now YahooGroups.
Please STOP adding ‘features’ [bugs] and make your service more reliable and easier to use.
And, please, Please, PLEASE warn us when your going to do a major fix, so we can be alert for the inevitable unintended consequences!
Kh said,
March 26, 2008 @ 4:44 pm
Jami,
Although I appreciate the fact that you finally answered us, you didn’t answer our concerns.
First:
This should be an opt in, not opt out “feature”. We shouldn’t have to opt out of this like with grouply.
Second:
You say large numbers of new members joined other groups. How many of these members knew what this was or what was going on and thought possibly the group owners had put those recommendations there in the emails for them. How many stayed on, spammed, posted, or left? Was it a true trial under these circumstances?
Third:
I once belonged to a bunch of sister groups in which the owner was mostly an absentee owner. Especially when something would happen she didn’t want to have to answer to. She’d disappear sometimes for a year or more. Then she’d pop back up and act like nothing ever happened. In the mean time the groups went dead because the mods didn’t have the authority to do anything. People just stopped posting on her groups. These groups are still around, still dead and guess what. Those that left and started their own groups as a result of her incompetence in running groups, had the previous dead groups shoved down their throats during this so called “feature” test.
Fourth:
If groups are heading towards a myspace/facebook/grouply type thing, PLEASE tell us now because I will look for somewhere else to go. I have 0 interest in social networking. That is something more geared towards high school and college aged people.
YG continues to ignore and not answer any of the concerns that were posted across two different blogs and some of the yahoo management groups.
RS posted some truly great ideas to make yahoo groups a better place and experience. You should hire him. You really need to pay attention to his advice because he has a much more realistic idea of what yahoo groups participants want than yahoo itself it looks like.
ReduceReuseRecycle said,
March 26, 2008 @ 5:01 pm
Ah, a small ray of light illuminating the murkiness of the rationale for this so-called “test”. Go to GoogleNews to read the articles referenced under the heading “Yahoo, Google, MySpace form nonprofit OpenSocial Foundation”. The Business Week article says, “… Despite already being the most popular site on the Web, Yahoo has a lot to gain by joining. The company suffers from a lack of innovation. Several of its social properties, such as Yahoo 360, have failed to take off. …” Now we know! Even when Yahoo tries to innovate, it fails– at least in our estimation.
Ellen R said,
March 26, 2008 @ 7:19 pm
Can’t help wondering if Yahoo’s latest test has anything to do with the following news release.
Also, can’t help wondering if Yahoo and Google are joining forces to combat this Grouply thing, or if Grouply is the way for handling the combining of the two?
Time will tell.
http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_Yahoo_Fi…
Yahoo! Finally Says Yes To Google’s OpenSocial Platform
“Yahoo agreed to join rival Google’s OpenSocial platform, which aims at building an infrastructure for the social web, as Google described it. Through the OpenSocial, platform, developers will be able to create applications for social-networking sites. The platform was launched last November, and MySpace is already a member.”
ReduceReuseRecycle said,
March 26, 2008 @ 10:33 pm
There’s a post on the EmailList-Managers Y!G referring to http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001063.html entitled “I Repeat: Do Not Listen to Your Users”. Jami and Leonard would be well advised to read that blog entry.
Shalf said,
March 27, 2008 @ 12:58 am
Glad you noticed, ReduceReuseRecycle.
I think it is also the outraged moderators here that need to get the message.
Having reasonable expectations for Yahoo’s decisions could considerably reduce the angst. Such as Opt-in. Weeks ago I correctly guessed it to be a non-starter for Grouply, and was roundly criticized for that attitude. The business imperatives aren’t quite as clear-cut for Yahoo wrt the related groups feature, but I wouldn’t expect Opt-in here either. It makes no sense to implement a feature like this and then limit its usage to the approximately 0% of groups that would ever notice the option existed.
(running, ducking, and hiding from the brickbats heading this way…)
Shalf said,
March 27, 2008 @ 1:11 am
Exactly right, ReduceReuseRecycle,
http://www.ygroupsblog.com/blog/2008/03/25/related-groups-feature-test-results/#comment-2635
Flickr (a Yahoo company) has fostered a lot of nifty enhancements by having an API that can be used under either non-commercial or commercial terms of agreement. Yahoo could do very well with something similar to enable third-party applications that can interact well with Groups.
In particular I’d love to see PBwiki enabled with an API so that I can have them host a Wiki that can be specifically for members of my Yahoo Group. Without an API that can’t be done, instead I have to manage a separate membership list within PBwiki or else leave the wiki open to the public.
