Just a quick announcement to let folks know that due to abuse of the invite feature within Groups (it’s being used to send spam), we’ve been forced to remove the ability for group moderators to customize invitations (or “add” messages) until further notice.
If you need to send a customized invitation, one work around is simply to send users a personal email with a direct link to the “join” page. This link will be:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NAME_OF_YOUR_GROUP/join (where “NAME_OF_YOUR_GROUP” is replaced with the actual name of your group).
Sending this link to someone is exactly the same as sending an invitation, except that if your group requires approval of new members, you will still have to approve them after they complete the join form.
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions:
Q. What about closed groups? I’m a listowner of a closed group and the only way to add members is for me to send an invitation from the website.
A. You can still invite members by sending an invitation from your group; you just can’t personalize the invitation. If you wish to send a personal message with an invitation, you might send a heads up via email prior to sending the group invite.
Q. Why not reinstate the feature and just limit to number of addresses in each invite to say 5 or something?
A. Putting in such a low limit would impact all users using the feature and still would not stop the spammers exploiting the custom message feature.
Q. What about the “add” feature? Will we still be able to do that?
A. The add feature and the invite feature will work the same in that the ability to write a custom message will be removed for the same reasons.
A. Closing down abusing groups does not solve the problem as these spammers just create new groups at a very rapid pace.
Thanks for your understanding.
Yahoo! Groups Team
Give Microsoft a break! They’re awesome and make great products.
Hello I am syedur rahman.I am a mlm bussiness man.I am a bangladeshi.Good evenig for all bussiness magnet.
Please delete this spam group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bqakufpajg
Our church sponsored Job & Networking Ministry is getting 150+ people at our weekly meetings. With the new rule of 20 invitations allowed per day, I’ll never get caught up inviting people to the group. The group is the means by which we share job leads, free job releated event notices, notices of free seminars, free resume reviews, etc.
Please reconsider this drastic move.
I just figured out the invite message sucks.
All it says is: ‘email’ has invited you to join ‘group’.
Its no wonder potental members just delete this ‘SPAM’ email, instead of concidering it as a interesting group to join.
I have been inviting like crazy, but only get 1 out of a hundred to join my group.
HEY YAHOO, thats not good enough!!!!!!!
Its almost worthless to invite anymore.
Give us back the ability to personalize the invite message.
BAN the SPAMMERS instead of punishing those of us who use the invite the right way, ie: to get members to join our groups.
Thank you
Yup. More Yahoo-itis.
I took my group OFF Yahoo years ago because of their antics.
I loved EGroups – then Yahoo bought them to bury the competition.
Tried GoogleGroups, but that didn’t pan out.
So, because Yahoo can’t/won’t hire decent I.T./Programming staff to resolve their spamming issues, *I* can’t personalize an Invitation any more.
Yay Yahoo – typical.
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I have started a small closed group. Unfortunately some prospective members are unable to join the group (even after i have invited them) as they don’t have a yahoo id.
Hi,
I’m the moderator of a couple of groups. I do not post my name on the group description so potential members do not have access to it before they join. Is there a way for potential members to find out who moderates my group before they join? While I don’t post my name in the group description, I feel potential members have a right to this information.
Sorry if this is not the correct way to post a question – I couldn’t figure out how to.
TIA
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R3HDSv eeeerrrffddgggggggccccc
80VJci wwwwqqqqsssddd
ZH1KHu wrerrerreteee
Why not do some of the following:
1. Implement CAPTCHA to reduce the abuse and prevent spambots from creating abusive groups or using the invite feature for spam.
2. Take the lessons learned from Yahoo! Answers and implement Community Moderation.
3. Have the option of flagging abusive invites and after enough reliable reporters report, the custom messages are disabled for the group, or their entire invite feature is disabled. Then Yahoo! can check the group to see if it was abusive, then reinstate it and mark the reporters as unreliable, or finish deleting it.
“If you need to send a customized invitation, one work around is simply to send users a personal email…”
So… if we’re to use personal email to explain why we’re inviting them, what our list is about and why they might wish to join, why do we need y’all?
