Moderator: Thank you for joining this exclusive Workshop for Groups Power Users. As a reminder, the topic of today’s Workshop is open to any Yahoo! Groups related questions you have.

Moderator: With us today is GroupsLeonard, the SR. Director of Yahoo! Groups, GroupsPM, one of our team Product Managers, and GroupsJami, Community Manager for Yahoo! Groups.

Moderator: Many of you have asked what the purpose of the Power User Group is, so I thought I’d take a moment to address that question.

Moderator: This group was created as announcement only group to inform you of the benefits associated with the Groups Power Users program. Meaning that the messages posted to the group will be reviewed by the moderator, but not appear to other members within the group.

Moderator: We have received a lot of requests asking for the ability to interact amongst one another. We definitely see the value in this but would like to keep the messages in this group targeted to Power User benefits and Yahoo! Groups news. That said, we are currently looking into creating an exclusive Power Users Discussion Board with the sole purpose of opening a channel for you all to exchange tips and tricks, share best practices, and get to know one another.

Moderator: I’ll post more details in the Power Users group when they are available.

jimk3758: Hello, what benefits are exclusive to power groups and when can we expect to see them? We really need more then 10 databases in my group.

GroupsJami: Hello jimk3758 – Currently, the main benefit of being a Groups Power User is access to Customer Care faster via the Live Chat button on the Groups Help pages: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/forms_index.html – that said, this is a pilot program and we’ve set up the Power Users Group to inform you of benefits as we add them.

afterfostercare: Can you create groups or categorizations of members so that we can have mixed company on a yahoo group and when we are at the group page, post a new message, and select which "group" or "category" of members get it. (eg: all or Admins or Parents or Students ) etc. Sometimes you want to post to the list but not to everyone. Maybe even an email version such as this afterfostercare-all@yahoogroups.com or afterfostercare-parents@yahoogroups.com and the post would only go to those members who are moderated into those groups or categorizations in their profiles.

GroupsJami: Hello afterfostercare – While this isn’t something we’re currently working on, it’s an interesting idea that we’ll give though to. Thanks!

nejatozcan: Is there any possibility to get full backups of the whole group messages?

GroupsJami: Hello nejatozcan – Can you please clarify your question? Are you asking if you can download messages?

ps2os2: First how can a group be changed from a non moderated one to a moderated one.

GroupsJami: Hello ps2os2 – You can find options for how you’d like to moderate your group by going to "Management" on the left side of the group’s page. Under Group Settings, click "Messages", then “edit” under "Posting & Archives". There you will find all the options for moderating your group – don’t forget to click "Save Changes".

Suebee: I have a question concerning when the system is down. Is there a place we can check to see if it’s Yahoo or our computers?

GroupsJami: Great Question, Suebee. You can always try going to www.ygroupsblog.com to see if that page loads. The blog runs on a separate system, so it should help you determine whether it’s your computer or our site.

miso_vegan: Any plans to make group archives searchable by member name?

GroupsPM: This functionality already exists today to search messages within a group. We are looking into different solutions to search public archives across groups, and it’s a good suggestion to see if we can then search by author across groups.

chucknln: How can we kill an old Yahoo Group that sends out automatic messages, but no longer has an active moderator?

GroupsJami: Hello chucknln – I am not entirely positive I understand your question. You always have the option of leaving a group that you are no longer interested in receiving messages from. You can also choose to be a Web Only member so you won’t get messages automatically sent to you. As far as Groups that no longer have an active moderator, we are aware that this is an issue and we’re working toward developing a solution. As we get closer, ‘I’ll reach out to the Groups Community to get feedback on the solution we come up with.

fauslas: Do you plan to improve Member Management? Useful tools can be added to this section. Moderators can not recognize members with their email address. Moderators need to see User’s Name&Last Name. Regards.

GroupsLeonard: We do plan on redesigning the moderator management pages. Your suggestion makes a lot of sense.

Bob_I: Why do I sometimes get ‘potential-spam’ warning messages with respect to a message from someone who is part of the group? Yes, they are submitting the message from the exact email address which is associated with their membership.

