My name is Melissa and I’m the Community Manager for the profiles team and work with Jami, the Groups Community Manager.

Jami mentioned that many of you have had questions about the new profiles system and I wanted to share an update with you all.

We appreciate all your feedback and comments and have been working hard over the past week to make a few changes to improve your profiles experience.

We understand that some of you miss the old profile; however, Yahoo! is committed to build upon this new profile and we hope you will send us your suggestions to make it even better.

Now to the changes we’ve already made. Some of you may have noticed that while perusing your friend’s profiles you previously came across empty profiles, making it difficult for you to learn more about a specific user. We’ve repopulated ALL of the profiles (whether they’ve logged into the new system or not) with the information that a user had previously entered, and set anything that was public before, back to public. This includes display images and limited profile information and details.

What this means for you, as a user, is that now when you’re in a Yahoo! Group or a chat room, you’ll be able to learn a little more about the user you’re talking to, whether they’ve updated their profile or not.

In addition to this, we’ve also updated some of the error messages you were seeing to alleviate some of the confusion. Before, if you searched for your own ID before you migrated over to the new profiles system , you saw a blank profile. Now, you’ll be taken right into the new profiles system and will have the opportunity to update your information right there.

If you come across an alias that hasn’t been linked to a main ID, you’ll be told “This user has chosen not to link this Alias with their profile on Yahoo! in order to maintain their privacy.”

We also heard from you that linking aliases wasn’t clearly explained, so we’ve updated the text to do a better job of explaining what’s going on, and how to make yourself (and your aliases) discoverable.

You all have been incredibly patient and we appreciate all of the feedback you’ve provided us over the past few weeks. We know that there are several other improvements you all would like to see, and we’re working hard to incorporate them into the new profiles system.

For more information on the changes to profiles, please visit the profiles news blog .

Melissa Daniels
Yahoo! Community Manager

We would like your input on potentially modifying or removing the Guideline prohibiting the use of Yahoo! Groups for commercial or advertising purposes . Our original goal in establishing the Guideline against commercial use was primarily to prevent spammers from using Yahoo! Groups. We still intend to strongly enforce this prohibition but believe that the broad prohibition on no commercial or advertising use of Groups may not be the best approach. We have not made any final decisions and would need to figure out how it would work, but we wanted to get your input as we consider potential alternatives.

Here are the two changes we are considering:

POSSIBLE CHANGE #1: Removing Guideline # 6 (The ban against using Groups for commercial or advertising purposes).

POSSIBLE CHANGE #2: Adding a line to Guideline # 4 (Stay on topic) to let group owners know that if they post off topic commercial messages they may run the risk that it is considered spam, which is not allowed.

What do you all think of this proposal, do you have any concerns? Please share with us by posting in the comments area below.

Thanks!
Yahoo! Groups Team

Big thanks to everyone for posting all of the great input and suggestions on the new Abandoned Groups Guideline we’re developing.

Next steps are for us to continue making our way through all of the comments you left and incorporating our thoughts, then drafting the post. Once we have the internal sign-off, we’ll share the new Guideline with all of you.

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts on how best to resolve this on-going issue!

Best,
Yahoo! Groups Team

As shared in recent posts, the Yahoo! Groups team has been busy working to strengthen and improve the Groups site by building a new technology platform that will allow us to release features and fix bugs much faster than ever before. This work made possible the recent updates to Photos and is a first step toward all of the changes described in the blog post, what’s in store for Yahoo! Groups . We also have members of the team focused on developing some entirely new features; including a new kind of application platform we call "grouplets".

Those of you who have experimented with the PeopleMap have already gotten a sneak peak at our first grouplet, and yesterday we pushed a new release that offers eight new kinds of grouplets (Address Book, Birthday List, Favorites, For Sale, Give Away, Group Profile, Jobs, and Places Map) and the ability to add as many different grouplets to your group as you like (though you always have to start from one of these templates).

As with the PeopleMap, the "secret sauce" of all these applications (which have essentially the same "back end", only with different fields pre-selected as defaults) is the ability for you as a moderator to customize the grouplets to fit the exact needs of your group. So, for example, a parents group might want to use the Places Map application to create a list of after school programs in a particular neighborhood, while a local dog owners group might use the same grouplet to create a map of parks with dog runs.

Keep in mind that grouplets are still in early beta, and we aren’t yet providing links to them from the group home page, but you can try them out and add new grouplets to your group by going to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/YOUR_GROUP_NAME/grouplets/manager

Your group members can then access any grouplets you have added by going to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/YOUR_GROUP_NAME/grouplets/subscriptions

(NOTE: Keep in mind that in both cases you’ll need to replace "YOUR_GROUP_NAME" with the actual name of your group.)

