74 Comments »

1. Gil. said,

   May 20, 2009 @ 8:06 pm

   What the devil is this? If I want to “update” my friends about what I’m doing, I know how to send email. And what is the difference between unchecking Share My Updates and setting them to Never?

   Am I to expect to have people I barely know send me invites to Connect? Great. Thank you so much. I can’t wait.

2. Arafin said,

   May 20, 2009 @ 9:28 pm

   Would it simply be a coincidence, or is your new feature connected to the current inability to upload pictures to the Yahoo Group I own? Sorry if I seem suspicious, but nearly every time you role out a new “upgrade” it causes something else to stop working. Please, can’t you just leave well enough alone?

   If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

3. Lyn said,

   May 20, 2009 @ 9:34 pm

   I agree with Gil. I discovered “updates” when peculiar personal information was broadcast about a dear friend on her Messenger listing. I asked her why the heck she was telling “that” to the world, and she had no idea that this item was being tattle-taled … once we figured it out, we both scrambled to recover our privacy. BAD Yahoo! Please change all the defaults to “NEVER.”

4. myra said,

   May 20, 2009 @ 9:37 pm

   hi to all my friends…

5. Administrator said,

   May 20, 2009 @ 9:43 pm

   All updates on Yahoo! Groups are defaulted to not share.

   Can’t speak to other Yahoo! properties since different properties have different expectations around privacy. Yahoo! Buzz, to take the most extreme example, is specifically about spreading the word on interesting content, so it would absolutely make sense to me if the defaults were set to publish there.

6. Administrator said,

   May 20, 2009 @ 9:44 pm

   @Arafin: If you’re having problems uploading photos, definitely let Customer Care know so we can investigate what the the problem is:
   http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/ownmod/forms/forms_index.html

   It might be a coincidence or it might not. But we won’t know until we can investigate based on the information you provide Customer Care.

7. A C Snag said,

   May 20, 2009 @ 10:06 pm

   This absolutely scares me. It seems everyone that makes money off the internet is looking for ways to connect more people. Recently I signed up for Gmail. I was expecting privacy then I find that Gmail is selling all the information they have on anyone. I Yahoo planning on doing this too. It’s hard enough as it is to keep from having identities stolen. Now Yahoo is working on making as easy as possible for people to use information on the internet to commit fraud. How long before Yahoo gets sued for providing info to criminals?

8. Jim said,

   May 20, 2009 @ 10:08 pm

   Thank you for making this opt-out by default. I’ve just found out how much I had started broadcasting without my knowledge on another major provider.

   I would like to think that people will be more interested in my posts, files etc. because they are interested in the topic (subscribed to the same group) than because I said it. I suppose some users’ egos need greater support.

9. Mike said,

   May 20, 2009 @ 10:16 pm

   Why is Yahoo working on this when such things as the search function is not working properly? And don’t tell us that we should report it if it is affecting our group – Yahoo knows there is a problem, across several groups, so why isn’t Yahoo trying to fix the problem? If it’s across several groups, it’s a problem in the software for all groups, not just a few groups.

   FIX IT.

   Why does Yahoo develop and launch a new product, THEN tell people what is a fait accompli, then have to scramble to fix a problem (such as allowing an invasion of our privacy) because the users didn’t have an opportunity to discuss the ‘newest, greatest, Yahoo development since sliced bread’, and thus have an opportunity to tell Yahoo what problems we, as owners and moderators, see as problems, and allow Yahoo to fix the problem BEFORE launch, or even before expending time, effort and money in developing the ‘newest, greatest, Yahoo development since sliced bread’ because we DO NOT NEED that ‘newest, greatest, Yahoo development since sliced bread’?

10. Jim said,

    May 20, 2009 @ 10:29 pm

    OK, I just checked my profile (which required me to enter my full name – I’m not happy about that) and found the following default settings:
    - Share My Updates – On
    - Share My Updates – Personal Info – Anyone
    - Allow my connections to share my information labeled “My Connections” with third-party applications they install and developers who made the applications
    - Hide My Profile – Off
    - Allow users to search for me by my display name, full name or e-mail address

    I note also that this (and whatever security it has) is beta software, so I can’t even be confident that changing all these settings will do what they’re supposed to do.

11. Ed Gould said,

    May 20, 2009 @ 10:29 pm

    I must say I am very much against this “feature” the email attachment has worked IMO extremely well. At the minimum if you were going to ram this down everybodies throat you should have informed the users. Telling us only stops people that are irate to take it out on the owners.

