What’s in store for Yahoo! Groups
Hi everyone; it has been some time since we’ve announced what we have planned for the Yahoo! Groups community, so I thought I’d outline our plans for the coming year.
Over the past few months, the Groups Team has been hard at work strengthening and improving our existing systems, while simultaneously innovating and developing new features and options.
What’s new now…
So far, we have released the following to the site:
An entirely new search and browse system. This new system fixes a number of known issues, makes search updates much faster, and improves the sort order when you browse for groups (many enhancements related to this release were highlighted in the recent post called Yahoo! Groups: How long does it really take ).
- A new “Groups Lab” initiative which consists of a team of folks who work to create features within Groups that can be customized by moderators to fit the specific needs of their group. The People Map is an example of a feature that was developed by this team.
- A new technology platform for the site (not quite fully released). We are changing every page of the site but doing so in a way that won’t disrupt your existing experience. This new platform will allow us to release features and fix bugs much faster than ever before.
What’s to come…
But the exciting news is what is to come in the future. Here is a short list of the features we plan to unveil to you in the coming year:
- New ways for people to share information with each other within your groups: Product Reviews, Services Directory, Wanted Boards, Address Book, Event Planner, and many more.
- Message Boards 2.0: Improving the Message experience within groups in many different ways (e.g. giving members the opportunity to choose which discussions they want to subscribe to, making it easier for moderators to highlight the best content, etc.).
- Ability to charge an optional subscription fee for membership to your groups (we have no plans to get in the middle of the transaction, just make it easy for you to make sure members are paying).
- Photo Album 2.0: An entirely new photo system with massive group storage and stunningly large photos.
- The return of archived attachments: We will process attachments and store them on your group, if you choose this option.
- For our non-English speakers, the ability to select the language you want to view the site in and better handling of all types of character sets.
We’ll also work to address some of the top suggestions from the Groups Suggestion Board , such as allowing members to adopt abandoned groups, increase the number of characters in group descriptions, enabling moderators to send and reject messages from the owner address, and many more. (Look for a blog post in the near future with more details).
The entire team is excited to finally deliver on several of the features we’ve heard many of you ask for. Thanks for being such loyal members of the Yahoo! Groups community!
Best,
Leonard
Director, Yahoo! Groups
Shal said,
July 14, 2008 @ 4:08 pm
Thanks Leonard!
BTW, that would be Photo Album 3.0 — Photo 2.0 was released in early 2006.
Kathleen said,
July 14, 2008 @ 4:39 pm
and that would be exCiting news rather than exiting….would love to see a more customized calendar, options for reminders, and some widgets we can add to the group sites.
Ed Gould said,
July 14, 2008 @ 4:48 pm
I have had 3 complaints already from members in my 20++ groups about the new pages. The complaints are uniform and straight forward.
The members want the old format back and are considering leaving YAHOO unless that happens.
I must agree with them. The new format is terrible (IMO) and it renders groups almost useless. Can we go back to the “old” format please?
Ed (who is also dissatisfied)
matti said,
July 14, 2008 @ 4:52 pm
Hi,
I JUST want something basic – LIKE yahoo groups successfully getting post to people!
Simple.
Unfortunately it is not simple, as EVEN people with yahoo email who are signed up to my group get the posts marked as SPAM! Even I (moderator) get replies to posts marked as SPAM!
OUCH, this hurts – and is forcing me to think about moving to another platform so that the posts get sent out appropriately.
If the yahoo group team can get together with the yahoo email team and clear this up, that would be very helpful.
Likewise, I would like the yahoo group team to work with other providers so that group members with AOL accounts can get the posts they have subscribed to also.
thanks
matti
ps – I moderate the posts, and try to keep the average volume to one a day.
Rosie said,
July 14, 2008 @ 5:03 pm
I’d rather see something useful implemented, such as larger message size – 1 MB is nothing these days. Why not work on improving what is there before adding new (and useless ie. people map) features?
Allan said,
July 14, 2008 @ 5:07 pm
Hi, I to get complaints about email marked spam when it is not or visaversa, another thing we would like to see is that the posting format in rich text mode include spell check this would eleminate much work, well that is all I am concerned with as for charging fees I am against that.
Signed
Allan=kb5doh Owner of five groups & moderator of one.
Melissa Boling said,
July 14, 2008 @ 5:14 pm
I have seen NO improvements, but new photos have stopped showing up on the new photos page, and I can no longer approve new members by email. Yesterday, I tried to approve two new members on the website and nothing happened. I didn’t notice until hours later, so they had to wait longer than they should have to be approved. (The second time I tried, it worked.) Why can’t things work the first time? Why can’t you work on just keeping things working instead of adding new useless stuff that no one knows about or cares about?
Melissa Boling
David Tucker said,
July 14, 2008 @ 5:17 pm
I would also like to see a larger size allowed in the posts sent to groups, like 3MB or so and also try to get a better system in place so you can communicate more readily with other service providers (AOL, Comcast, Etc.) to get issues sorted out so these other user can get the things they are asking for from the groups.
Robert said,
July 14, 2008 @ 5:17 pm
‘ … Photo Album 2.0: An entirely new photo system with massive group storage and stunningly large photos. … ‘
Sounds good. I can’t wait to see this happen. Sounds like some really exiting changes coming in the future.
One little thing though… The last time Yahoo changed the photos section, my group lost all of it’s photos. Most of the photos I couldn’t recover because a.) Yahoo Groups ignored my pleas for help in recovering the lost photos, and b.) There really isn’t any easy way for owners/moderators to easily download all photos as a backup on a regular basis.
I would like to see an easy way for moderators/owner to be able to create backups as a future new feature. That way if Yahoo accidently loses messages, photos, databases, polls, etc…, the list owner has a chance to restore such vital club content back to his or her group without having to attempt to contact Yahoo Groups admin for help.
Finally, let me say that I’m NOT attempting to slam Yahoo Groups admin here. I’m a big fan Yahoo Groups admin and everything they have done since I’ve been a member and a list owner for over 10 years now. I’m just a bit disapponted over this one unfortunate incident where years worth of group photo got deleted. I hope that this time when the change over occurs myself and others don’t lose crucial group info and photos that the group has collected from its members thoughout the years.
Administrator said,
July 14, 2008 @ 5:22 pm
@Shal – Thanks Shal, that is correct. Hopefully you’ll find this change to be a much more visible improvement. – Leonard
Administrator said,
July 14, 2008 @ 5:23 pm
@Kathleen – Thanks Kathleen, good catch. Corrected. – Leonard
Administrator said,
July 14, 2008 @ 5:25 pm
@Ed – Ed, could you give me a little more detail on what your members are seeing? We haven’t changed most of the pages in a long time, and the pages we have changed are not Group Specific pages yet. But I’d like to get the root of the problem. Thanks, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 14, 2008 @ 5:26 pm
@Matti – Have you had a chance to ask Customer Service to look into the Spam issue yet? We usually need some examples of the emails but often they can get to the root cause of the problem. Sorry that you are having a tough time with those filters. – Leonard
Administrator said,
July 14, 2008 @ 5:28 pm
@Rosie – There will be a lot of restrictions removed as we upgrade the code, including the one you are asking about. Coming soon. – Leonard
Administrator said,
July 14, 2008 @ 5:30 pm
@Melissa, I’m sorry you are having issues. We are looking into the photo update issue now. Unfortunately the code was written many years ago and finding these issues can take us a lot longer than any of us would like. There will be a lot of bug fixes as we roll out the new code. – Leonard
Administrator said,
July 14, 2008 @ 5:33 pm
@Allan, I’m sorry you are having spam issues. If you could look at my response to Matti, we’d love to try and help you get the spam issues resolved. – Leonard
Administrator said,
July 14, 2008 @ 5:34 pm
@David – Thanks David. The message sizes will be getting much larger. More to come… – Leonard
Administrator said,
July 14, 2008 @ 5:37 pm
@Robert – We have to live to a standard that everyone can trust, your comments are fair. I’m sorry we let you down. The ability to back up data does exist in some of our areas, but clearly not enough (like Photos). Hopefully we’ll be able to get much closer with the coming releases.