We look forward to hearing what you think, whether the feedback is about the idea as a whole, about specific grouplets, or about ideas for new grouplets and new features related to grouplets.

To provide feedback, send email to groupslabs@yahoogroup.com (or join the Groups Lab group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/groupslabs if you want to participate in an ongoing discussion).

Please keep in mind that grouplets are still in early beta, which means:

• You can expect to see bugs.

• You can expect to see missing features and usability problems.

• You can expect down time and even the removal of some grouplets (if it turns out there is no interest in them or unforeseen technical problems).

In short, hold off on introducing grouplets to your group if you are concerned about experiencing any of the inconveniences listed above that come along with trying out a beta feature. If these kinds of inconveniences don’t scare you, we’d love to hear what you think.

Meanwhile, here are a few of the new options and features that we already know we want to add to grouplets in the coming months:

• The ability to upload photos to grouplet entries.

• The ability for members to comment on entries.

• The ability to add new types of fields such as multiple choice questions, composite fields, and multiple instance fields.

• A notification system that can alert group members to new activity in grouplets.

• The ability to import data into grouplets from the database, offline spreadsheets, or other sources.

• The ability to move data from one grouplet to another.

We look forward to hearing what else you want!

Thanks!
Yahoo! Groups Team

Abandoned Groups, or groups whose owner has gone inactive, have been an issue within the Groups community for some time. While it may seem as though this is a simple issue to address, it’s actually fairly complicated. There are several factors involved that make it difficult for us to re-assign ownership responsibilities without the original owner’s consent.

In order address this on-going issue, we are going to create a new Guideline regarding owner responsibilities to lay the groundwork for transferring the ownership of a group where the group owner is not fulfilling his/her responsibilities. For example, this Guideline might inform group owners that they are responsible for monitoring group activity to make sure the group remains true to its purpose and that pending messages and members are processed in a timely fashion.

Our general philosophy at Yahoo! Groups is that group owners are free to run their groups in any way they want, as long as their actions do not violate the Yahoo! Terms of Service . However, we never intended this to mean that a group owner could essentially abandon a group, without first making sure that someone was in place to take over. And we have heard from many users on the Groups Suggestion board who have urged us to help them when a group owner stops being an engaged owner. When members have invested significant amounts of time and effort into a group, we understand they feel it isn’t fair for their group to be ruined because the owner disappears. We agree.

At the same time, we need to make sure any system for transferring ownership of a group is not abused by those who might try to “steal” a group and does not punish group owners who are simply taking a short vacation (as opposed to those who are truly absentee).

So while we’re still working out the details and the timelines, we are considering implementing a process along the lines of the following:

• Group owners who do not take any action in their group for an extended period of time may receive a notification that they are risk of having another member promoted to co-owner status.

• The owner will then have some period of time to respond to this notification. If the owner responds, then nothing will change in their group.

• But if the group owner fails to respond within a specified time frame, then another group member will be promoted to co-owner status. If the group has moderators, the new owner(s) likely will come from that list. If there are no moderators, then the new owner will be automatically selected from the Group membership based on some combination of seniority and participation. Alternatively, we are also considering giving group owners the ability to name someone as their predecessor should their activity/moderation be inactive for the specified time frame (similar to a living trust).

As we work to define the best terms for this Guideline, we’d like to hear your thoughts on the process we’ve proposed above.

• What should the specified time frame be that a group owner is absent before someone else within the group be promoted?
• Should Yahoo! promote a moderator that exists within the group or should the current owner have to name someone who will take over in the event they go inactive when they start the group?
• What other criteria should we use for deciding who becomes the group owner in a situation where there is no active moderator or “trustee”?
• What should happen if the original group owner does reappear, months, or even years later?
• What other concerns or suggestions do you have that we haven’t addressed here? Please share with us by commenting below.

Thanks for your help to shape this important new Guideline!
Yahoo! Groups Team

Rather than commenting in my previous post on this topic, I wanted to post follow up responses to some of your suggestions and concerns in a new post. First, I want to apologize about the lack of notice you all received regarding the changes to your profiles. While it wasn’t a change that the Groups team was directly involved with, we know we could have done a better job on communicating the pending changes.

There are several common concerns I’ve seen that I would like to address:

First, I wanted to reassure you that we are reading through all of your comments and concerns and sharing them with the profiles team. There is one request in particular that I want to call out and that’s the request to bring back the date that a user created a profile ("Member since XXXX") we see the value in this and we’ve already shared this feedback with the profiles team for consideration.