    It might help if a survey was done first. Now it comes across as a dictate and people (including me) do not like dictates. I can swallow a few but something like this a HUGE and really needed input from the users *BEFORE* implementing.
    It is now unclear as (at least in the past) there was a limit to the number of people that could view the page in question. I for one would rather the YAHOO groups remain as they were.

    Back it off and try doing research before implementing anything this drastic.

12. Administrator said,

    May 20, 2009 @ 10:52 pm

    @Mike: If you take the time to read the blog, you’ll see a continuous stream of updates about the work that is going on to fix message search:
    http://www.ygroupsblog.com/blog/?s=message+search
    We’ll have a new update on Friday or over the weekend: hopefully with very good news.

    @Jim: Sometimes people are interested in a topic no matter who is posting, while other times they may want to hear what their friends have to say about something but don’t care so much that they want to join a random group on a topic. It’s not an either/or thing.

    As for the defaults, as I said above they are all OFF for Groups. Nothing you post to a group will be shared unless you explicitly opt in. Full stop. But as I said above, it may well make sense for other Yahoo! properties to have different defaults.

    @Ed: Huge amounts of user research have gone into Updates. And the feature is not being rammed down users’ throats. As I mentioned above, the defaults for Groups are all set to off. You have to opt in.

13. Gil. said,

    May 20, 2009 @ 11:00 pm

    Okay, fine. I now realize after reading this again that Never refers to whether or not Yahoo will “prompt” me before sending out those updates. If I hadn’t been so mad, I wouldn’t have made that mistake.

    I’m with Lyn. Defaults on this should all be No and Never.

14. Administrator said,

    May 20, 2009 @ 11:11 pm

    Good post on one of the “groups about Groups” that really gets at the potential value of this feature:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/yahoo_group_of_groups/message/31476

15. Gil. said,

    May 20, 2009 @ 11:27 pm

    Just one problem, Administrator – you have to join that group to read the message. As if.

16. RS said,

    May 20, 2009 @ 11:43 pm

    Profiles is not a system I plan on using.

    For me, the only possible application as presented thus far would be to make a Profiles-specific ID which I purposely signed up to certain groups as a main ID in order to broadcast my activity in specific groups to other interested connections who connected specifically based on that interest point.

    My mother in Hoboken doesn’t care or even comprehend my addiction to play by e-mail games, and my activity there won’t mean doodly squat to her. Since its presently only ‘anyone’ ‘connections’ or ‘no one’ I have to make a slew of new IDs for each set of groups, depending on who I want connected to that group, and connect them in via that ID. Until its also ‘per connection’, That’s too much work. You still need categories of connections, so that I can choose to share things with only ‘family’, ‘work’, ‘friends’, ‘etc etc as I so choose to create. Right now this pig has lipstick but only three legs.

    Oh, and here’s the kicker. ALL of my connections would still have to be Yahoo users and go their profile pages to see these updates anyway. So now if I wanted this increasingly complex PR scheme to work, I first have to recruit them to Yahoo profiles, which few of them would even want to do, just to keep up with my posting. Yet another site for them to log in to. Yay, I’m sure they will love that.

    So far, this is not an improvement in my options or services. Shal’s post gives a lot of theoretical reasons how someone could be inspired by a user’s updates, but I just see it becoming very noisy on someone’s connections page very quickly. Can you ignore a profile user’s feeds if they become tedious? And how granular is that? Do you have to disconnect from them? Is a disconnection mutual? Can I be connected yet ignoring feeds from all the users services besides the ones I want?

    This still says “overly confusing furball” to me until its more streamlined. A whole page of instructions makes it feel overwhelming. I really think the cart was put before the horse on this project, and as a user, it still doesn’t interest me. I keep hoping, but no luck yet.

    Keep developing it, but make the core product work better before stapling all the other things on to it. I am glad you groups guys do seem to get what we want in developments, and had the good sense to finally roll something out in the “off” position. FWIW, I still feel heard by your team, and hold them up as an example to Yahoo of development process done well overall.

17. Administrator said,

    May 20, 2009 @ 11:46 pm

    It’s a group worth joining. And unfortunately, it wasn’t my message so I can’t repost it here.

    But it was in reply to a question about what the value of the new feature is, given folks can simply send an email to friends if they want to share their posts in Groups.

    Here was my (less compelling, though similar) response to the question:

    “First, emailing your friends, particularly if you want to email a bunch of them, takes time. First you have to repost the content, decide which friends you want to share it with, and then take the time to grab each email from your address book (assuming you have one). Not necessarily a big deal, but it’s not nothing either.