Best,
Leonard
Administrator said,
July 14, 2008 @ 5:37 pm
Thanks everyone for commenting, please keep the feedback coming!
Carol Link said,
July 14, 2008 @ 5:40 pm
I have suggested many times that Our Yahoo Groups need to have
3 different Privileges like
1. Owner: Full Privileges
2. Co-Owner: Partial Privileges
3. Moderator: Less Privileges than the Co-Owner
The reason we need the Option button for co-owner is so the Co-Owner is not given the Privilege to ever delete Our group’s if they happen to get mad about some! This has happen to me 3 different time’s
Also We would like to beable to apply music to Our Home Pages like we could before again!
This is My Suggestion
Thanks for taking time to read my comment/suggestions
Carol YahooID cherokeeky2000
Misty said,
July 14, 2008 @ 5:48 pm
We’re a senior group (over 50 yrs) where everything we want and need is already in place and working fine for several years. We post jokes, recounts of our days, families, recipes, etc. on a daily basis and don’t need/want catagorizing of discussions. That may work for your blog, but not in groups that are a family smorgasbord. The search feature is fine and dandy and not even used as often as YAHOO wants to believe. The only annoyance is the constant fixing of what isn’t broken and the removal of the features that made groups interesting and as easy as pie to navigate as well as being a whole lot of fun. Remember chats???
Instead of fiddling around removing things, give us back what has been eliminated over the past couple of years(iframes, music etc. on the homepage, even though some of us can use a workaround) and leave well enough alone already.
addy said,
July 14, 2008 @ 5:51 pm
thank-you so much for your effort and updates !
regards, addy
Lois said,
July 14, 2008 @ 6:00 pm
Wondering if it would be possible to have Chat Rooms on our sites and the ability to save the chat text. We are a Genealogy group and it would be a great addition for us. We are having to use AIM chats now and would prefer to keep things in Yahoo.
Will appreciate the attachments being saved, as they were before, in the archives and not deleted.
Thanks……
GiangTM said,
July 14, 2008 @ 6:18 pm
Great, that’s what I am waiting for. What about the schedule?
Dave said,
July 14, 2008 @ 6:26 pm
I really like the People Map feature – excellent application in our Amateur Radio Disaster Relief network site.
I’ll just second- or third — or fourth the request for better delivery options for reminders, specifically another group I administer would like to have calendar reminders go to only the two individuals on a patrol “shift” – not the whole Group. But in all – cudos to the team who are working to move Yahoo Groups forward!!
Karyn said,
July 14, 2008 @ 6:38 pm
I would love to have a way to back up the photo’s as an art group my members and I share much there and to lose it all would be horrible but more what I miss is the folder within a folder option that we had for photo’s (example 2008 main folder with sub folders for each month) making it extremely easy to navigate to the current work and not wade through folders to find things.
LOVE that the archiving of attachments is coming back – that feature has been sorely missed.
Also where is chat! We often try to share our techniques and since no more chat we find it hard to do with email delivery through Yahoo not always being instantaneous.
RanDallk said,
July 14, 2008 @ 6:40 pm
Just wanted say Thank you for the great work!
David said,
July 14, 2008 @ 7:04 pm
Any way to ‘restore’ the “polls” feature? In a particular group I own, this feature was disabled by the original founder of the group back in 2000 shortly after the group was started.
Now that he is no longer there (8 years later), it would be great to use this feature as I use it on several other yahoo groups I run.
bferrell said,
July 14, 2008 @ 7:36 pm
Why don’t you fix what doesn’t work NOW before you start out with something else. Email delivery has not worked properly for over a year and now the groups calendar is not functioning correctly. Every note to support comes back with totally inappropriate unrelated answers, replies back are IGNORED and NO ONE ever fixes the problems.
RS said,
July 14, 2008 @ 7:47 pm
You guys just hit all the marks I’ve been hoping for and grousing about not seeing, including fast responses to user posts here even. Keep it up! I’m encouraged from what I see today.
One side note on subscribing to threads…you do know people do often change the subject lines within ‘threads’, right? Some folks like all the RPGers change subjects on every reply or near enough to it, so subscriptions won’t be as helpful there, unless you have some other way to mark the message as a ‘reply to’. I look forward to seeing that sometime soon to check it out tho.
Thanks!
-RS
RS said,
July 14, 2008 @ 7:49 pm
To Carol Link: You can customize permission levels when appointing new moderators and co-owners. I believe you have to set them to moderators first, and then promote them to owners, iirc.
Wendy Cutler said,
July 14, 2008 @ 7:54 pm
I’m not sure what “stunningly large photos” means. The maximum upload needs to be more than 5mb. No one can buy a camera these days that takes a photo that small (!), and it’s really helpful to some people to not have to resize every photo, or for some people, any photo.
I can’t say I’ve noticed the changes, as I work with the groups mostly via email. What IS annoying right now that’s new to me is that messages seem to be delivered as a block of text in a picture, so it’s impossible when replying or forwarding to delete everything except the sentence being responded to. Is that because I’ve switched to allowing attachments, so I’m receiving messages in html formatting? Does it have to be that way?
Mike said,
July 14, 2008 @ 8:00 pm
Sounds like some great things happening at Yahoo groups. I’ve been a member and group owner since it was Egroups, 7 or 8 years ago.
The new photos sounds good, I just hope it doesn’t go back the way it was, with huge photos and limited space. I used to have to go in and delete the full size to make room for more photos.
The new adoption plan sounds like something we’ve been requestion for years. I just hope you don’t make it to hard to adopt a group. I also hope you have a plan to get rid of abandoned groups that are just used to spread spam. I know just in the auto category, like Mustang, maybe half of them are abandoned and full of spam. Very few are even worth saving. I know a couple that I’d like to adopt and shape up. Thanks for all your efforts in making this such a great community. Mike
RS said,
July 14, 2008 @ 8:01 pm
Wish list item:
I would like a way to see ALL my groups on one page, ideally the first page of groups.yahoo.com (assuming I’m logged in, of course), and please make my viewing choice “sticky” so it stays that way in between sessions. A simple marker or boldfacing can tell me if I have new posts since the last time I visited. Anyway, something like that would be nice so I could see, say, up to 100 group links on one page if I chose to. Offering different formats/templates for viewing groups would be cool.
RS said,
July 14, 2008 @ 8:03 pm
Wendy: Change your message delivery to Traditional, that puts it back to regular text. It resets somehow from time to time I find, so be prepared to keep switching it back.
Judith said,
July 14, 2008 @ 9:10 pm
I agree with those who say fix what we already have before adding new frills features.
The calendar is very quirky – sometimes it works perfectly, then entries will mysteriously disappear. Polls are the same, working well for months then shuffling the choices so that I have to create the poll three or four times before the choices are finally in the necessary order.
As for photos, they are large enough. The old, largest size took up too much storage space and just had to be deleted. And, as Karyn said, could we go back to the old folders within folders method of storing them? It worked great.
On my wish list:
1) for mods to have more control over the granting of new member privileges. In our case, we have abuse of the polls feature and would like to withhold voting rights until a member has ‘proved’ themselves.
2) for Yahoo to keep track of people via their Yahoo ID as opposed to their email address. Again, our example is poll abuse with members changing their email addy to be able to vote multiple times in a single poll.
3) the return of full-featured chat.
I’m glad you’re trying to improve Yahoo Groups, but I’m not sure Yahoo Admin knows what improvements we owners/moderators really want.
Capri said,
July 14, 2008 @ 10:53 pm
Something that Yahoo has overlooked for far too long is putting in an audio option as an alternative to the visual captchas. It’s not good enough to make the picture bigger, there needs to be an audio option for people who use screen-readers which can’t recognize captcha images and read them out for visually impaired users. I got my ids and groups before that captcha thing showed up on Yahoo, but haven’t been able to create new groups, or join new groups via the web interface, I can join via email interface, but then have to select a profile later to be able to use the web features. And unfortunately, some groups reject all subscriptions via email interface, suspicious of them as possible spammers. I’m glad you’re bringing the archived attachments back, and hope there is something that can be done about helping active users to take over abandoned groups, a lot of groups are abandoned and in serious need of clean-up – spammers again. Now, if you could get an audio code or do away with the captcha altogether, since it clearly isn’t stopping spammers, only the visually impaired users, that would be great.
