Three pieces of very good news on the bug front this week:

1. Yahoo!’s operations team has figured out how to redirect traffic around the "severed cable problem ", eliminating significant email delays for groups (note: there was a separate issue that began affecting some Yahoo! Mail users yesterday, but the problem would have affected their mail generally and would not be limited to Yahoo! Groups messages).

2. The problem preventing YMail/Rocketmail and Broadband Partner users from joining (and creating) groups has been fixed. The join process should now work for them in the same way as everyone else. They no longer first have to create an alias.

(Note however, that when these users add files/photos/links/etc., they will find that their full email addresses are exposed unless they do take the time create an alias (and then select that alias (or "profile") on the Edit Membership Page). See below for further information on how these users can create an alias.)

3. The "103 errors" that were affecting some dial-up users trying to add photos to groups (that have been migrated to the new photos platform ) has been addressed by increasing the time limits before our system generates this error. This change should largely eliminate this problem, although it may still recur in cases where a user is on a particularly slow connection and/or is trying to upload a particularly big image.

(However, the "sort problem" with albums on the new platform that was fixed in November has temporarily returned. It will be fixed in early January.)

Thanks to our engineering team for their hard work in getting these fixes in place before the Holiday lockdown on new pushes. Thanks to our users for their patience in working around these issues. And best wishes for a wonderful Holiday season to all!

Gordon Strause
Yahoo! Groups Product Manager

P.S. As always, if you’re still experiencing problems (related to these issues or others) and need help from Yahoo!, the way to get help is to contact Customer Support:

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/members/forms/forms_index.html

While we do read the comments posted to the blog, it is NOT the way to get help with individual issues.

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CREATING AN ALIAS

FOR YMAIL/ROCKETMAIL USERS (and regular yahoo.com users)
- Creating an alias simply requires clicking the "Add new profile" link from the Edit Membership page
(the page can also be accessed directly by going to: https://edit.yahoo.com/identity/manage).
- Click "Add Alias" and enter your desired Alias in the box provided and click "Save" directly to the right. If the Alias you want is available, it will then appear automatically as an Alias. If the Alias is already in use, you’ll receive a message that says "This alias is not available. Please try entering another."
(Note: The Profiles Blog has some useful tutorials on this if you want visual instructions).

FOR BROADBAND PARTNER USERS (AT&T/SBCGlobal, Rogers, Verizon, British Telecom, Telecom New Zealand)
(though this may not work for Telecom New Zealand users)
- Go to http://manage.members.yahoo.com/FULLEMAILADDRESSHERE
(replacing “FULLEMAILADDRESSHERE” with their full email address. So, for example, if the user’s email address was jerry313@att.net, they would enter http://manage.members.yahoo.com/jerry313@att.net )
- Click on the "View My Profiles" link in the navigation at the top of the page
- Click the "Create New Public Profile" button
- Once finished, click the "Finished Editing" button

Update: As noted below, the problems caused by the severed cable are NOT limited to Yahoo! users in India. ALL groups are potentially affected.

That said, it’s certainly possible that other issues, unrelated to the cable, may also be causing some groups to have issues. So if your group is experiencing problems that you believe are unrelated to the cable (and all problems other than delays in messages from the group to individual mail accounts fall in this category), please do what you should always do in these situations: contact Customer Care:

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/members/forms/forms_index.html

We do read all comment posted on the blog. But the only way to actually get help from Yahoo! with a problem is to contact Customer Care.

———–

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=ayPbWf_7l17w&refer=europe

The severed cable described in the article above is affecting the data connections for Yahoo! between the US and India.  One consequence is that group members may find the delivery of some mail messages delayed until this problem is resolved (which could be days or weeks).

This problem is likely to primarily affect Yahoo! Groups users in India but will not be limited to them. So if you suspect you’re not receiving all messages that have been posted to a group, we highly encourage you to visit the group’s message archive.

Thank you,

- Gordon
Yahoo! Groups Team

UPDATE: It appears the work around described below does NOT work for Telecom New Zealand (TNZ) users. Until we can push a fix,  there only option is to join groups as email only users by being added or subscribing via email.

There is currently a bug that is preventing Yahoo! Broadband partner users (which include AT&T/SBCGlobal, Rogers, Verizon, British Telecom, Telecom New Zealand) from being able to easily join (or create) groups on the web. This bug has the same root cause as the similar problem affecting YMail and Rocketmail users (and the experience for the user is a similar loop), but the work around to solve the problem is slightly different.