Eliminating Grouply’s need for their subscriber’s Yahoo passwords would be another benefit. That way, with access mediated by an API, Yahoo would be in control of what information Grouply can access.
bonnie said,
March 27, 2008 @ 1:30 am
I have been with a club for 4 years now and the group I am in is totally different from other groups. I feel that the choice should be amoung the clubs or groups to join this issue. I feel its a bad idea my choice is my own and I wish to be able to have the club Im in sit a side and I only want my clubs spam. Instead of messing up adding more confussion please go and reconsider your capture codes that are not working to keep the spamers out but to keep our memeber with site problems out.
RS said,
March 27, 2008 @ 3:23 am
Thanks for reposting the Coding Horror link. I think it is fair at this point to say they have read that article, and follow that methodology. In this case, we were essentially outvoted by the numbers. I just hope that they watched all the relevant numbers and not just one set.
Big Mark said,
March 27, 2008 @ 4:31 am
I have several members including myself that are unable to add photo to our profile. Thereis a message that reads;”The Edit Picture feature is temporarily unavailable. Please check again later”. It has been there for sometime now . Any idea when this will be fixxed ?
Thanks for your help .
Judy said,
March 27, 2008 @ 4:57 am
Whilre reading through these comments, I would have to agree that the new feature would not be good at all. While in my groups we do not allow advertising of any sort, this opt out thing is a bad idea. I would think that my members would not like other related groups added to their group e-mails. I know I would not. I also like what Aurora Mathews said
miss josh said,
March 27, 2008 @ 11:25 am
to be honest, i didn’t really understand any what you wrote in the email. but i do know that i joined this GROUP becuz it was recommeded on another GROUP. i didn’t even know this page existed, i clicked to it from the GROUP. if you have a homepage, why can you just list links for people who would like it? i guess the older i get (62) the simpler i like things! ha!
luv, miss josh
p.s. i capitalized GROUP becuz i get lost in the other so-called groups. i like the groups that come in the email box.
Patty said,
March 27, 2008 @ 4:05 pm
There would be no groups without group owners, of course. And group owners want to control things in their groups. It’s not a hard concept to understand, Jami. Way back in the dark ages, maybe in 2005, we were notified individually, as group owners, of changes. Remember the petition against the changes? Well, I do. Yep, way back then. But between then and now, somethings have happened. Let’s go back to sending the individual emails to each group owner when a change is suggested, or hey, let’s try asking us what we feel. Remember surveys? I understand the concept of not really listening to us, what do we know? But not listening to us can be a slight problem for you–as in we will find alternative systems for our groups. So give us a chance, please. And how hard is it to let us know each day you’ve read what we’ve said? Just keep in mind–you can’t run all our groups. You need to accommodate to us owners. Opt in, not out. Ask us, don’t tell us.
Laci said,
March 27, 2008 @ 6:47 pm
Touché’ Patty and others. It is very obvious how Group owners feel. Y’ can dress up the and twist the fact that Related Groups is an upcoming idea all they want. The owners/moderators see it in another light. Dim light. I have read some very good suggestions in the owner’s blogs. I know an advisory board supposedly is being set up for Y’ Groups by Fleischman Field Research to help with better service to the Groups. We can only hope the board takes effect ASAP and that this, said board will listen to the owners/moderators that have not only invested the interest but also heart, time and energy. They did it to achieve great group/groups to be set apart from others where in the same category or not.
Peggy Maloney said,
March 28, 2008 @ 2:09 pm
I was never given any say into whether I would or would not be interested. The owner or moderators of the 9 groups i’m in never took a vote.
I for one like the idea. I get tired of the same groups month after month and would like a change once in a while or even add to what I already have.
It would be nice if we could get a list of groups. I found it is difficult going into Yahoogroups and looking for one.
ReduceReuseRecycle said,
March 28, 2008 @ 2:51 pm
Peggy,
Some moderators posted here that they DID ask for input from their group members, and members said they weren’t interested. Mostly members griped to mods, saying they were extremely irritated at all the extra space used by the “related groups” listings. That could be a serious problem for people on dial-up, you know.
If you want to easily find other groups, start with the home page of a group you already belong to. Look on the left side of the page, and you’ll see the words “Group Information”. Under that is the word “Category”, and there’s a clickable link to the right of that word. Click on it and you’ll get more groups from that category. Above the list of groups will be other sub-categories you can look in.