Michael said,
July 14, 2008 @ 11:23 pm
I’m in 2 groups that have left yahoo groups to go to google groups because the allow larger attachment size. You may want to address this issue
Michael
Reduce Reuse Recycle said,
July 14, 2008 @ 11:25 pm
“Subscription fees”? Hmmmm, is this being done at the behest of The Freecycle Network? Sounds like something that Deron Beal and the TFN board would push for!
Edward Hibbert said,
July 15, 2008 @ 12:09 am
If you’re going to be changing the HTML on your pages, rather than the software which serves it up, then I and other developers of applications which use Yahoo Groups and are dependent on that HTML would appreciate the opportunity to see a beta version of the new pages before it goes live.
Ali said,
July 15, 2008 @ 2:07 am
I like the mapping out of e-groups
Cindie said,
July 15, 2008 @ 2:34 am
I would just love for you to address the problems we are having now… Like the double email post. I get two of EVERYTHING! Two post to moderate the same person for the same post, and two each of same post from members that post to the group. ugh.
Dipesh said,
July 15, 2008 @ 2:47 am
Very Good
Nice
Excelent
Mind Bloing
blaqeye said,
July 15, 2008 @ 3:41 am
really a nice piece of work
yahoo u rock
good luck
Patty said,
July 15, 2008 @ 7:10 am
Why would we want to charge members of our groups? Could you please explain more about that?
Stephanie HC said,
July 15, 2008 @ 7:11 am
It seems somebody has to do something about all these codes, your blog is peppered with this
YMail cant send plain text messages without adding codes or taking out line spaces between paragraphs. If I use ATT-Yahoo web mail and send messages in plain text to any of my groups – NO line spaces show up. This is a known issue.
I would actually prefer to see the basics perfected before adding the extras. What good is a GPS system in a car if the seat falls through the floor….?
Lucy said,
July 15, 2008 @ 7:19 am
Am I understanding that yahoo groups are going to a forum type situation? I really hope not. I hate forums, they are impersonal and hard to keep up with. I like groups the way they are.
Administrator said,
July 15, 2008 @ 9:09 am
@Carol, thanks for sharing your needs with us. We need to provide a lot more granular control on rights management. In particular, a way to reflect your organization’s management structure. We are also looking into music support now, I think it would be a lot of fun. Best, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 15, 2008 @ 9:11 am
@Misty, please let us know if a change we make does impact your group. With regards to chat, that was shut down across all Yahoo some time ago, but there are new technologies out now that may make adding these feature back a very good possibility. Best, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 15, 2008 @ 9:12 am
@Addy, Thanks! Leonard
Administrator said,
July 15, 2008 @ 9:13 am
@Lois, just mentioned this to Misty as well. Yahoo took down all chat rooms a few years ago, but we are looking at new technologies to bring this back. Should be very doable. Best, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 15, 2008 @ 9:17 am
@GiangTM, Do you mean when will each feature roll out? We’ll be using the blog to notify people of the changes and what each one means to their group. Best, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 15, 2008 @ 9:18 am
@Dave, thanks for your kind words. The ability to send more granular alerts is definitely something we are looking at. The calendar application is actually run by the Yahoo Calendar team, but they are working on some new features that we hope to be able to incorporate soon. Best, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 15, 2008 @ 9:19 am
@Karyn, the photos area really needs more features, as you mentioned. Thanks for letting us know what is important to your group. Best, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 15, 2008 @ 9:20 am
@RanDallK, Thanks! Leonard
Administrator said,
July 15, 2008 @ 9:22 am
@David, we are working on a policy for groups that have lost their owner. Once we get that published, we’ll be in a better position to find ways to help you with the problem you mentioned. Sorry I don’t have a quicker solution for you, but we do hope to get this problem resolved soon. Best, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 15, 2008 @ 9:24 am
bferrell, I’m sorry you are having problems with emails and the calendar. I’m also sorry to see your customer care requests are not resolving to your satisfaction. Let me know when you emailed them and I’ll try to track down what happened to your question. – Leonard
Administrator said,
July 15, 2008 @ 9:27 am
@RS, thanks for all the helpful guidance. With regards to seeing all of your groups, we are reworking how we can pull all of your groups, which will make it much easier to pull the entire list the way you want to see it. Best, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 15, 2008 @ 9:32 am
@Wendy, when we first added photos, almost nobody had a digital camera and the sizes were very small. The new storage will be very large, and so we will also allow you to store larger photos in general (and more of them). The email display issues sound a bit wonky, sorry about that. When you go to “edit membership” at the top of your group page and switch between fully featured and traditional, does that fix the problem at all? – Leonard
Administrator said,
July 15, 2008 @ 9:34 am
@Mike, thanks for the feedback, we’ll be giving you a LOT of space for photos. Regarding spam groups, we have some ideas for fixing that, but I’m guessing it will require that we all work together to solve that problem. – Leonard
Administrator said,
July 15, 2008 @ 9:35 am
@Judith, thanks for all of your suggestions. You are not alone in these requests and we are listening. Best, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 15, 2008 @ 9:37 am
@Capri, we have been working with the team at Yahoo that owns the Captcha product. They are working on an audio Captcha and we hope to get it soon. Best, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 15, 2008 @ 9:37 am
@Michael, attachment sizes will be getting much bigger very soon. Thanks for letting us know how important it is. Best, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 15, 2008 @ 9:39 am
@Edward, we hope to have an API program available soon to make the issue you raise go away. Best, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 15, 2008 @ 9:41 am
@Cindie, I’m sorry you are having that happen. This is an example of something that customer service should be able to handle. They might initially reply to you with some common solutions, but just make sure they understand that your problem has not been resolved, and make sure they get copies of both emails you get with the headers, and I think we can fix your problem. – Leonard
Administrator said,
July 15, 2008 @ 9:45 am
@Dipesh & @blaqeye, thanks! Leonard
Administrator said,
July 15, 2008 @ 9:49 am
@Patty, many local groups have membership dues that exist outside of Y! Groups that help them fund their activities. – Best, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 15, 2008 @ 9:52 am
@Stephanie, the variety of emails systems out there with their own rules does make this a real challenge for us. I think this will be an area of continuous improvement for us for a long time. – Leonard
Administrator said,
July 15, 2008 @ 9:53 am
@Lucy, you can continue to use Groups as you do today. Best, Leonard
ekim said,
July 15, 2008 @ 10:11 am
“” if its NOT win-abled, i’m not interested. “”
this will be the main thingy very soon that everyone will use and /or reply with.
so ya better learn about it before others do.
btw: the originator / pioneer of win-abled also predicted the now well known,
URI ’s being used instead of URL ’s
RS said,
July 15, 2008 @ 10:22 am
When looking at monetizing the groups, I have a thought which I hope would be easy to incorporate. Many groups may not wish to charge a membership fee, but may wish to maintain a donation account to allow people to contribute on a voluntary basis to support other efforts like maintaining a website hosting, or fundraising events, etc. So long as the feature can be made voluntary and configured as the Owner desires, you’ll have a good thing to offer. Some may want to charge fees just for joining, some may want ongoing fees, some may want donations only. So long as choice is a feature, it sounds pretty good! Thanks for answering everyone on this announcement. Its cool to see.
Administrator said,
July 15, 2008 @ 10:36 am
@RS, fair points. Best, Leonard
Nathan said,
July 15, 2008 @ 10:42 am
I’ve been sole owner/moderator of a group for around 4 years. The group existed a couple of years before I took over and was full of spammers I whittled it down by ruthless, but careful management. The protections given the members from predatory services and people are the backbone of the loyal membership that remains. Yahoo is a great tool, has given me exactly what I need and any help at weeding out leeches so my members can feel more at home is what I need.
Someone mentioned that they were leaving Yahoo for Google for improved service. Just try and disable your Google bar and you’ll find they have built a trap that behaves very much like a virus, popping up to force you to return. I do not feel owned by Yahoo and our group appreciates the long time good service.
Thanks, I trust any improvements you plan will succeed, as is usual.