For the moment, these users must first create an alias before they can create a group. To do so, they should:
- Go to http://manage.members.yahoo.com/FULLEMAILADDRESSHERE
(replacing “FULLEMAILADDRESSHERE” with their full email address. So, for example, if the user’s email address was jerry313@att.net, they would enter http://manage.members.yahoo.com/jerry313@att.net )
- Click on the "View My Profiles" link in the navigation at the top of the page
- Click the "Create New Public Profile" button
- Once finished, click the "Finished Editing" button

Now these users should be able to join (or create) groups.

Meanwhile, we’re working on a fix to make this work around unnecessary. And these users can also be added to a group (or can subscribe via email by sending email to GROUPNAME-subscribe@yahoogroups.com) without going through this process either.

Sorry for the extra hassle for these users. But note that the problem only affects users of these services who are joining a group for the first time (and who have not yet got an alias for other reasons). Users with these email addresses who have joined groups in the past on the web will not be affected.

Thanks to all of the moderators who joined us at one of our Groups Moderator Town Hall events held in various geographical locations across the nation in 2008!

At these events, we give local moderators an opportunity to come together to meet and exchange ideas with other Groups owners and moderators in their area, meet members of the Yahoo! Groups team, and ask direct questions of the team in a panel discussion. The feedback and suggestions we hear at these events provide the team with yet another avenue to understand the needs of our moderators and identify opportunities to make the Yahoo! Groups product even better.

You can catch a glimpse of these events firsthand by viewing the photos sets below:

Groups Moderator Town Hall New York

Groups Moderator Town Hall Sunnyvale

Groups Moderator Town Hall Chicago

Groups Moderator Town Hall Portland

Groups Moderator Town Hall Atlanta

Groups Moderator Town Hall Dallas

Thank you for making these events a success and thank you for being a part of the Groups Community!

Best,
Jami
Groups Community Manager

Because of a hardware problem at one of Yahoo’s colocations, a number of Yahoo! properties are having technical issues. Yahoo! Groups users are being slightly affected because the Yahoo! Calendar (which Groups leverages) is temporarily "read only" (meaning you can’t add new events).

In more positive news, we have pushed a fix to the problem which surfaced this week preventing moderators from being able to view images in pending messages (generally, we never push code on a Friday but this bug seemed severe enough to warrant it). Note that one element (the "preview" link) on the edit pending message page is still broken, but we wanted to get this out regardless so that moderators who needed to view images before approving them could begin doing so immediately.

Thanks for your patience,
Yahoo! Groups Team

Since the holidays are traditionally a time when we turn our thoughts to others, I felt it would be a perfect time to feature the Gift Of Lovingkindness group as somewhat of a reminder that positive and loving thoughts and actions are one of the best gifts you can give, not only to your families, but to everyone you come into contact with.

This group offers a place for you to share your experiences with Meditation and Lovingkindness Meditation, to express insights, asks questions and most importantly, lend support to one another in your practice. No strong meditation practice is required. This group does not follow a particular religion and is open to anyone who is open and interested in lovingkindness.

Meditation is also a great way to give back to yourself and relieve the stress typically felt throughout the Holiday Season!

Enjoy,
Jami
Groups Community Manager

Update: 12/4 11:20 AM PT- We’re aware of the problem some groups are having approving pending messages with images and are working on a fix. This issue is unrelated to the coming change with attachment storage (no code for that has yet been pushed to production).

Back by popular demand and coming soon — Yahoo! Groups will be enhancing and reinstating a feature that will give moderators the ability to archive/store email attachments in Groups (removed 2003). This will allow your group members to retrieve attachments along with the original message at any time and not have to store them on their computers.

Benefits at a glance:

• Adds valuable content to the group archive accessible by current/future users
• Enables users to upload content (photos, files etc.) with an email vs. having to upload each file
• Reduces the size of emails, optimal for low bandwidth, dial-up users
• Enables digest and web only members to have access to attachments
  

Please keep in mind that this new feature is 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 the feature (if it turns out there are unforeseen technical problems)

This feature will be available in the next few weeks; we’ll post more information as we get closer to the release date with details.

We look forward to hearing about how you like this feature and what we can do to make it even better.

Thanks!
Yahoo! Groups Team