That is such an easy process, and it doesn’t involve the asinine and irritating listing of groups that other members of your group also belong to! Do you really want to know that 17 members of your 1500-member group also belong to another group about collecting pornographic magazines if you aren’t interested in collecting pornographic magazines? No? Didn’t think so!
Jeanne said,
March 28, 2008 @ 11:14 pm
The option to ‘opt in’ is the most optimum concept.
The “related groups” that were appended to my groups posts were sometimes actually detrimental, opposite or hated. The problem is, only the group owner or members know what is actually a related group. At present, I would never opt-in to this system and will opt-out the moment that option is available. For my groups, this related groups feature is absolutely AWFUL.
K said,
March 29, 2008 @ 4:14 am
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, that system to find related groups works good for some groups but not for others. Sometimes a group owner doesn’t know how to list their groups. I just checked on one that is actually a hobby group but it’s listed as “other” which means there are 18844 groups to wade through and likely none are related to that one. I don’t know if there is an easy fix for that. I just find it a lot easier to use the search engine that Yahoo provides to find groups. In either case, it’s up to the owner to list a group correctly and to provide key words in the group description that provides a listing through the search engine. Of course, it’s also possible some groups don’t want to be found easily.
Barb said,
March 30, 2008 @ 3:17 am
Our group opted out of this feature. But one thing that really irritated one of my groups was that they had to go way down the page to find the regular features like ‘visit your group – new photos’ section.
Might I suggest that if you do insist on adding this feature, you add it to the bottom of the links on the right hand side instead of on the top.
Barb.. who still does not like this feature.
Paul said,
March 30, 2008 @ 5:53 am
As no one here actually pays anything to Yahoo for the services provided, I don’t see that anyone is in a position to complain!
If we actually paid to use the service provided by Yahoo then perhaps we would be entitled to winge and carp, but we don’t pay.
Therefor I think Yahoo can do as they wish, and really don’t even have to consult the users.
There are plenty of other online forum providers who also don’t charge anything for the use of the facilities, use one of them instead of complaining about Yahoo.
You could even revert back to the good ol’ newsgroups, still very much alive & kicking.. and keep a load of idiots out at the samn time because they have no idea how to use bewsgroups.
Paul.. using NNTP since the early 90’s
RS said,
March 30, 2008 @ 8:13 am
We can complain all we like, Yahoo asked for our opinion. They opened the door. But yes, you are correct, many other fish in the sea.
Patty said,
March 30, 2008 @ 1:16 pm
Yes, Yahoo was willing to hear what we thought, as they should be. There still won’t be any Yahoo Groups without Yahoo Group Owners! So I think it’s important for us to say what we feel and for them to listen to us. I think there have been a number of important issues brought up and I don’t think everything is a complaint. We’re here trying to help, before we have to go look for those other fish.
www.smasra.com said,
March 30, 2008 @ 2:13 pm
great change , i looked at the original post on this topic, looks good
thanks
http://www.smasra.com
Laci said,
March 30, 2008 @ 6:59 pm
Some indeed do pay and use Yahoo as their ISP browser through AT&T and/or on their own. Some also pay to belong to All Stars or whatever they are calling it this month. And with paying having their nicks banned for no reason till 2021. (Many of our members) One owner had his nick banned from running a prayer during a memorial for a deceased member. (2021) So some (many) do pay .I feel they indeed do have the right to complain. They are paying for a limited service no matter how it is chalked up in a group or out.
Karen said,
March 31, 2008 @ 3:55 pm
Hey gang, here’s what Yahoo is sending out, supposedly in the name of mods, when someone joins a group and I figured you should know the latest, and no, the group doesn’t share calendars nor did the mods write this, and no, gosh, mods were not notified of this new lovely. I blanked out the name of the group with XXX:
Welcome to the XXX group at Yahoo! Groups.
You’re set to connect with your group, so drop by soon.
Be sure to check out all the simple (and free) ways to
communicate, share, and discover:
* You choose when and how to stay in touch
* Swap photos, files, polls, calendars, links, and more with members
* Quickly scan new postings and browse detailed message archives
* Plus enjoy many more ways to show and tell – 24/7
So get started. Visit XXX now.
Regards,
Moderator
XXX
gh said,
March 31, 2008 @ 4:03 pm
Karen,
I saw that on one of my groups as well, all with a green background. It was awful.