Rommeytx said,
July 15, 2008 @ 11:17 am
I am the owner of a Spanish Literary group (my URL). I had problems with this new service offered by Grouply.com; … from my search we seem unable to block its access to our groups and we see a disturbing development. As I posted in a site discussing the problem:
“In spite of Rich Reimer and Mark Robins assurances, I personally got complains of over 45 members from the several Yahoo groups I belong or manage, about getting spam sent under those members identity as originating from the groups they belong and coming from their own e-mail address, the one they used for the membership (the groups never had those messages posted in them to begin with)… I won’t provide more details unless the members I speak of let me to release their information…
But at least, be assured that one has, that’s myself… and I had to delete already about a couple dozen spam-mail messages sent by “myself” to “myself” in the last three weeks, and I am not a member of Grouply… albeit most of the complainers are… ”
Today, I had another experience yet, a member in my group registering on Grouply and sending an invitation to register with it, to our group, and a couple of e-mails, one on this address, and another on another account in a different server, both coming from the same address, this one… and both porno spam… I’m awaiting personal confirmation from the member I mentioned, because I already had another situation in which the member of a different group was not aware of such registration and haven’t sent any invite to that group… Something fishy there.
My question, is it possible to develop a tool for our groups that would stop this Grouply if we want to preserve the privacy of our groups?
The blocking mechanism they offer, requires from me to enter my nick and password, therefore giving them access to my owner/moderator privileges without my knowledge… Not only disgruntled employees of Grouply.com are a danger, but hackers taking advantage of their limited experience dealing with this scourge, are even more dangerous… We might loose appetite for using any kind of groups, for right now, Yahoo and Google, tomorrow, who knows, MSN could be in line in the near future…. Any way, … please help!
Frank Rommey
i48998 said,
July 15, 2008 @ 12:06 pm
I hope somewhere there in the list of requested features, you have a feature to allow moderators to get stats, i.e., should be able to see if the email sent was opened by the receiver or not.
Edward Hibbert said,
July 15, 2008 @ 1:05 pm
>@Edward, we hope to have an API program available soon to make the issue you raise go away. Best, Leonard
Thanks for your reply. I’m extremely interested in this, as I have an application which makes extensive additions to Yahoo groups features for moderators. If you need early testers for your API, I’d be very happy indeed to try it.
caryl said,
July 15, 2008 @ 1:36 pm
It’s just beautiful to see Leonard responding to people’s issues and questions here — feedback that’s really important.
I’ve made a lot of suggestions over the years (BCC to owner’s address of any rejection messages etc sent from a yahoo group page, etc)
But I really only have ONE BIG request: Please ..Whatever you do ……. please keep in mind that many of us are STILL on dial-up (SLOW) connections and also have size limitations on our incoming emails. Please don’t slow the pages down or remove the option to have all emails in order of arrival and unthreaded.
Thank you so much~!
Lucy said,
July 15, 2008 @ 2:31 pm
Gordon it means a lot that you’re answering our concerns. It’s really appreciated.
With the new features will you consider going back to keeping the home page pictures in the photo album like you used to? I wasn’t aware until long after it stopped that you were no longer doing so and didn’t keep the pictures. It’s a great archive to look back on. Once I realized it, there was no way to go back and figure out what the pictures were that were missing. Thank you again for answering us.
ronmillus said,
July 15, 2008 @ 4:33 pm
What was wrong with the old format? This new homepage[I guess thats what it is] to me,screams,leave yahoo! Plus why doesn’t the check all button work anymore? When click on it all it does is take you to the top of the page but doesn’t check anything. Great improvements.
CheriDonna said,
July 15, 2008 @ 4:37 pm
I’ve been a long time subscriber to Groups and moderator and/or owner of about a dozen. The only problem I have is it seems I have to use an alternate email address for a couple of the groups. When I use the primary email address, I lose my profile and have to resurrect it.
No one at Customer Service seems to be able to help.
A large question….naturists/nudists is NOT an adult topic, we are family-oriented, G-rated, yet we’re stuck with the Adult situation and advertisements. Can we please, please, please come out from behind the Adult wall.
Thank you for listening.
Tom said,
July 15, 2008 @ 6:53 pm
Now I want complete honesty here people. How many of you here making complaints are either members of adult groups, or had adult groups blown up under you, because of violation of the rules?
Harry Quinn said,
July 15, 2008 @ 6:55 pm
I hate it! I have to keep scrolling back and forth, Put it back the way it was, I don’t have a 45″ monitor. Harry Quinn
Tom said,
July 15, 2008 @ 7:03 pm
Ha! I should have read all the comments before making my own. Groups that have lost their owners. Poor orphaned groups. Makes one sad, until you realize that they lost their Yahoo mail accounts for various and sundry. Boo Hoo!
Let’s all be honest. I belong to adult groups. Most of what brings people to yahoo are adult groups. There are others, but they don’t get near as much traffic. I wish Yahoo would recognize this fact openly, and tell prospective straight out what will get their groups booted from the roster.
I can tell you that anything that concerns anyone not an adult (Please have a seat pervs. Did you have any trouble finding the place. Welcome to Dateline loser.) will get your group, your nick, and your profile booted, so leave now.
It’s a privilege to be a member of a group, not a right. Unless you pay for it, which most of you don’t.
At some point Yahoo is going to be sold, either to Microsoft, or some other corporate entity, and then will the real changes occur.
kidlat said,
July 15, 2008 @ 8:15 pm
I have suggestion, we hope that we can upload music and videos that can be viewed by the members with the following options:
1. Moderator ( access and upload music and videos)
2. Limited (members can view only music and videos)
Thanks
Kid
Winona said,
July 16, 2008 @ 12:48 am
Leonard,
This is the best news I’ve heard in a long time! Thanks so much for posting the update.
I’m most looking forward to Message Boards 2.0!
aminu said,
July 16, 2008 @ 1:29 am
I wish ol wel, infact every thing is very interesting.
aminu said,
July 16, 2008 @ 1:34 am
weldone
graywolf said,
July 16, 2008 @ 6:26 am
All this, well some of this is great, but when are they going to fix the groups system. I have been place in auto-reponder 3 times. Last Sat, Sun and today.
HEY Yahoo I did 10 emails over a one hour period.
Saturday is 8 in 1 hour and 7 minutes
And what happened to the auto-resonder problem in HELP
Also a friend had had the same problem, I have read about other problems, so all this new stuff some of it is great, but can we please fix the system
Bill Herbert said,
July 16, 2008 @ 7:29 am
I’m guessing this calender problem is related to the new software.
This morning I’ve struggled to set up a yearly repeating reminder for Sep 13, 2008, second Sat of the month. Everytime I saved or updated the time, the calendar saved as Sep 06, I could switch the month, but the date was always the 6th. I wasn’t able to find a work around and ended up letting it go as the 6th. I’ll post any progress or any further observations I have.
Any one with similar calendar troubles?
Administrator said,
July 16, 2008 @ 8:53 am
@Rommeytx, I’m sorry to hear about the issues you are having. We don’t have any tools related to this at this time. If you haven’t had the chance yet, I encourage you to look at this post from Jami on the matter: http://www.ygroupsblog.com/blog/2008/02/15/member-account-passwordsecurity-and-groups-3rd-party-websites-usage/
Best,
Leonard
Administrator said,
July 16, 2008 @ 8:55 am
@i48998, we have done some preliminary designs of a new moderator control panel with stats included. I don’t have a timeline on that one yet, but we are definitely on the same page. Best, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 16, 2008 @ 9:01 am
@caryl, You are not alone. About 12% of Group users are on dialup, and we want all of you to remain active contributors!
Best, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 16, 2008 @ 9:03 am
@Lucy, Leonard here. I’ll be honest I didn’t know we used to do that or that we had stopped. I can see how it would be an interesting ability to go back in time and look. Not sure when we’ll get to it but thanks for letting us know! Best, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 16, 2008 @ 9:05 am
@ronmillus, Could you let me know which page you are looking at? We haven’t changed anything on the home page in some time, but Yahoo! Mail has, is that the area you are experiencing difficulties with? Best, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 16, 2008 @ 9:16 am
@CheriDonna, I’m sorry to hear you are having problems with the email address. I mentioned we are rewriting the entire code base of the site, and this is an example of the reason why. We are finding issues like these that no one can fix, so rebuilding the system is the only way we can help. With regards to the adult question, if you don’t have any content that might be construed as a problem for minors, I’d suggest contacting customer care (http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/general.html) and asking them to re-evaluate their classification. It may require that you email back and forth with them a few times to get them to understand your perspective.