GroupsLeonard: We run our spam filters on every message, regardless of membership or not. Because many owners don’t necessarily know the people who join their group, we have not differentiated. However, if you police your own membership, you can shut off the spam filter completely to avoid this from happening. Management > Messages > Postings and Archives

byron_int: On the Members screen, just below "send message" and "edit membership", could we have a "notes" field of about 80 characters to make moderator notes about the members of our groups?

GroupsJami: Hi – This is a great suggestion. I recommend that you post it to the Groups Suggestion board so other users can comment and vote, which helps us prioritize the suggestion: http://suggestions.yahoo.com/?prop=groups

ps2os2: I own approximately 30 YAHOO Groups and am constantly fighting some YAHOO issue whether it be group slowness or have specific questions that when submitted to YAHOO it gets a non responsive answer can we get a live person that knows what is going on to respond in a cordial way not some pseudo computer generated answer.

GroupsJami: Hello ps2os2 – As a Yahoo! Groups Power User, you do have access to a live person via the Live Chat button that should appear when you go to the Groups Help pages: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/forms_index.html

rheasupport: Is there a way to prevent people from hooking an RSS feed to your Yahoo Group? Members of our group are not happy that someone is posting all of the messages straight to his blog because it shows names and email addresses.

GroupsPM: Hi rheasupport,

GroupsPM: RSS feeds are available only for public archives. If you change your message settings, under Management ->Messages ->Archive Options, and change the access to "Members", the content will no longer be available for RSS feeds.

hwnddawg: Can we have multi-font (e.g. East Asian) font support for primarily English-speaking groups? i.e. can we have the message archives display Chinese fonts properly even if the group is "English"?

GroupsLeonard: We are reworking all of the groups to be UTF-8, which should allow you to display multiple languages on your pages without issue.

HappyRasta: Hi – I have a group that discusses philosophy, ethics, law, etc. Every couple of months, it somehow gets moved to the "adult" section of Yahoo Groups, where many of our members can’t access it. Why would this be happening? Our archives aren’t even open to non-members. Thank you.

GroupsLeonard: Please contact Customer Care and ask that the issue be escalated. If the content is not adult it is not acceptable to do this.

kc_walker: Regarding "abandoned" (ownerless) groups. Please consider an option to merge into similar groups. There are benefits to everyone.

GroupsLeonard: This is a common question, and we are working on a new policy to enable abandoned groups to be brought back under new management.

ps2os2: Can YAHOO go back to storing pictures that accompany a member’s email? I can’t tell you the number of requests I get to reship pictures even if it for say a limit of 2 weeks that would be satisfactory as well.

GroupsLeonard: This is being planned for late this year, early next year.

sylib10: 1) we are using yahoogroups to publish our weekly and monthly schedules and alike. w/o exception, yahoogroups REFORMATS the email (colors, spacing, alignment, etc.) so the end user receives a very different and not professional looking email. How can I force my formatting? Or in other words, eliminate changes made by yahoogroups? 2) I am trying to UPDATE a mesage before approval. Updates DO NOT take place unless i am going to the HTML pane. Why changes made in the message pane itself are ignored?

GroupsLeonard: You may have better luck using the traditional format with your emails. You can change your member email preferences by going into the membership link and switching message format to "Traditional". With regards to message updates, this is not the ideal situation and we hope to resolve it soon.

nabilbeit: When "adding" a new member cannot modify invite message

GroupsJami: Hello nabibeit – Due to abuse of the invite feature within Groups (it was being used to send spam), we were forced to remove the ability for group moderators to customize invitations (or “add” messages). In the interim, 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:

GroupsJami: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NAME_OF_YOUR_GROUP/join (where “NAME_OF_YOUR_GROUP” is replaced with the actual name of your group).

lpydb: Will you be returning the option of putting a message on the invite when you invite members to your group.

GroupsPM: The answer to your question lpydb, is a great follow up to GroupsJami’s response above.