    But second, and I think much more importantly, email is a very different medium from Updates. When I send an email to someone, my expectation is that they will read it. And as a consequence, I’m very selective about what I email, since I know it places a burden on the recipients’ time.

    What this means is that there is tons of content I post to Groups (and other places) that I would never directly email to all my friends: everything from pictures of my kids, to links to interesting articles, to political causes, to reviews of restaurants, books, and movies, to requests for recommendations or advice.

    But while I would never email these posts/pics/questions/etc. directly to my friends, I would be quite happy to share this content with them and to hear what they have to say. In fact, in most cases, I really would like to get the reactions of any of my friends who is interested.

    For this kind of sharing, Updates is great for me because it requires no extra effort from me to share, and it places no social obligation on my connections. If they happen to see what I published and are interested enough to click through, great. But they feel no pressure.

    Of course, none of this might apply to you. But if so, just suppress the updates option and go about your normal business.”

    - Gordon

18. RS said,

    May 20, 2009 @ 11:48 pm

    Another question.

    What if I don’t want people to be *able* to send out updates from the group?

    How do I prevent that?

19. Administrator said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 12:05 am

    Unless you change your membership setting to “closed”, you can’t prevent users from opting into Updates. Of course, you can’t prevent them from emailing what they post to your group elsewhere either. Users ultimately get to decide where the content they post goes.

    That said, keep in mind that users can only send out as updates their own submissions. They can’t publish into Updates anyone else’s content.

    In addition, if your group is restricted, you still have complete control over who has access to your group.

20. David said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 1:17 am

    It has messed up the formatting om the MY Groups page so it is no longer usable as a link to all my groups

    A step backwards for me and I would prefer if Yahoo sorted out what does not work and ask me if I want to opt in to new features

    I am fairly computer literate but most of my members are not so this will actually put of my members using Yahoo

    Sort out the joining systym so it is easier for members as a start please

    Regards david

21. Vlaserted said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 1:53 am

    Отлично написано. Позитива конечно не хватает, но читал на одном дыхании

22. glitz said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 3:37 am

    I HATE THUMBNAILS!!!!! You can not share the pic and instructions on the site like you used to do. I belong to a craft group and I made something of my own design and wanted to share the pic and instructions on one page of email. ( Thumbnails are unacceptable you can not see the pic enough to know if you want to make it). This so called enhancement is nothing but garbage— you have to click two to three times to get the pic in the homepage of which I hardly ever go to. You are forcing us to do this. Not only that but when we do go there all you get is the pic NOT pic and instructions. I hate it and I know I am not alone in this complaint. Please put it back where we can share our craft products.

    Funny thing is if we take a pic from the web it comes thru regular size but if we send an attachement thru from our camera it comes in thumbnail. And I have not changed my camera settings everything is the same as it was except now when I do I get blasted thumbnails. Thanks Glitz

23. Stephanie HC said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 4:19 am

    >>Sometimes people are interested in a topic no matter who is posting, while other times they may want to hear what their friends have to say about something but don’t care so much that they want to join a random group on a topic. It’s not an either/or thing.<<

    Yes, and what about the previous post that that person was replying to? Now that will be shared as well if any portion of it remains in the message! What about people that “connect” to people that have not been approved as list/group members who may even have been removed all someone has to do is hit reply put in one word “Interesting!” and bingo the whole message goes to someone that should not receive it! For purely “light” chit chat groups I am sure it is OK but what of thoise groups where material is sensitive or confidenatial? Group owners and moderators should ALSO have a setting as to whether or not group information can be shared. Didnt we go through this before with Grouply?????

24. Michael said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 4:23 am

    Administrator said: “That said, keep in mind that users can only send out as updates their own submissions. They can’t publish into Updates anyone else’s content.”

    What if a user is replying by email, and their submission includes portions of another user’s post?

25. John Novack said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 4:36 am

    Computer types have a generic name for this “feature”

    Kindly known as “turd polishing”

    Groups has so many other less exciting issues to resolve, but of course that isn’t attractive.

    One example: orphan groups. Complaints for years, but still groups with dead or disappeared owners.
    Solution. Form another group. That inflates the numbers. Advertisers are deceived, that helps income. Doesn’t matter that the group members no loner have a leader.
    A solution was promised long ago, but instead we have a new “feature”

    No point in extending the list.
    the faceless ‘administrator” has no choice but to defend the official party line

26. Stephanie HC said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 4:39 am

    >>“First, emailing your friends, particularly if you want to email a bunch of them, takes time. First you have to repost the content, decide which friends you want to share it with, and then take the time to grab each email from your address book (assuming you have one). Not necessarily a big deal, but it’s not nothing either.<<

    Actually it is easy if you use an e-mail client like Outlook Express. I have several “groups” set up in OE eg “owners” for people that own dogs that I have bred, “women” for women friends that would be interested in specific things, and all I need to do is either add the one word owners or women to the To line or as a BCC and BINGO, off it goes.