Best,
Leonard
Administrator said,
July 16, 2008 @ 9:19 am
@Harry Quinn, Sorry to hear you are having to scroll. Do you know what page that is happening on? About 8% of our customers are on smaller 800×600 screens, so we do try to make sure the site works for all of them.
Best,
Leonard
Administrator said,
July 16, 2008 @ 9:20 am
@kidlat, we too are excited to get a feature like that out to members. Best, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 16, 2008 @ 9:21 am
@Winona, Thanks! Leonard
Administrator said,
July 16, 2008 @ 9:22 am
@aminu, Thanks! Leonard
Administrator said,
July 16, 2008 @ 9:24 am
@graywolf, I’m sorry to hear you were put in auto-responder status so many times. Most of our efforts in rebuilding the system are to address these issues. We haven’t gotten to auto-responder yet but we hope to soon.
Best,
Leonard
Administrator said,
July 16, 2008 @ 9:26 am
@Bill, We do use the Yahoo! Calendar system for groups, and no, you are not alone in your problems. They are making some major improvements to that product so we hope to see many of these issues resolved soon.
Best,
Leonard
Desi said,
July 16, 2008 @ 11:55 am
As an owner and member of lots of groups, I’d like to be able to go to the page where you can see a list of all your groups and put a name in a search box to find it rather than have to scroll through each page. I’d also like to be able to put them in an order that means something to me rather than just alphabetical (or whatever the other option is currently).
I’ll give some more thought to other things I’d like to see and add them here later. Thanks for being responsive and allowing us to add our thoughts to this blog.
Desi
Harry Quinn said,
July 16, 2008 @ 12:30 pm
Leonard, I don’t know what happened last night, but now it’s back just like it was. Sorry for the emotional reply, but it was really not usabale the way it was lastnight. Harry Quinn
John Stewart said,
July 16, 2008 @ 12:51 pm
Is it possible that these changes are why one of my groups has ceased forwarding and archiving email? (KMM129852497V66158L0KM)
John
Denver said,
July 16, 2008 @ 3:59 pm
Hi Leonard,
Thank you and to your team for everything that you do. I look forward to upcoming new features and the great enhancements! Just one question — is there a possible “re-design” (new look) of Yahoo! Groups in the near future? I was a beta tester of the beta groups a while back and I liked how we could re-arrange your group page the way you wanted with fonts and many color themes, including background pictures.
Thanks,
Denver
Antonio Lopez Reyes said,
July 16, 2008 @ 4:44 pm
I run a translation agency. If you ever need translation, do not hesitate to contact us.
David Smith said,
July 17, 2008 @ 12:09 am
Can you expand a little on what it means to make information easier to share?
I don’t quite grasp the improvement, based upon the description.
What would be helpful for our group is to add a wiki companion to organize information. The file/links/database features are too structured — I’ll start a document and realize that the topic has two files, 3 links, and 5 database entries, etc.and then have to figure out how to cram all of them into one of the apps. A wiki page would offer more flexibility in integrating the content.
.
Gesine said,
July 17, 2008 @ 4:07 am
Totally different topic —
Is there a way to copy Files and some archived messages, without having
to select/ctrl C each message?
Thanks, Gesine
Administrator said,
July 17, 2008 @ 8:57 am
@Desi, both of your suggestions make a lot of sense. Thanks for sharing those ideas. Best, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 17, 2008 @ 8:58 am
@Harry Quinn, you never need to apologize, a problem is a problem and needs to be fixed. I prefer a passionate customer to one who would not care if the product stopped working! Best, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 17, 2008 @ 8:59 am
@John, none of the changes we have made should have caused that to happen. Have you had a chance to write in to customer care to see if they can track down what is going on? Best, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 17, 2008 @ 9:00 am
@Denver, yes, we are looking into giving you significant control on the look and feel of your group. Thanks for being a beta tester! Best, Leonard
Lena said,
July 17, 2008 @ 11:19 am
I bet that after “rebuilding the system” we’ll have new bugs while old ones still will remain not fixed:
- extraneous strings in digests if Subject contains 8bit characters and is either long (thus truncated) or unencoded;
- overwriting X-Originating-IP header line if it was present in incoming message;
- moderators’ ability to ban some of owners;
- switching member to FullyFeatured on going to Bouncing and at reactivation;
- wiping out Bounce History at recativation;
- inability to turn off the spam filter on mail to -owner@.
I’m particularly disturbed by the “better handling of all types of character sets”. The road to hell is pawed with best intentions. Don’t mess with charsets! Many users’ mail programs and webmails cannot handle Unicode; quite often charsets are recognized incorrectly rendering message completely unreadable, as often happens with googleGroups. Please, never convert from one charset to another, never convert to Unicode!
Jimmie Spears said,
July 17, 2008 @ 11:41 am
Jimmie Spears: Thanks for all the positive information, have a blessed day!
MOHAMED FARHAN said,
July 18, 2008 @ 2:01 am
very nice
Amarnath Raha said,
July 18, 2008 @ 5:08 am
Hi…friends..
What’s up? It’s very nice to to say that our ‘Yahoo Groups’ cross another one milestone by giving us a cool feature. Thanks to Yahoo Goups. No more today. Have a day. See you.
Nubia said,
July 18, 2008 @ 2:46 pm
Hi
there are some feature which would be very usefull for us, specially for large groups with a lot of traffic mails
1. create a status of VIP
the owner of each groups could add this special status of VIP to his best posting members and these mails will go in a special folder called “VIP mails” (like actually SPAM)
we will not miss any mails of these VIP and will not be lost in the mass
2. the possibility to delete the mails in pending by CLICING a square and not like actually choose between 3 choises
and possiblity to delete all the mails in pending of a page in only 1 clic
there is an other issue very important for me YOU NEVER TALKED ABOUT
the problem with html codes happening since some month actually in all yahoo mails, which is of course also a problem in groups
the mails sent throught yahoo are corrupted in the html and some codes appear in the html codes who corrups pictures links
i wote to yahoo customer about this problem 1 month ago and gave them some exemples, they told me they are aware of the problem and work on it but 1 month after still nothing done for this and same problems
i hope this can be solved quickly now because it become really annyoing
thanks
nubia
owner Nubia_gorup
migo said,
July 20, 2008 @ 2:48 am
happy to be one of this group
Loloy D said,
July 20, 2008 @ 7:56 pm
I manage several “organizational” groups here in Yahoo Groups and a common problem I face and share with other users is the extreme heterogeneity of member’s preferences with regards to receiving email messages from our groups. For example, new members are more likely keen on saying “hi’s” and “hello’s” and posting senseless or pointless one-liner comments – now we don’t want to really discourage them or ostracize them but we really have to maintain some sense of courtesy with respect to the number of posts we receive per day. I would like to therefore suggest that you install a posting quota per member: examples – 10 messages per day, to 10 messages per month to 30 messages per month and so on. This will let us maintain our sanity in managing our groups and also put those one-liner posters in check.
I’d be very glad to see this feature implemented – Posting Quotas. Thanks.
Administrator said,
July 21, 2008 @ 12:08 am
@RS, thanks for all the helpful guidance. With regards to seeing all of your groups, we are reworking how we can pull all of your groups, which will make it much easier to pull the entire list the way you want to see it. Best, Leonard
Wendy Cutler said,
July 21, 2008 @ 11:03 am
One of the things you’ve changed recently is allowing us to add (not just invite) 100 members in one 24 hour period – the add page and the help text both say
“You may add 100 addresses per day. The limit applies both to an
individual group and an individual moderator”. But if we try to add more than 10, there’s an error message saying that the ones over 10 have to be removed. Your help people have explained to me now that I can go back in and add another 10, up to 100. Well, it would be really helpful to TELL ME that somewhere. I had no idea it worked that way.