I also wanted to ask that you contact the profiles Customer Care team with requests to retrieve information that was contained in your profile or aliases that you may have lost. Please remember, your profile will appear blank UNTIL you go through the new profile migration process, here — please be sure you update your new profile prior to contacting Customer Care about any missing information. After you update, if you’re still missing information, you can reach Customer Care by completing the web form found here .

We’ve also shared your recommendation of adding a “Favorite Websites” section with the profiles team. This would turn entries into clickable links and look into the possibility of migrating the data that was in "cool links" area into this new section.

Additional explanations to some of the concerns you’ve raised:

- Even though last name is "required", it does not show up to anyone you have not made a connection. "Display name" is the only thing that does show up to everyone. If you don’t feel comfortable providing your full name, many users have opted to include a last initial instead of a full last name.

- We understand that some users are receiving a "disabled by an administrator" message and are currently looking into this issue.

- Several of you have asked about the third party applications checkbox and why it only becomes unclickable when you select "My Connections", rather than "Anyone.” This is found under the "Settings/Who can see this on my profile/About Me" section. You are unable to deselect “share my information with 3rd party companies” when your profile is set to public/anyone because it is viewable by anyone— including third parties. When you set your permissions to be viewable by anyone, there is no restriction on who can or cannot view your profile and the information contained in it.

– For more information on how to use your profile, start with the new profiles tutorial, l ocated here .

– To bind your aliases with a profile you must first select which aliases you want to bind to your primary profile. To do this, click here .

- Please note that you must FIRST go through the new user experience before you are able to bind your aliases to your profile. Get started here . Please visit the profiles news blog for more information on this specific topic.

- To add altogether new aliases to your account, go here .
Please note that you must FIRST go through the new user experience before you are able to bind your aliases to your profile. Get started here .

- Last, as an FYI, I wanted to point out that the age/location information that currently appears on Groups Member pages may become increasingly out of date since it is not being updated when a user updates their profile.

I’ll post more information as it comes available.

Thank you,
Jami
Groups Community Manager

Yesterday Yahoo! profiles launched their new service, geared towards a more open and social Yahoo!. This new version of Yahoo! profiles has lots of great features that can help you stay connected with your friends and family. When you create a new Yahoo! profile page, you’ll be able to add photos, information about yourself and invite your friends to connect with you.

Your profile is all about you-your connections , your updates , your privacy settings , your life. We want to help you better connect with the people that matter to you in the easiest way possible, whether it’s sharing your recent updates or connecting with people from your address book- we’re here to help.

We realize that many Yahoo! Groups users and moderators previously used the profiles system to verify user’s age and contact details. With the new profiles system, once a user updates their profile you’ll only see the limited contact card (displaying the user’s name, location, age, gender and status message) unless you are a connection for that user, or the user has updated their permissions.

This means that until a user updates their profile information, you’ll see a blank contact card for that user. Each user will have to go in and update their profile in the new system, and decide whether or not they want their data to be viewable by all users. For more information on how to do this, visit the profiles news blog , or the profiles help pages .

Some of you have expressed your concern with being unable to verify whether or not a user is over 18. Don’t worry—this feature is built in to the Yahoo! system—any users under the age of 18 will not be able to get to a group that is marked as mature content that may not be appropriate for minors. This takes place whether or not a user has updated their profile, or whether or not you can view their profile. As a group owner, you don’t have to do anything to verify a user’s age.

Thanks for sticking with us while we make these updates to the profiles system. The new profile features a lot of changes that help make your profile on Yahoo! easier to use and manage, but we know there are some growing pains.

Thanks for your patience!

We are aware of the questions and different issues some of you may be experiencing with your new profile; the Profiles Team will soon be posting an update that I’ll re-post here that should answer many of your questions.

Thank you for your patience.

Best,
Jami
Groups Community Manager

You do so much for your community.
We’d like to give something back.

Save your seat for the Yahoo! Groups Moderator Town Hall

————————

Join Yahoo! Groups for a special evening, just for moderators, where you can:

- Hear the latest Yahoo! Groups news.

- Exchange ideas with other moderators.

- Participate in a panel discussion with the Yahoo! Groups team.

- Enjoy complimentary food and beverages.

————————

Yahoo! Groups Town Hall — Bay Area

- Yahoo! Inc, Headquarters
- Thursday, October 23
- 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

Click here to register now

Last week we hosted a Yahoo! Groups Workshop for our Groups Power Users. Below is a link to the transcript of this Workshop so you too can benefit from reading the answers to the questions raised.

Click here to read the Workshop transcript

We’ll be holding more Yahoo! Groups Workshops geared toward more advanced topics in the future, share topics you’d like to discuss in the comments area below.

Best,
Jami
Groups Community Manager