    The point is that groups come in all flavors from light, fluffy chit chat that do not even need archives, to special interest and technical groups that use archives for reference, groups that support or fight various legislative issues, mental health support, research on health issues, religious groups, technical groups, and IMO the only ones who are really going to love this “sharing” concept are the first group! Certainly not mothers who have children with cerebral palsy or the sons and daughters of parents with Alzheimers, or people who are working on a technical project for a competition and need confidentiality. I was finally dragged into a social networking site and frankly, the whole thing is a waste of time, people must have no lives! Communicating in sound bites with nothing of substance. Groups or lists were and are great for people that wanted more than that, and still do. Never forget it.

27. CB said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 5:03 am

    I don’t understand how this is not a violation of a group’s privacy. One of the strong points has been that only members can see what’s posted. Now, someone updating can let information be seen by anyone they want, without the knowledge of other group members’ privacy. Even if only the updater’s message is sent, it most likely may include other information related to group messages. I also don’t like having to reveal a full name in the Yahoo Profiles. I agree with many here–this is NOT a good idea. Group owners should, at the very least, be able to delete this “feature” from being used with/for/on their groups.

28. moon said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 5:04 am

    yahoo filmldlr

29. Gabe Fineman said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 5:58 am

    You mentioned that
    >A user who has posted an answer to a tax question on an accounting group with PUBLIC ARCHIVES could in essence publish their answer to all their connections or anyone who comes across their profile

    What is a public archive? Can I allow non-members to see files in my group? How do I do this? I do not see it anywhere in Yahoo help.

30. kh said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 6:26 am

    You know, not everyone wants to be part of social networking. I can’t stand it and want nothing to do with it. You should not set things up so that it defaults to this. It’s no different than grouply who makes you opt out of evertything. I might not have such an issue with them if it defaults to needing to opt in for those wanting to do this. I totally agree with the user above that said this is something that group owners should be able to set up not to allow. It’s not something that I want and I know there are a LOT that feel the same way as I do about it. Please don’t set this up to default to on. It’s not fair especially to those that aren’t knowledgeable to figure it out or how to turn it off and opt out of it.

31. Richard La Flame said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 6:37 am

    First – I “Do Not” like this new addition to our Groups page.

    That being said – just “HOW” do I “Remove” that cloumn from “MY” personal
    Groups Page? I want to take it off or Edit it off of my personal groups page.

    Thank You

32. Ceridwen777 said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 6:38 am

    How can I get rid of this text that appears on all the groups on the my groups page?

    “Alternate user profiles (Aliases) are not supported for sharing updates. To enable, please use your primary user profile.”

    I am NOT interested in sharing updates, and have already said so on the form. But this text won’t go away! It messes with the formatting – virtually eliminating the “simple” feature for viewing my groups…

    GRRRR!
    Ceridwen777

33. kh said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 7:18 am

    The post you referred to is from a person that is a known grouply lover. So anything he has to say is irrelevant to this issue. He’s not going to answer our concerns for this “feature”. He’s all for it and we know that already.

    Also when I checked I was “not” defaulted to not share it was all defaulted to on. I went in and changed it.

    The concern here is that even though the person opting in may only be able to share their own posts what about when they include past digests as some forget and do and an entire past post from another member which many do? That’s still an invasion of privacy for those not wanting to have anything to do with this type of social networking. So unfortunately it looks like the only ones with any say are the ones that are all for this because the rest of us don’t seem to have any say at all. We’re stuck with it no matter what we like or don’t like.

    You said you did research before implementing this but I never saw anything asking our opinion. How about the rest of you? Is this why nothing was done about the grouply issue? Because you were getting ready to roll out your own even worse “feature”? I say worse because at least with grouply we could opt out our groups. It doesn’t look like you’re giving us that option here on yahoo groups.

    How are you going to address the issue for those members that have a problem with what they post on a group for “members” to see but don’t want non members seeing? Also like the gentleman above said what about the fact this is going out to all contacts including those that aren’t interested in that subject. I sure don’t want to get a bunch of updates from people on things I have no interest in even if they are friends or families. What about those that belong to groups on depression or illnesses for instance. Do you think they want what they post going out to non members?