Either allow the whole hundred to be added at once, or just add some explanation that it’s only ten at a time. Really, though, it’s a “gotcha” to allow people to enter many more than 10 and then make it an error. If only 10 at a time will be allowed, then fix the length of the entry panel. AND explain that we can come back for another round.
I love being able to do more than 10 at once. I add names from a sign-up sheet, and it’s been a real bother to get them all entered 10 every 24 hours.
Administrator said,
July 21, 2008 @ 2:22 pm
@Lena, Thanks for you comments. What do you use the bounce history for after a user has been reactivated? Thanks, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 21, 2008 @ 2:23 pm
@Nubia, the mail HTML issue is a problem, but we are working with that team and hope to have the problem resolved soon. With regards to your other ideas, there are definitely some ways we can make our process much faster for you as a moderator. Thanks for writing in. Best, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 21, 2008 @ 2:25 pm
@Loloy D, sounds like a problem that needs to be addressed. Thanks for sharing that with us. Best, Leonard
Administrator said,
July 21, 2008 @ 2:29 pm
@Wendy,
Yes this is an error on our part. We had to make the change quickly and were not able to make it function exactly the way it should. We hope to have this fixed in the future, sorry for the confusion.
Best,
Leonard
Liz said,
July 21, 2008 @ 11:20 pm
What I’d like is to be able to post pictures in my newsletter. I get newsletters from other authors who have their covers and events photographs. I was hoping that was what you meant by fully featured.
Lena said,
July 22, 2008 @ 2:04 am
> What do you use the bounce history for after a user has
> been reactivated?
To explain the member what happened and what exactly to complain to the ISP or the mail provider about; to see dates between which the member didn’t receive messages; to see the fact of not receiving at all; to make conclusions about reliability (and compatibility with Groups) of different mail providers in order to know to which to recommend members to switch if they are frustrated with current one. And at last, it’s called “history”. Wiping out (or hiding) history is not a good way to take lessons. How would you feel about wiping out history of, say, your country?
Nancy said,
July 22, 2008 @ 4:31 pm
We need more lines in database 10 is not enough
Wendy Cutler said,
July 24, 2008 @ 11:07 am
RS and Leonard, thanks for the help on the email display. Yes, it does fix it to change email display from Fully Featured to Traditional (sorry for the delay – I had to wait to see a posting).
I remember people complaining in groups (years ago, either when it was an issue or I was paying attention) about people replying to postings who leave the whole original posting in their reply. They’re not going to have any choice if that’s not fixed in the Fully Featured version, which I assume, based on the naming, is the version that you want people to use.
Is there a way to link to a posting when we reply? I see that I had the comment number for a posting I did previously, but I don’t know how I got that or how to get someone else’s posting comment number.
How does the ‘Notify me of followup comments’ work? An email for every comment? I haven’t been ticking that because I don’t want a lot of emails. I’d just like to know if someone replied to me, or maybe get a digest, else visiting every now and then is fine while I’m still remembering to do that.
Wendy Cutler said,
July 24, 2008 @ 11:12 am
Liz’s idea to be able to post pictures instream seems so reasonable, if the group is set up to allow attachments. Even the traditional mail delivery comes in as html (is that because I’ve allowed attachments? – I can never figure this out), so it’s not more bandwidth to have the attachment at the end of a note than displaying in the note. Or is there a security issue?
Rosemarie said,
July 24, 2008 @ 12:51 pm
I totally agree with Carol about her suggestions..
I have suggested many times also that Our Yahoo Groups need to have
3 different Privileges like
1. Owner: Full Privileges
2. Co-Owner: Partial Privileges
3. Moderator: Less Privileges than the Co-Owner
The reason we need the Option button for co-owner is so the Co-Owner is not given the Privilege to ever delete Our group’s if they happen to get mad about some!
Also We would like to beable to apply music to Our Home Pages like we could before again!
This is My Suggestion
Thanks for taking time to read my comment/suggestions
Rosemarie YahooID sweetrosie1208
Nubia said,
July 24, 2008 @ 2:04 pm
Thanks a lot Leonard
i am happy if you find my ideas interesting
and more happy if you and your team can resolve this problem of html codes
best regards
nubia
Owner nubia_group
#
Administrator said,
July 21, 2008 @ 2:23 pm
@Nubia, the mail HTML issue is a problem, but we are working with that team and hope to have the problem resolved soon. With regards to your other ideas, there are definitely some ways we can make our process much faster for you as a moderator. Thanks for writing in. Best, Leonard
Marge said,
July 24, 2008 @ 6:12 pm
I am on about 7 lists, and have not received mail on any of them for 7 hours. What’s happened to all the mail?
Addie said,
July 24, 2008 @ 8:07 pm
I am so glad the attachments will be back!!! Hooray!!!! Thank you!!
Jamie said,
July 24, 2008 @ 8:43 pm
I’m happy for all the change and especially the one about the abandoned
groups but i do have one request.
I was allowed moderatorship over a group that the owner bounces in
most all year. I know as of right now shes been bouncing since Jan 15th
so that right there tells you she has no interest in the group. She
won’t reply to emails at all so can’t there be something yahoo can do
about this? If yahoo can look at a group and see the Owners record
then i’m sure it can be fixed.
I would also like to see an easier way of reactivating your email
once you have exceded the max amount of emails sent. I think that
should be upped to more than 15. Some people share alot and
when they get locked down for over sending, it tends to cause them
not to send at all
I like the idea about the bigger size email allowance and the photo
storage being bigger, great idea.
Thanks you
Brad said,
July 25, 2008 @ 9:07 am
I would love to see the option of having music on your front page of the group like you use to be able too before that option was taken away. So many groups liked that and members too.
softbrat0 said,
July 26, 2008 @ 11:32 pm
I have a few comments and suggestions…
I LOVE the fact that posts are listed by when they are posted. I LOVE the fact that you can see them all at once and just click the topics you want to read. I love that you can read teh first few lines of each topic. I love that you can choose to get every email, or a daily digest in your inbox, or none at all, or only special messages, or view online. PLEASE do not change these features, or at least keep them as options.
*I think a chat room option would be cool, and used frequently by my group.
*I think music would be a cool option.
*I would like (in the future) to have a group spawn from my main group that would need payment fees. I agree it should be several choices, such as donation, regular monthly or yearly fees, or even a one time sign up fee.
I have an idea that would serve our group well…
I do a spotlight (which uses the photo on the main group page, and the description of that photo). I’d like to be able to set up 10 or 20 different ones and set them up to rotate each month, week, or even day. I currently have to have all of this information stored on my pc, and go in and manually change it each week or month when I get time. This way our members who request it can be spotlighted, and I only have to set it up once instead of for each one on a constant basis.
I also would like an option (for the owners or moderators, or whoever is given the permission) to have a box in the messages, so the message can be saved into a specific folder or archive. This way I can click any message that has event information, and place it into the folder or archive named “events 2008″. This will make it easy for my members to find, and will keep all the replies to that message out of the folder. Only the important messages will be moved. I’d like to be able to name the folders myself.
I would really like for the polls to be improved. the order of the options are all wrong, and I have to re create it several times before it is correct, which annoys those who get everything by email. I would also like the option to only be able to vote on a certain number of choices. Like your top 2 choices, or top 3 choices. (or maximum 2 choices, or maximum 3 choices) Not just 1 choice, or as many as you want.
The calendars need to be improved immensely! So many fields of information are irrelevant to what we are recording!! I need the option of choosing my own fields, or creating my own drop down menu choices for those fields. For example we need to include the admission price for one of our fields, we need to include whether it’s an indoor or outdoor venue, etc. Things that are just not available at the moment. There are also too many irrelevant fields right now, which discourages my members from filling out the calendar because it’s a long drawn out process. When you click on the date you want to enter, it should automatically show up in the date field, you shouldn’t have to re enter it. When the same event is on three or four different days, but not consecutive days, you don’t have the option to enter it all at once. I’d like to be able to enter several dates, that aren’t consecutive.
Thank you so much for listening!! I really like this group because it gives us what we need. We can’t find that anywhere else, and I hope you don’t get rid of too many features, because we don’t want to have to find a different group!