GroupsPM: This feature was taken away as it was being heavily abused by spammers. We recognize the high value of being able to send personal messages during invitations, and are actively working to bring it back.

ddrinnan: This is an e-mail related question… so it’s not exclusively a groups question… but e-mail is a major part of using Yahoo! groups. When the classic e-mail was "updated" a couple/few months ago, the ability to configure the width of sending & receiving windows was taken away. Now the windows are incredibly narrow, so if you type more than a very few characters per line, then upon receipt, the message is almost un-readable because it’s broken-up into such short lines. I tried to report this as a bug, and it was "acknowledged"… but apparently not addresssed. Can this PLEASE be fixed? Thanks! -dave

GroupsJami: Hi Dave, Thanks for your question. If you could, email your question directly to us at groupspoweruser-owner@yahoogroups.com and we’ll have someone from the Mail team address your issue. Thanks!

mvanroy2001: What is the difference between "hard" and "soft" bouncing e-mail addresses?

GroupsLeonard: A hard bounce means that your mail provider can’t deliver the message at all, for instance the mailbox is full or the account is no longer active. A soft bounce comes from the mail users account, like an "out of office" message. Usually we can’t tell when there is a soft bounce, because it looks like a reply from the user.

hwnddawg: thanks Leonard, looking forward to it!

GroupsLeonard:

davec: What can I do to block ‘blogspot;’ spam from my group? 90% of the messages that are submitted by new members are spam and I spend more time managing spam than managing users.

GroupsLeonard: You can set all new members to have their messages moderated, and then only remove them from moderation when you trust them. Management > Messages > Posting and Archives

mvanroy2001: To add to what sylib10 said, I have a member in one of my groups who is receiving Russian / Greek characters when I post in English. Neither of us speaks Russian or Greek.

GroupsLeonard: It really depends on where this happens, in email or the website. Different browser and email settings can cause this to happen. I’d probably recommend that you reach out to customer service to find a solution, as it is hard to solve without a lot of back and forth.

Moderator: Hi all – just wanted to post a heads up that we’re halfway through the Workshop. If you have a question that you haven’t yet asked, I’d encourage you to submit it now!

kc_walker: When you were in Dallas I asked about getting "group statistics" – membership duration info, average number of posts, time spent until first post (mine is new members moderated), etc, etc. You guys have the DBs, we just need the data!!

GroupsLeonard: Some of the data is easy to get, some isn’t being tracked at all right now. We are planning a new moderator dashboard and hope to include much of what you seek in that release.

Bob_I: thank you!

GroupsLeonard:

JLKillgore: Are there plans to reinstate a chatroom in Yahoo Groups?

GroupsLeonard: We are looking at new chat room solutions for your Yahoo Groups. Likely something that we get done in early 2009.

ps2os2: I have noticed that some person manages to get the owners email address and spams the living daylights out of me. Is there someway of routing the email to the sent message que (or hold the message) so I can deal with 50+ emails that are spam by a single check mark?

GroupsLeonard: We are looking into an intermediary communication system to shield moderators from bad behavior.

sterlingda888: Many times I’ve recommended that in the Yahoo message approval email, an option be given to 1) mark the message as spam and remove the member, 2) approve the member forthwith [for a list with "new members moderated" setting]. I would think this would be easy to implement. Why hasn’t it been?

GroupsLeonard: Each feature was added as customers asked, however we never rebuilt all of the management features in a way that combined common behaviors. As we rebuild the Groups site, we will work on a new management dashboard to do just this.

gep_2: Has anything been done about allowing spammer-infested groups to be recovered after being lost or abandoned by its owner?

GroupsLeonard: We are working on a new policy for transitioning groups from owners who have stopped operating a group.

DeniseK1: I would like to start a blog and connect it to the home page of my Yahoogroups listserv. Can this be done, and how would I do it?

GroupsJami: Hello DeniseK1 – Can you please clarify your question? Are you asking if there is a way to have your blog posts automatically sent out via email to the members of your group? If so, the answer is no, but you can re-post your blog posts to your group.

fauslas_1: When in a group, if you press "My Groups" link, groups are listing alphabetical order instead of moderator’s organized order.