    Even though I have a hobby and belong to a lot of groups on that hobby, I sure don’t want to be inundated with posts from people about that hobby. I’ve probably already seen the posts myself if I’m interested in that group or chosen which posts I wish to read or delete. I don’t want to get them from others just because they’re on my contact list.

    How will you deal with these things?

34. Bobbie said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 8:02 am

    I agree with CB. How is this NOT a violation of Yahoo’s own TOS? How can we protect the privacy and ownership of our members’ posts if other members are permitted to publish them to whomever they please? The only way a moderator could ensure protection would be to moderate the entire group and manually crop all quotations from each and every message that was posted. Not only would that disable discussion continuity, it would be virtually impossible on groups with a large active membership!

    …and to answer KH: None of us had any idea this was in the works but why should Y!G ask us, just because we USE the product extensively and depend on it to remain safe and reliable for our members? I don’t believe they care whether they make our experience better or worse. All of these new features have been fun and exciting for them to develop and show off but they’re not the ones that have to manage them once they’re implemented system-wide!

    Maybe now that they’ve celebrated this marvelous technological achievement they can focus on fixing the “bones” of this beast! I haven’t been able to approve memberships or moderated memberships “via email” for weeks ~and it’s not just me or the groups I personally moderate! Customer Care says they’re aware of the problem and working to resolve it…. Yeah, right. Maybe after they build another fluff piece.

35. Bobbie said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 8:16 am

    IMHO, “Social networking” is nothing but publishing your diary for the world to read. I hope Y!G takes the time to read their own TOS before they end up with a class action lawsuit on their hands for enabling and encouraging copyright infringement.

36. HR Mitchell said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 8:24 am

    ADDITIONALLY…

    Many groups deal with confidential issues. Group owners need to be able to disable this feature for their groups.

37. Kenz said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 8:58 am

    I totally agree with Ceridwen777

    My list of Groups is now a complete mess because of:
    “Alternate user profiles (Aliases) are not supported for sharing updates. To enable, please use your primary user profile”
    Which takes up anywhere from 3 to 5 lines !!

    We already have several ways of sharing content within the Yahoo! Groups enviroment; photos, files, email attachments
    So, why do we need this new ‘improvement’ ?
    It’s as useless as that linking to related Groups fiasco, that appeared (briefly) last year…
    I’d love to know who asks for these new ‘improvements’ !!

    Grrrrrrrrrr, indeed
    Kenz

38. Richard La Flame said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 11:11 am

    Are they ever going to tell us how to “REMOVE” that Yahoo Updates column from our personal My Groups Page.

    Our groups are Moderated and we Just Do Not Need that extra column there.

    I realize that we can not control what some group members copy and then send out to other people in their E-mail but We Don’t Need this mess here.

39. Richard La Flame said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 11:12 am

    I agree wth the Grrrrrrr!!!

40. patty said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 11:22 am

    Well at least Grouply let us opt out of their system. I do not want to have any of my groups in this system for the reasons many have already expressed. Please set this so that only groups that want to be involved with this are.

41. RJCF said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 11:29 am

    I don’t like this new feature at all. Our group is not a social networking one and there are violation of privacy issues here. This is not an appropriate use for Yahoo groups. Leave this sort of thing to groups that are primarily for social networking.

42. Administrator said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 11:58 am

    With regards to privacy and copyright, particularly the concern a number of folks have raised about exposing the “reply text” in a message, the key point to remember is that (with the exception of photo thumbnails), no content is actually published in Updates.

    The only elements that actually show up in an update are:
    - the (profile) name of the person who posted;
    - the “name” of the post (for photos that is the name of the photo, for messages it will be the subject line of the post);
    - and the name of the group where it was posted (which is why Updates cannot be enabled for Closed groups).

    But to actually see the images or the post, the person viewing the update has to click through to the group itself. And if they are not already a member, they will have to join the group to view the full image or the post (unless, in the latter case, the message archive is open to non-members). And if the group requires moderator approval to join, the user will actually have to get that approval before they can access the post.

    In short, there is no way to view the “reply text” of another user through Updates. And for that reason, Updates is actually a far superior method (from a privacy perspective) for enabling members to share their own posts to a group with others, since if they forward a post via email (the standard practice today), the reply text is potentially included and there is nothing a moderator can do to stop it. With Updates, moderators of restricted groups still retain control of who has access.

43. Administrator said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 12:03 pm

    As for the folks who have said they don’t like the “social networkingness” of the Updates feature, that’s fine. Definitely don’t use it if doesn’t work well for you.

44. Administrator said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 12:09 pm

    Good feedback about the My Groups page.