Instead of dealing properly with YOUR spam issue, you big solution is to screw all the moderators who run their lists responsibly? Dumb. Extraordinarily bone-headedly dumb.
I get around this impersonalized automatic yahoogroup invite by sending a regular email (with my closed groups detailed information) to my new member and ask them to send an email to:
“NameOfMyGroup”-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
That way they are getting my groups information and still able to subscribe.
Hope that might help some of you.
How do I enable another member of a Yahoo Group that I started and moderate, the authority to also serve as a moderator and thereby able to edit within the group and use the Invite and Promote feature?
Frank Mazurkiewicz
Yahoo guys,
you need to update your Help FAQ! I spent hours trying to figure out why I couldn’t do this anymore.
Some of us don’t read these things, and just search for them when there’s a problem. SO MAKE IT EASIER TO FIND OUT.
hiiiiiii
09193782769
When I checked my Group list in “Members”, I saw 30 names.
A former member who unsubscribed wants to get back in. I sent an invvite through the Members invitation form. The result, rejected. It said “already member”. I rechecked, and his name or email address is NOT in the list of 30.
How do I solve this problem of getting him back to the E-List?
My 1st time to visit here.
right now No Comments………..
i mean this is hecka lame i just re read it….your closing the group that is so not nice!! well like that one person said i still have like myspace and all that other stuff
well thats kool, improving the group and all and blocking spam. It will be a lot safer i think…
i need this group please joined
I am going to write a smaller message than the first previously planned.
Personally in my opinion spam is not a major problem for active dedicated
moderators. They just remove the spammers.Spammers who are removed
have better things to do then to keep changing their user ids to post in a
group that does not want them.
Spam through invites? Only owners and moderators can sent invites not
regular members. The only way a potential spammer could send spam
within invite messages would
would be if he created a group just for that purpose.
For several years now I have been the member of a general average of 50
groups. I have never received spam though an invite. I do not believe that
it is a real problem.
So why is yahoo doing this. I personally think that they want our groups
to fail. Why? I can speculate on this latter.
Glenn King
this was a really dull idea. now anyone in a closed group can invite someone to the site to join, the moderators will have no idea who they are or who invited them. we have a closed group and those diverse, we do like to know where the posters stand before inviting them…just to avoid spamming and silliness.
we need the right to include a message. if you have people who spam, delete their yahoo membership. don’t limit those who use it in fairness.
Dear frinds of American Freedom of speach,
It has come to my attention that requests for any betterment or solutions of any kind are being blocked on the web. Search for betterment or any general term of who can or what is the way to better our situation are directed to sex ,sports, or bad news …….. ways to do things other than search fo betterment or the truth in america.
Please help reverse this treason ,,,,,,, demand to know who is blocking the solutions …………… share the truth if you love America …..tell it now!
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hi i want yahoo gorups
Why spam a group when YG doesn’t clean up their comment boards…just spam here…(sigh)
welldone
Hey YG, I’m absolutely thrilled to have a 1000 member invite limit per day now!
I’ve never even come close to inviting that many people to one group in a day, but it’s nice to know you’ve given back dedicated owners the chance to keep their groups filled w/new lifeblood again!
Cheers, Jon
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Limiting invitations has been the worst development I’ve seen yet from Yahoo Groups. It doesn’t even make good business sense for Yahoo and punishes group owners who’ve stuck with Yahoo Groups through thick and thin.
At MySpace you can invite up to 500 friends a day to your profile. Why not set that limit for each individual group?
If we can’t continue to draw new people to all of our groups, Yahoo will die even faster than it has been the last several years.
Btw, dropping a personalize message is also a very bad idea as the topic of many groups can’t easily be explained from just reading the group name.
Please go back to the old invitation system asap and deal with people who set up phony groups to spam their porn sites on a case by case basis.
I am a moderator of a closed group and have invited new member to join. Now these invites do not show up in the moderator activity list. Also, they are not listed under “Pending Members.”
What is going on? It’s bad enough not being able to attach a personalized message to an invite but not having a record of who has been invited makes it very hard to document who has and has not been invited.
when replying the group email in yahoo group, the personal address of previous sender appears. How to get automatically the group address instead?