Stephanie said,
July 27, 2008 @ 12:12 am
I agree with the masses here. I need the basics fixed before I can get excited about the new stuff. New things generally mean lots of bugs and kinds to be worked out, and if you’ve got a bunch of bugs and kinks to begin with, adding more bugs and kinks just piles on the frustration.
I’ve emailed so many times about my files section being screwed up and nothing has been done about it. I cannot create ANY files at all!! I’d like to be able to do this. I have basically three options here: Yahoo Groups, Google Groups, or MSN/Live Groups. I hate MSN because it forces me to use IE browser and I hate IE browser because it’s full of vulnerabilty issues. Google Groups is just all wrong for me. I do not feel at all comfortable navigating through there. It’s just too impersonal for me. Since I’ve been using Yahoo Groups since it was EGroups, well … this is my home in my opinion. But my home has been deterriorating it seems.
It’s like living in a 60 yr old house full of foundation issues and cracks in the wall, and all that’s done is a new coat of paint is slapped on it. While it looks pretty for a little while, things are still not working right. This is Yahoo Groups right now.
Here’s an example of just one of my issues right now:
Files
Files Help
We’re Sorry…
There was a problem with your request.
The page you’ve requested returned this error:
SF error: sfGetStats() returned error Cannot access list directory
If you continue to receive this error for more than 48 hours, please contact our Customer Care team. We apologize for this inconvenience.
This is my FILES access section of my group. Since I created the group I’ve had this notice up, and emailing about it does nothing for me. Please fix this, and all the other problems, and I will be not only jumping for joy, but welcoming the new add ons. BUt like so many others have said – we need to look at what’s broken for the time being. Don’t put your cart before the horse Yahoo Admin Team. You’ve got GREAT ideas, but you’re rushing the plans here.
Stephanie said,
July 27, 2008 @ 12:29 am
Just to add to that list, I also cannot access my Message archives, Database section, or Links.
In all – I am getting errors from Files, Messages, Database, & Links.
As it is now – I can barely use my group.
STS said,
July 27, 2008 @ 11:23 pm
Can the administrators please quote a bit from the entry they are responding to? I’ve had to scroll up to find the original entry and then down again to re-read the reply. It’s nuts to have replies so distant from the original complaint or suggestion, with no clue what the reply is replying TO
except for the name of the contributor!
The #1 item on my wish list is to have the window for editing messages the same size as the message window, so that moderators do not have to enter hard returns to prevent endless lines. I almost always have to edit the same message several times just to fix line length, because the edit window is narrower than the message window.
STS said,
July 27, 2008 @ 11:27 pm
LoloyD wrote;
> we really have to maintain some sense of courtesy with respect to the number of posts we receive per day.
No new feature is needed to accomplish that goal. That’s what a moderated group can do already!
Any limit on number of messages from one person would need to be an owner choice, not a one-size-fits-all limit.
Serge Moderator said,
July 28, 2008 @ 8:12 am
I was a moderator of a group for several years. Last year I didn’t log in for several months and discovered my account could no longer access the group via web log-in. I still get new member approval emails, and the emails work. Also I get the normal discussion mail. Several Yahoo tech support people said my account was suspended, but now, when I log in, no evidence of suspension is evident (there’s supposed to be a link that says something like reinstate without saving old settings, but it’s nowhere on the welcome page). I’ve gone back and forth with tech suppt since December and have gotten no where. I cannot log in to access the group via the web, much less do moderator duties. When I try it acts like I’m a new member, and when I try to join the web page bombs. Anybody help!!!!!
Wendy Cutler said,
July 28, 2008 @ 9:58 am
Regarding softbrat’s July 26, 2008 Calendar comment about events occurring on more than one day, I would like to be able to copy an event from one date to another. So often, my events don’t recur on a regular basis, but the same event with much of the same detail occurs again, and it would be helpful and feel less frustrating to just copy one of the instances to another date. I don’t think that’s possible now, is it?
Stephanie HC said,
July 28, 2008 @ 10:09 am
Clarification please!
>>Message Boards 2.0: Improving the Message experience within groups in many different ways (e.g. giving members the opportunity to choose which discussions they want to subscribe to, making it easier for moderators to highlight the best content, etc.). <<
Does this mean going to a Message Board format and not an e-mail format? How will this affect those who download mail eg into OE? We already have some (dog) breed specific message boards and they are NOT as well supported as the mailing list format – it just does not work as well for an international group of show dog fanciers with a common and specific interest. Topics can morph into other topics but all are connected to the overall rationale for being a member in the first place. Message boards tend to separate topics and render them separate and unconnected. Also I am a moderator which means keeping things running smoothly – not a Dictator that decides what is or is not good, better, best or what is or is not important. I do not decide what is “best” – the group/list members do. Yes, there ARE groups that are run as Dictatorships – but ours is not one of them, and our members seem to like it that way
!
Shiraz said,
July 30, 2008 @ 4:08 pm
I started using People Map in my Alumni group. It is awesome. Now we know who is near us and we know there addresses/ company/ phones etc. very nice feature.
Shiraz
Jason said,
July 31, 2008 @ 1:28 pm
I have used Yahoo! Groups since the early days after the E-Groups merger, and have owned or moderated dozens of different groups over the years.
My own feedback (and yes, I know some of it may be duplicative of the thoughtful comments shared earlier by others) includes the following “wishes”:
1. A mechanism for allowing moderators to gain owner rights over groups with no (or absentee) owners.
2. An ability to store/sort/archive closed polls — perhaps in a folder system.
3. A more precise system for auto-closing of polls at a specific date **and time.**
4. Optional date-and-time stamping of poll responses.
5. Optional permissions (on a per-user-group and per-user level) governing the ability to modify or delete their own posts, or the posts of others.
6. Optional right to grant/deny a moderator the right to review moderator logs, or to override default moderator rights on a per-user basis (e.g., to deny one specific moderator the right to set a poll, in a group configured to allow moderators the right to set polls but not members).
7. Ability to sort files and polls by any column.
8. Ability to archive to offline file the content and structure of messages/files/photos/links/polls.
9. Ability to specify a post number in a poll, to allow a member to click to see a specific post that might provide context to a poll question.
10. Ability to move/copy materials between groups (perhaps an owner-only right), to facilitate archiving.
Thanks much for you consideration!
Kathie said,
July 31, 2008 @ 3:21 pm
Hey! We just got word that Yahoo has finally gotten it together and is matching Google group’s attachment size of 20 MB. Has anyone else heard anything about this? We’ve tested this and have been able to send through an email with up to a 4 MB attachment.
Gracelaw said,
August 1, 2008 @ 7:45 am
What’s happened to “next!?”
I suspect that many group members read messages on their groups’ sites, as I do, rather than via email or digests … and I suspect many read as I always have: I open the first new message since my last visit, then click “next” to open each following new posting, viewing them chronologically. Suddenly, that function is no longer an option.
The new options are “next message” in the current topic, or “next topic.” Neither of those is what I want next! What happened to plain old next message, meaning the next one that was posted by my fellow group members!?
Wendy Cutler said,
August 2, 2008 @ 12:07 am
Gracelaw, when you click on Messages on the sidebar, do you have the option to (List as Individual Messages) at the top of the messages list? I’m able to go back and forth in all the groups I tested between Individual Message view and (Group by Topic). In the Individual Message view, there’s still the next and previous. In the topic view, the link is to the next topic.
Ben said,
August 2, 2008 @ 1:49 am
Just wondering…if I copy and try to paste when composing a message in the rich text format, I must first turn off rich text and paste and then turn it back on to use it’s features.
gitta said,
August 3, 2008 @ 2:47 pm
dear moderator
i created a group about my adored and beloved Freddie Mercury but i dont know how to use and manage it
.can you hep me and give me the correct instructions ? i want so strongly give him a tribute for years and years.
Thanks and kisses.
Gracelaw said,
August 4, 2008 @ 6:43 am
Wendy, thanks for your response. I didn’t notice any options regarding listing messages when I sent that note, though now I clearly see that I have a choice of listing by individual message or by topic. I’m really not sure if it was a problem with Yahoo Groups or with me … but it’s resolved, and that’s what matters!
Mike said,
August 4, 2008 @ 10:11 pm
anything new on abandoned groups?