    While I think it makes sense to display the text we are showing today on both simple and expanded views (since it’s a new feature, and the text provides clarity on the settings), in the coming weeks we should be able to switch to showing the full text only on expanded view and get the simple view back to one line.

45. Administrator said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 12:16 pm

    @Gabe: The file section cannot be made “public” but the message archive (and new applications features) can. For more information, you can see this Help page (http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/ownmod/email/email-07.html) or consider asking questions on one of the “groups about Groups”:
    http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/ownmod/starting/ideas-01.html

46. NBR said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 12:36 pm

    Golly Gee Whiz!! Yet another really useless wizbang feature only valuable to those who might have a need to satisfy their egos or loneliness complexes. I was really expecting some type of news about how the YG team is spending quality time fine-tuning the remaining service and performance issues that still persist with the YG platform as Melissa had indicated would be the teams’ focus after the round of service “hiccups” in March. Guess I was expecting too much…..

47. Richard La Flame said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 1:18 pm

    What I want to know is “WHY” can’t we remove that Yahoo Updates Column now instead of waiting?? That should be our choice.

48. patty said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 4:16 pm

    Thanks, administrator. (Your name?) So what that does is yet another way for you to advertise joining groups? Just to read what one person said? But I’ve got private groups (non-listed) and don’t want people to try to join. Again, I don’t necessarily want the names of my groups promoted. And I certainly don’t want people joining my regular groups just to read something a friend said when that friend has no interest in the topics in my groups. That’s just more work for me and sure, it inflates numbers, but that wasn’t my goal.

    Also you should know that links are not clickable when you surround them with a parenthesis, as you did to Gabe.

49. Bobbie said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 4:52 pm

    The current limitations (“Alternate user profiles (Aliases) are not supported for sharing updates. To enable, please use your primary user profile.”) inspires me to change my profile for all of my groups to an alias. I went to MY profile and discovered it was set to share all of my updates with “anyone” I’ve ever sent an email …including “abuse@xxxx” and Yahoo Customer Care!!! Not only that but the description of the option “never” (as in “never prompt me”) is going to confuse some people into thinking that setting would mean they’d opted out of the update publication! Just because there’s a checkbox above it, doesn’t mean they wouldn’t think they had to select from the dropdown menu choices of “never” or “before sending updates”

50. Administrator said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 6:38 pm

    @patty: I’m Gordon.

    Exposing new people to what’s going on in groups is what this feature does. If you call that “advertise for joining groups”, then the answer is yes.

    And it’s worth noting, in that regard, that the question of “how can I grow my group” is perhaps the single most frequent question we hear from new moderators.

    But if you don’t want new members coming through this channel, you’re, of course, free to reject the membership of anyone you don’t want and you can discourage your members from opting in to share their posts to this group (but presumably, if privacy is important because of the content discussed in your group, your members will come to that same conclusion and won’t bother anyway).

51. Administrator said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 7:19 pm

    @Bobbie: Even if your settings on the http://profiles.yahoo.com/settings/updates/ are set to share with “anyone” or “my connections”, if you don’t also opt in on a per group basis (from either the Edit My Groups page or when posting content).

    Until you opt-in in this way, your setting on the Updates pages is irrelevant, since the per group setting is the first thing that is checked. On the other hand, both settings do matter, because even if you opt-in on a per group basis, if your “Groups” setting on your “Manage My Updates’ is set to share with “no one”, then Updates still will not be generated from your Groups posts.

    In other words, for Updates to be sent out, BOTH of the following needs to be true:
    - Your “Groups” setting on the “Manage My Updates” page is set to “Anyone” or “My connections”.
    - You need to opt-in to sharing updates from the group where you are posting.

    Now admittedly this is a bit confusing, but the reason is that Yahoo! Groups works differently from pretty much every other Yahoo! property. On other properties like Yahoo! Sports, News, Movies, Local, etc, it makes sense to have a single setting. If you’re willing to share one movie review, you probably are willing to share all of them.

    But Groups is different. You may very willing to share updates from a quilting group with your friends, but you may not want to share updates from your health group. For this reason, it was necessary for us to create a way to set settings on a per group basis in addition to the global settings on Updates.

52. Ed Gould said,

    May 21, 2009 @ 10:08 pm

    This “new” YAHOO method of sending out pictures is just a pain in the ASS.
    The extra work involved makes it HORRENDOUS and labor intensive,
    PLEASE YAHOO GO BACK TO THE OLD METHOD. What was a few minute even now takes 30 minutes or MORE.