GroupsPM: Hi fauslas_1, reordering groups in "My Groups" is a common issue faced by all our users, and we will be addressing this as part of our system overhaul that’s currently going on.

ImproperUsername: Can we get grid updating for our subscriber lists so we don’t have to open each subscriber separately?

GroupsJami: Hi ImproperUsername – Not sure we understand your question. Can you please clarify?

simmiejoyz: Are there any plans to provide a tool via Y!G for listowners/mods to download/backup group archives?

GroupsLeonard: We don’t have any plans yet, but thanks for the suggestion!

emmphx: I started a group 10 years ago. My email has since changed and the group no longer lists me as owner. I am still a moderator. The other owner disappeared off the face of the earth about 8 years ago and is still listed as owner. Why can’t yahoo help me out and put me in place as owner? It’s easy for me to prove by tracing my email changes!

GroupsLeonard: We are working on a new policy for transitioning groups from an owner who is no longer managing a group. Coming soon!

ps2os2: I have noticed that "someone" claims that a group violates some rule and YAHOO deletes the group without warning. Is there anyway before deletion that the group owner can at least have some input before the delete happens. There is at least 1 (maybe more) individual that takes delight in getting YAHOO to delete a group.

GroupsLeonard: This should not be happening. If this has happened to you, please report the occurrence to Customer Care. A group moderator is notified of most infractions and given time to remedy.

JudgeMaker: Is there any way to "edit" a member record? Our purpose would be to add or edit a name of an e-mail address in a Group .

GroupsJami: Hello JudgeMaker – You can change Membership Privileges and Message Delivery for your members but you cannot edit their email address. Only members have the ability to make this change.

byron_int: The "notes" field could be marked as visible or not to ordinary (non-mod) members of the group. It could be used for keeping track of city, interest area, address, phone number, or ? — instead of having to use a database.

GroupsJami: Hello byron_int – Have you tried Groups People Map? You may find this new feature useful to track these details. You can learn more here: http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/peoplemap/

lfmarcus: In a private group, if I "add" a new member rather than "invite" the person, will they still be able to access our Web site?

GroupsLeonard: They will still need to come to the site and link their email address with a Yahoo User ID.

geoff_184: I am wondering if yahoo has ever considered adding a video section to yahoo groups? That is, a "Video" option included in the left side menu along with the existing "files", "photos", "polls" etc options. Yahoo already has yahoo video, so I would think it is merely an issue of joining the two services together. I know the members of my group would certainly appreciate it, as having to upload videos separately to the group is a hassle. Would be better to have everything in one place. It would also bring more users to yahoo, from other video providers such as YouTube, Bebo etc. Kind regards, Geoff Blackmore.

GroupsLeonard: Yes, we absolutely intend to offer video in the future.

Suebee: How can you keep a trusted member’s emails from always falling into Spam? She’s not moderated but something about her email gets her tagged every time.

GroupsLeonard: You can set only new members to be moderated, and then turn spam filtering off. But only do this if you trust the members you choose not to moderate.

c_baysan: Is there a way of changing the name of Yahoo Group (in our case, the dropping off of a letter in the name) without affecting the past accumulation and/or membership data?

GroupsJami: Hello c_baysan – You can indeed change the name of your group without affecting any content or memberships within your group. You can find more information by following this link to Yahoo! Groups Help: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/ownmod/starting/starting-05.html

kschroer105: I’ve been getting at least one spam every day in my group.

GroupsPM: One way to control spam is to control who posts to your group which is an option in your Management settings.

jamesime: I have two yahoogroups identities and about ten listserv’s between them. What is the procedure to move groups from one to another so I can close out one of the identities?

GroupsLeonard: As mentioned, we are currently looking into ways for moderators to invite members from one group to another. In the short term, you can go to the invite link on the group you want to keep, click on the "add" link on that page and paste in the email addresses of the members you are transferring.

ps2os2: Since I have 30++ groups it takes *FOREVER* to page down through the groups to find the group you are looking for. suggestion add the ability to do a find on the first characters in the group name (or some other quick way)

GroupsLeonard: Good suggestion, when we redesign that page we will find ways to simplify your navigation along the lines you recommend.

modelpower2006: ok not sure if this is getting through as it is not the scheduled time but I would like to submit a question about auto helps and whether the continued use of auto help is really worth it because when people have difficulties they really need to talk./email and im with live help not a robotic programme that tries to guess what you are needing help with.

