Hello Yahoo! Groups moderators and users,
My name is Jim Stoneham and I’m the Vice President of Yahoo!’s Communities products, which includes Yahoo! Groups. I’d like to update you on where we are with the changes to Yahoo! Groups that some of you have seen in the past few weeks.
First, I wanted to make it clear that we have been reading all your email and comments carefully. Based on your feedback, we have decided to roll back all of our recent changes at this time.
Some of you have made the point that the original intent of Groups (essentially an email listserv) is different from what our new design entails. You are right, of course. The new design is intended to better serve smaller, private groups – which are a significant part of our user community – and we know these changes are not going to be welcomed by everyone.
Based on your feedback, we are going to iterate on the new design separately from the original Groups product. For those who are interested in using the new design, we are creating a whitelist (instructions forthcoming in a blog post next week) where you can sign up for the option to use the new design. There are two things to note about this whitelist: (1) you can revert back to your original groups experience any time and (2) we may ask you for some feedback so we can continue to improve the user experience.
I realize that our recent changes have created uncertainty for you. Yahoo! Groups is a mature product, however, and it is natural and prudent for us to evaluate how to evolve the product so that it meets the needs of our wide range of users and the needs of our business as well. I believe we can do a better job of involving our customers in the conversation, and that is what we aim to do going forward.
If you want to contact me directly, you can do so by sending an email to me at jimstoneatyahoo-incdotcom. Please also continue to provide your feedback on this blog and the Yahoo! Groups Suggestion Board – our team is listening.
Thanks,
Jim
I am so glad that we will be able to remain as we are and not be forced to use the new format! THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!
Having said that, I would like to see the option to be able to use the CHAT in the format that we are in now, as well. It was there a few years ago and our group used it frequently. We would love to be able to use it once again…
I think Classic groups like Classic mail is a defining thing for the genre. Almost everyone fighting for that format defined it as Classic.
As an owner of one group, and a moderator on 4 others, and a member of a sixth, and a member of moderator central, with me, as you can imagine, any delays in messages show up big time! The current changes have a profound effect as well!
However this last mail server outage takes the cake!
Since it happened, not only are messages delivered up to five days late, and out of context, uploading photos is a nightmare since half of them appear as a red “X” or an Icon, (not good when your group is WWII research and remembrance, and has the last few survivors as members, and want to know where their photos are!).
To cap that, now all of my group postings are being delivered to my BT Yahoo Spam folder!
When will it all end! Soon I hope!
Terry