    PLEASE YAHOO go back. I have 30+ groups and I am going over to GOOGLE as they do it right. IF YAHOO ever changes back I might consider coming back but GOOGLE is so much better and they do not go around messing with a system that works.

    Ed

53. patty said,

    May 22, 2009 @ 3:50 am

    Gordon, thanks for your reply. How will Yahoo prevent someone from posting what someone else said, since that’s so common in my groups. For example, some write “as Gordon said, “Until you opt-in in this way, your setting on the Updates pages is irrelevant,” (and go on with your whole quote) but I think whatever.” In other words a previous post is embedded in one way or another in the new post.

54. patty said,

    May 22, 2009 @ 4:59 am

    OK, maybe I’m starting to get this. All that is shown is the title of a post and the group that it was posted to?

    I think this is going to be confusing for the user. Now if someone marks “share my updates” for a group, just the title of every post is shared? I’m not sure I see the incentive for this yet.

    What do polls have to do with this? How does one share a poll?

55. Bobbie said,

    May 22, 2009 @ 5:23 am

    The biggest problem I have with Y!G implementing all these new “fluff” features is that there are so many bugs in the existing product. I still can’t approve memberships or release moderated posts via email and at least once a day I get error messages trying to access my groups from the web ~which means I can’t approve/release them from there either! The “error d’jour” is:

    [We're Sorry...
    There was a problem with your request.

    The page you've requested returned this error:

    Program Initialization Error

    If you continue to receive this error for more than 48 hours, please contact our Customer Care team. We apologize for this inconvenience. ]

    Yes, I’ll report it to Customer Care but the canned response is that Y! is aware of the problem and are working diligently to resolve it.

56. Jen said,

    May 22, 2009 @ 5:40 am

    This would explain why I have started to get sex related emails that I have NEVER gotten before. I like the privacy that I had before. I will be leaving all groups that I am in and removing myself from Yahoo. I do not want someting that does not give me privacy. My “default” settings were not to keep everthing private it was set on public. Not what I wanted. Goodbye Yahoo!

57. patty said,

    May 22, 2009 @ 6:55 am

    Although I did not sign up for the system to share, when I uploaded a picture for a member who can’t do it to our group, immediately it popped up asking if I wanted to share. Although it was checked to never ask me again for that group, it asked me with each picture. Do I have to set up a profile (which I do not wish to do) in order to stop that from happening with each picture? If so, that’s going to drive members bananas.

    Also I gather that groups cannot opt out of this system if they do not wish the promotion? No, I don’t really want to create closed groups.

58. Administrator said,

    May 22, 2009 @ 11:01 am

    If the pop-up is appearing every time despite your checking “never ask me”, that’s definitely a bug. Would be great if you could let Customer Care know Patty (we’ll need the know the group name and your ID to investigate):
    http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/members/forms/general.html

    And speaking of bugs, I should be posting an update from the team working on fixing message search bug (by far our biggest issue) later today: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/issues/ki-30.html .

    As for the inability to approve members and messages via email Bobbie, that’s almost certainly caused by your email client/ISP failing to honor cases in the subject line of their reply:
    http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/EmailList-Managers/message/95547

59. Administrator said,

    May 22, 2009 @ 11:04 am

    @Bobbie: As for the “program initialization error”, we’ve seen a few groups start to get that error this week. For awhile that bug was a real pain because we couldn’t reproduce it (which makes it very difficult to fix), but we now have reliably replicable case that should provide us with the answer (which makes a fix likely soon). Was actually discussing that bug with two of our engineers this morning.

60. Ellen said,

    May 23, 2009 @ 8:43 am

    Why wasn’t I notified about this change via email? Yahoogroups send me several emails a day, you know how to reach me.

    I have read here that the default is to be private, but looking at my profile page, it seems that everything was set to be shared with “anyone” by default, and the “share my updates” box was checked by default. If all of that doesn’t mean that my information is available to anyone, your system is way too confusing. I’ve read some of the comments here, and see that I’d need to choose to “share my updates” for each group individually, but my first thought when I saw the “yahoo updates” option on the mygroups page was that I was choosing whether or not share my updates within the group (because, to me, the whole point of joining a group is to have information and conversations within a specific group), and clicking on the question mark above the “yahoo updates” column doesn’t explain that this would make your posts public (as that is the default on the profile page). So it seems to me that many users may opt-in without understanding what they’re doing.

    Another privacy issue: if a member of one of my groups chooses to “share their updates” to the group with anyone, and includes the entire daily digest in their post, they are inadvertently sharing a lot more than they intended. People regularly share phone numbers and other information they’d prefer not show up in google in our listed-in-the-directory,-but-otherwise-private yahoogroups.