GroupsJami: Hello modelpower2006 – I am assuming by "auto helps" you are referring to the Customer Care web forms. As a Yahoo! Groups Power User, you do have access to a live person via the Live Chat button that should appear when you go to the Groups Help pages: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/forms_index.html

G-318083042: Is there a way in which a yahoo group could be embedded on a different host website? We were contemplating setting up a forum on our website, but perhaps it might be better to embed the yahoo forum on our website. Currently our forum consists of @4500 physicians and is fairly active.

GroupsJami: Hello G-318083042 – If your archives are public, you can do an RSS feed.

goodone: how does people map function development go? Should we expect it soon out of beta?

GroupsLeonard: Yes, we will soon offer a directory of applications that you can choose from to enhance your group.

G-325647840: One of the biggest issues for list owners is spam. The best way I’ve found to avoid spam is to place all new list members on moderation. As that requires more effort from moderators, you want to take new members off moderation as soon as possible. Taking members off moderation is not as easy as it could be. Can that process be automated or made simpler?

GroupsLeonard: We are working towards rebuilding the management tools to make it much easier to combine actions.

kschroer105: What happens when I "Reject as spam" a post? Is future spam from that user filtered?

GroupsLeonard: You would need to either remove the member or ban the member to stop them from emailing your group.

patricianuk: I will not be able to attend the online workshop but I have a question/concern which I think should be addressed ASAP. I have been getting serious concerns from fellow members and friends concerning grouply.com. Investigation shows that those using their Group email collection and digest service may be giving Grouply access to the email addresses and other details of other members without their permission – in this age of super-spammers and also identity theft, this is a serious cause for concern. Most of us are careful about our member’s details and our responsibility to them. Is there any way that we can block Grouply access to this information or can track which of our members may be using Grouply? Thank you – please let me know what happens about this.

GroupsLeonard: If you make it a policy to block Grouply from your site, you may remove any member found using Grouply to access your groups.

fuscialadybug: I have two issues. 1. Sign In: Yahoo is making me sign in every day, instead of every two weeks like it used to. I am moderator/owner of several groups but I use the sites less when I have to sign in all the time. I went through a whole guided help procedure but it hasn’t worked. Can’t you make this easier? 2. Combining groups: I have been handed groups by owner who didn’t want to run them anymore and would like to consolidate them. I was told that you have no method for consolidation. Can one be developed? 3. My groups order: I would like the list of my groups to be in order of which ones I use the sites of the most. But the procedure posted for changing the order doesn’t work. Can you fix it so I could re-arrange the order?

Moderator: Just a heads up that this Workshop will be ending in 10 minutes….

cholly364: I have a problem when sending a message on YahooGroups using Outlook and HTML. When the message posts it double spaces lines so it does not resemble the intended format. What is up with that?

GroupsLeonard: The sign in issue sounds like a bug, and should be reported to the sign in customer care team by going through the help contact form. Regarding combining groups, you are correct that we do not have a process in place for this currently, but we will consider this in the future. We are currently looking into ways for moderators to invite members from one group to another. The Groups ordering feature is broken and we do intend to fix it in the future.

GroupsLeonard : Not sure, could be something due to a font choice or setting in Outlook. This might require customer service to get involved. They will ask you to include a copy of the email you are sending.

ddrinnan: It is my experience as a group owner, that if we want to have a file that any member can edit, then such members have to be moderators. There does not appear to be a way to give a non-moderator file-modification privileges? That seems odd in itself, and warrants confirmation. Related though, is the fact that there is a limit as to how many members can be made moderators (15? 16? 18?). So, in other words, it is not possible to have a group with > 18 members, all of whom can edit a file? Please correct me if I’m wrong? Thanks…

GroupsLeonard: You should be able to go into the Management link, Web Tools, and edit the files preference to allow members to upload and edit files.