Since the mods didn’t send that why is Yahoo sending it like we did?
gh said,
March 31, 2008 @ 4:06 pm
Paul,
I don’t consider it complaining. However if we want Facebook/myspace or grouply we’ll go to them. The reason I’m on yahoo groups is because I have no interest in social networking. If they want to do that why not do as a separate service and not mess with groups. Up to now they’ve been the best. If they change over to social networking they’ll lose a lot of people. I don’t think that’s what they want. Why just try to copy what others are doing. They have a unique product right now if they leave it alone.
Mims said,
March 31, 2008 @ 4:14 pm
Karen and GH, I don’t understand why Yahoo signs the names of mods who had nothing to do with writing that. Doesn’t seem very fair, does it? Is this the forthcoming new YG team willing to talk to us before doing something?
Chrissy said,
March 31, 2008 @ 6:51 pm
Paul,yes groups are free but we built the group and chose what it is about.
We have every right to complain.
“You choose when and how to stay in touch,* You choose when and how to stay in touch,
Quickly scan new postings and browse detailed message archives,and
Plus enjoy many more ways to show and tell – 24/7″
Oh man that has me worried.
Karen said,
April 1, 2008 @ 3:11 am
I’m sorry, I get it now. It’s an new updated HTML or whatever you call it automatic letter that confirms someone has joined the group, that the mods had never seen. I just thought from the wording that it sounded like there were changes made or being made to groups.
Terri said,
April 3, 2008 @ 12:01 pm
I want to thank you Jami for the feedback on the “related links” and for the action that will be taken to make it a choice for group owners. I am never against progress but I do like to have “options” for what makes my particular groups run well.
Thank you for not letting our voices get lost and taking into consideration what we needed.
I would like to ask if there is an option to not have Yahoo send out Automated greeting posts to new members? I have “posts/files” that go out automatically to my members that are clear on the rules and how the group runs. This post is rather generic and really doesnt apply and will become “junk mail” to my new members. My automated posts/files are specific to my members and group.
Can this be shut down?
Brooke said,
April 4, 2008 @ 1:35 pm
check out my new blog:
http://brookelk33.bravejournal.com/index.php
thank you!! =]]
JD said,
April 19, 2008 @ 5:17 am
Can’t take the spam any longer. I started a group for a common calendar to share and within hours started to receive spam. I won’t bother trying to use the group as intend because its classless and basically unworkable. What can be done. I’ve tried all the settings.
All and all, yahoo has been unable to manage spam for it users and the pay for protection model doesn’t work and never will. One very big reason Yahoo is under fire to be sold. They have missed one of the biggest white elephants in the middle of the room in internet history with its customers moving over to google. MS is no better at spam but remember its about eyeballs and a finite amount of time each day.
Steve said,
May 14, 2008 @ 10:51 pm
I first have to say that I appreciate the opportunity to post comments in this forum. It’s also good to see Jami’s posts on the matter.
That said, this is ridiculous. Yahoo, while providing a feature that some people find desirable, has released this feature while at the same time showing absolutely no consideration for those of us who find it intrusive, and not to put too fine a point on it, Spam. As the old saying goes, this is no way to run an airline.
A professional way to do this would have been to release this feature as an opt in, rather than an opt out, or to release the feature after having had the foresight to, oh…I dunno…actually release it with the mechanism for opting out already in place. As it is, I’ve posted on the message board, scrolled through this blog, and I still see no way to get the Spam that Yahoo itself is currently attaching to the postings in my group. Given that fact, I’d appreciate hearing from Jami or someone else with Yahoo when we might have such a mechanism. If none is to be forthcoming for a while, then I’d suggest that Yahoo disable the Related Groups “feature” until that mechanism is in place. I refuse to believe that this can be that difficult a thing.
farmer said,
July 23, 2008 @ 5:59 pm
Question
I noticed when deleting posts from yahoo groups that while they are deleting from the message board itself and no longer show up by post number in the listing of messages, that when using ADVANCED SEARCH to search by user name or email address, the deleted posts are still displayed in the Advanced search as if they were not deleted.
Why is this? and how can you get posts you delete by their post number on the message board to also delete from the Advanced search listing. Thank you
Hosea said,
August 2, 2008 @ 8:16 am
As owner/moderator of a Yahoo group, I wish to up-date a person’s email address. I can go to my account, see members on the left side, click on that and view all the members and their email addresses, but see no place for editing. It is difficult to believe that an email address for a member could not be simply changed by the moderator. Please give me instructions.
Hosea