    Please send out an email to ALL yahoogroups users explaining the new system clearly. Meanwhile, I’ll be telling the members of my groups what I’ve been able to figure out.

61. hom said,

    May 24, 2009 @ 1:58 am

    امووووووووووووووووووووووووووت فيكم

62. hom said,

    May 24, 2009 @ 2:01 am

    احبكم

63. Bobbie said,

    May 24, 2009 @ 6:09 pm

    “Administrator” said:

    “As for the inability to approve members and messages via email Bobbie, that’s almost certainly caused by your email client/ISP failing to honor cases in the subject line of their reply:
    http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/EmailList-Managers/message/95547”

    In that case, my email client isn’t the only one not honoring email approvals, Gordon. None of my moderators can approve memberships or moderated posts via email either and they’re using different email clients. We’re not creating the subject lines, Y!G is, and it’s the same as it’s always been:
    ” Subject: APPROVE — xxxxxxxx wants to join GroupName”

    All we’re doing is hitting “reply” and “send” as instructed in the notification message:

    “To approve this membership using email, reply to this message.”

64. Bobbie said,

    May 24, 2009 @ 6:18 pm

    I joined that group just to read the information referenced in Message 95547 and it indicates that the email client *may* be changing mixed case in the email address to lower case letters. If that’s the issue, it’s not an “AOL thing” because I use upper and lower case letters in a lot of my AOL email addresses (including my own) and they remain intact from portal to portal.

65. Bobbie said,

    May 24, 2009 @ 6:21 pm

    Excuse me, I meant to say that mixed case “email addresses” and “subject lines” remain intact when sent from AOL to Y!G and individual (private) email addresses ..and that’s the client I’m using to moderate these groups.

66. patty said,

    May 25, 2009 @ 5:20 pm

    Thanks, Yahoo gang, for helping me learn how to set things up so I didn’t keep getting the pop-up asking me if I wanted to share. I passed on the information to members of all my groups.

67. Richard La Flame said,

    May 26, 2009 @ 11:10 am

    Gordon why can’t you folks allow “US” to make up our own mind as to whether or not “WE” want that Yahoo Updates Column on our My Groups Page? We for the most part are old enough to know if we want that column or not. I for one do not want to share my information with any one out there unless I know that person and then I can send them what ever I want using my E-mail. Why can’t you let us remove that column if we don’t want it. It is just messing up my page format and I want to remove it from there please.

68. Samuel Nicholson said,

    June 6, 2009 @ 7:33 pm

    take me off your list, I do not want any more yahoo e mails from any one, I am getting too many and my old computer can not handle them. Please, no more e mails from Alaska Radar sites

69. Yahoo! Groups Blog » Updating your connections with Yahoo! Groups said,

    July 20, 2009 @ 11:22 am

    [...] in May we announced that Yahoo! Groups would begin publishing “Updates” about your activity within Groups. [...]

70. BEV said,

    August 18, 2009 @ 3:38 pm

    My status updates was also default set to share updates with everyone, revealing to every single friend on my list the rather sensitive marital issue group I had posted to, I feel totally humiliated

71. Melissa Daniels said,

    August 18, 2009 @ 11:32 pm

    @Bev,
    First off, I’m sorry this happened! Secondly, be sure to check your settings– for groups, they default to “off.” We never have, and will not default them to “on” in order to protect our user’s privacy as we know there are sensitive topics covered in many groups. Again, my apologies.

    If you haven’t already done so, you can log into your profile at http://profiles.yahoo.com to delete that one update from your profile. (Just click the grey “x” next to the update).

    -Melissa

72. june simpson-bynoe said,

    October 2, 2009 @ 6:40 am

    not interested in any undates,please delete me from your list and any updateds which I may accepted by mistake.
    Thank you

73. Richard Strong said,

    October 11, 2009 @ 12:26 pm

    How do I turn all of this off. I don’t want to share anything. I don’t want any profile that anyone can read. I don’t want messenger.

    This is the worst…. ONce you click on something you are not sure of you find that personal information about is being shared and I have not found how to remove the feature.

74. Johanna Andris said,

    October 16, 2009 @ 11:39 pm

    I want my Yahoo! Profile to simply be my name “Johanna Andris.” Most other members in my Yahoo Group list their names this way. When I try to change my profile, it will not allow me to use spaces nor capital letters. I wonder how others are able to do this? Please instruct me on how to change my profile/membership, such that my full name can be listed on all of my postings. Thank you! Johanna

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