lfmarcus: I posted this question just before the chat started, so not sure if it reached you: Hi! Thanks for doing this. I’ve had a private group for over 10 years and our biggest problem is the technical process of signing up new members. (Going public is not an option). I issue an invitation to members and tell them to click on the "join this group" button in the Yahoo! invitation because we want them to complete information on our Web site. But many, non-technical new members, have a difficult time setting up a Yahoo! account and going through the steps. Is there anything I can do to help them or an easier way for them to join? Thanks, Linda

GroupsPM: Hi lfmarcus, Simplifying the Join process has been a long time goal for Groups and we are about to do it soon, specifically solving the problem for non-technical users. For right now, you may want to use the "Add" functionality, which will give them access to your posts, but not web.

mvanroy2001: How can I set up a poll so that the options appear in a specific order, such as Monday thru Friday? Whenever I try the poll automatically displays in alphabetical order.

GroupsLeonard: Hmmm…. I just tried it myself and it sent in the order that I typed them in. If you still see this problem, can you contact customer service, it might require a little more back and forth to solve.

JLKillgore: I see from other answers here you are looking at finding a way to get "dead" groups under control again. That’s awesome. Do you have a guesstimated timeline for when that’s expected to be rolled out?

GroupsLeonard: We should have the updated policy out by the end of this year. We’ll update via the blog.

lpydb: What is the difference between removing a member and banning a member?

GroupsJami: Hi lpydb– If you ban them, they can’t request to join the group again. However, if you only remove them, they can continue to request to join.

simmiejoyz: What are the plans for rolling out the return of attachments (photos) showing up in archives on the Y!G website? I know this was in the plan and would like to know what your plans are for making this much-missed feature available again.

GroupsLeonard: We are building this feature right now. No release date yet but hope to have it out by the end of the year.

JLKillgore: re: Suebee’s last question, would you consider allowing us to tag trusted members as trusted, and make their posts exempt from the spam filter?

GroupsLeonard: Yes, this is a good idea.

ps2os2: This has been a long standing issue with YAHOO Groups and I am at wits end trying to deal with it. It’s a little complicated but here it goes. WHEN an email (from a group) gets bounced (what ever reason) the user is cutoff (that is FINE) what is a PITA is that YAHOO does not save the entire rejection email so the person cannot have ammunition to go to his ISP with the issue. Yahoo (IIRC) saves only the first 100 lines of the rejected email and nine times out of ten it deletes the reason why it was rejected so I cannot go back to my ISP and ask "why did this get rejected for this reason at this date/time" If you have specifics then the ISP can at least do problem determination adequately.

GroupsLeonard: When I click on the bounce history link in the email preferences, there is a section called Last Bounced Message that is there specifically so that we or the owner can communicate with the ISP about the reason for the rejection. Here is an example of one of mine: Remote host said: 550 5.1.1 User unknown; rejecting [RCPT_TO]. Typically this has worked with our ISP investigations in the past. Let us know more if we are missing something with this approach.

Bob_I: Leonard — sorry, I didn’t follow your response about Grouply. How would I know if one of my members is using Grouply?

GroupsLeonard: At one point users changed their email to a Grouply email so you could find out via the membership list. If this is not the case, you can block all usage by following this post on thh Grouply site: http://blog.grouply.com/protect/#block

Moderator: Thank you so much for joining us today, we hope this Workshop was beneficial for you.

Moderator: In closing, we wanted to highlight several resources available to you when you need help with your group:

Moderator: Yahoo! Groups Blog:

Moderator: http://www.ygroupsblog.com/

Moderator: Live Chat with Customer Care: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/forms_index.html

Moderator: Groups Help: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/

Moderator: Moderator Central: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/moderatorcentral/

Moderator: Groups about Groups: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/ideas/ideas-01.html

Moderator: Yahoo! Answers about Groups: http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/;_ylt=AuHxP2fb5q9Vlr7_wtw5GygP.Bd.;_ylv=3?link=list&sid=396546285

Moderator: We’ll post the full transcript of this Workshop to the Groups Power Users group shortly, so stay tuned!