Steve said,
August 5, 2008 @ 2:44 am
Although I like the idea of making everything better, I just have one problem. I can no longer get onto Yahoo Groups! I get as far as “Sign-in”, and I get an “Internet Explorer can not assess the webpage. What do I do now?
kit said,
August 7, 2008 @ 10:32 am
I hope there’s an option where we can archive messages faster and even new messages. An option also where you can stop the message from sending(hmmm…) And also some sort of titles or menu of titles displayed on the right side..just like the blog interface.
Thanks…
So when do we expect the new features for 2008 to take effect? Tnx
Jason said,
August 11, 2008 @ 12:44 am
I agree that the People Map might not be a useful feature for everybody, but for some groups that have a Geographic base it comes in handy, for example I have members in 2-3 geographic regions and I need to track how many in which so that we can customise our meet-ups to the regions having a reasonable member volume.
Top Improvements Needed in Yahoo! Groups:
1. Meetup like feature that allows you to set up a group meeting and keep track of people who (a) accept, (b) decline or (c) maybe. This would make Yahoo Groups very competitive with “meetup” or “invite” only sites. Right now it is hard to deal with multiple posts and keeping track who accepted/declined.
2. Wiki like interface for databases, i.e. nicer interface with more rich text possible for DBs so that valuable information stored in Databases is easily searchable, viewable and presentable on the front page, not burried a few layers below. We place high importance to the DBs and have several hundred entries in some of them. Would also be nice to run stats, totals and filters, on the different table columns.
3. Expand on the DB & link features, merging them and bringing them an end user interface that is viewable on the main page, along with the messages. Simple example: If I add a link in the DB it would be nice to have it clickable. A deduping featuer would also be beneficial.
4. A customisable front/home site with widget like features to place important things up front and in your users’ face; e.g. calendar, it is not getting the attention it should where it is. If I could add it to the front page, everbody would see it and interact. Along these lines it would also be nice to control what is publicly viewable and what not, e.g. might want to show part of DB contents to potential members as an apetiser, but keep some crucial information private until members sign up. Such as a catalog or directory, where you keep contact details hidden. This helps to expose the Yahoo groups to potential members as more than just a chat group with rich features.
Roxanne said,
August 13, 2008 @ 3:09 pm
Hello,
Just want to say thank you, Keep up the good work guys.
Good Luck!
Pamela Tatt said,
August 16, 2008 @ 10:24 pm
My problem is Databases — can we please have more!!!
I run a charity knitting group and need lots of databases to keep track of charities/donations/monthly projects etc. Because of the limited number I have been forced have off-group databases which totally confuse many of my members most of whom are up in years and not very computer literate.
HELP!!!
judith said,
August 18, 2008 @ 9:52 pm
What would make my day and sure a few others is when you go into archives and want to delate them , it’s a pain to have to do a page at a time why can’t a months worth be done .
Ithe having to click on each attacment to view it takes alot of time why can’t they come full size to see with out all the hassel like other mail accounts do. All you see is a tiny pic or what ever is sent, and have to click one at a time to see it the normal size. Work on the things already on the mail not add new stuff no one will use.
Wendy Cutler said,
August 22, 2008 @ 10:44 am
Is anyone reading this any more? Can’t you admin people remove the spam postings? Not to mention, ban the last poster and others from posting?
Not seeing any replies from yahoo and seeing the off-topic postings make me think this is not a forum that yahoo is paying attention to any more, which may be why the useful postings have dropped off – I see there’s been nothing since the spam one three days ago.
Ben Young said,
August 27, 2008 @ 1:53 am
I agree with Wendy. If this is going to be a blog for spam artists rather than one which is for useful suggestions AND REPLIES BY THE YAHOO TEAM then it is getting to the point of marking Yahoo Groups Blog as spam.
OK Leonard or another member of the groups team…….PLEASE RESPOND.
Waiting said,
August 30, 2008 @ 12:23 am
When is the attachment archiving coming back? You state on July 14 that you’re working on it and that was 6 weeks ago. You gave us a 15 MB attachment size, but my group has capped attachment sending size at 7.5 MB to accommodate our members on dial-up and we will not allow a full 15 MB attachment through until the archiving is back so our dial-up members can switch to the Daily Digest setting and pick and chose what attachments they really want. Until the archiving comes back, we really can’t, in fairness to all our members, make full use of the 15 MB attachment size.
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Beth said,
September 10, 2008 @ 9:40 pm
I am very excited to hear of changes to the group calendar. Our group would love to have rsvp capabilites, where we can click on the event on the calendar, and respond whether or not we can make it, make a comment if we need to, and allow all the other members to see who is and isn’t attending. I am also excited about the message board changes, that will allow me to highlight topics. Thank you on your continued dedication to improving the Yahoo Groups experience.
Edgardo said,
September 15, 2008 @ 10:47 am
Thank you for all the work. Would it be possible to attach pictures to the Birthday Reminders?
rkenneth said,
September 17, 2008 @ 9:10 am
Happy to hear improvements are in the works. I haven’t seen any mention of RSS, so I’ll mention it. We need to be able to subscribe to our groups’ posts via RSS.
Lauren said,
October 15, 2008 @ 7:10 pm
AMEN to the meetup functionality. My group needs the RSVP abilities too!
Dave said,
October 18, 2008 @ 12:29 pm
How about adressing the Grouply Problem?
bernadette pielow said,
October 19, 2008 @ 6:39 pm
WE REALLY NEED AN RSVP FEATURE!!!! It would really help us plan our group events!!!
Robert Dobbins said,
October 20, 2008 @ 2:28 am
Quote: “Ability to charge an optional subscription fee for membership to your groups (we have no plans to get in the middle of the transaction, just make it easy for you to make sure members are paying).”
Please notify me when this dream becomes a reality.
kandy said,
October 23, 2008 @ 5:19 pm
This is a wonderful idea
kandy
Bill said,
October 25, 2008 @ 6:27 pm
“Member profiles” (you call it Group Profiles) is great. At first I didn’t realize that it included the people map.
The subscription fee option will be very useful.
I would like to see even MORE flexibility in scheduling repeating events in Calendar. For example, I might want to post a reminder to repeat “every 8 days”.
Thanks!
Sreenadh said,
October 29, 2008 @ 2:54 am
From the past 1 week or so we getting numerous problems with Yahoo Message Approval system. Some of the problems are -
* The group moderators approves the messages but still they will NEVER APPEAR in the group! (most of the times)
* The members post the messages, and those messages will appear in the pending messages section, BUT WITHOUT THEIR CONTENTS!!
If the members cannot expect that what they posted will not appear in the group, if moderators cannot be sure that the mail they approve will appear in the group (instead those mails just vanish into thin air!) – the what use with all the other useless features?!!
Of course Yahoo Group is the BEST. Sure. But the recent problems shows that the recent updates to the Yahoo Groups has affected even the basic functionalities of the group (message posting and approval) thus totally buggy!!!
Our group (Ancient_Indian_Astrology) was a moderated group with 2500+ members. But due the recent bugs, we were FORCED to make it an unmoderatated group to avoid missing of messages posted (during posting as well as during approval) !!! Please…..Please……do something to prevent this collapse of an excellent service yahoo provides – i.e, Yahoo Groups. Please make them dependable and robust as it was a week ago.
charles said,
November 23, 2008 @ 6:12 pm
I wish that the emails did not have all of the old post strung out and repeated every time someone post. Can there not be an intelligent threading or something in the emails so we do not have to dig through screen after screen of the same repeated post every time someone post via email? This is what I hate about Yahoo Groups and wish all of my groups went to a true forum software instead of the Yahoo Groups because of the awful emails sent from the groups. I do not need to see the post being replied to and every other post replied to before that one many time over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over – hopefully you get the point.
jake said,
December 4, 2008 @ 6:55 pm
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Fermin Hernandez said,
December 29, 2008 @ 9:23 pm
It’s been more than six months since this message was published and we have been experiencing problems with foreign characters. We write mostly in Spanish in one of my groups and we have been receiving giberish instead of what the member originally. I contacted customer service and was redirected to this page but I don’t find a deadline or a commitment to solvethis issue. When could we expect this to be solved? Thanks