Sort of O.T. Changes to Yahoo Groups - long
2010-09-25 by tlbepson
On August 31, 2010, Yahoo!--with no warning--implemented a new format for Yahoo! Groups for a selected number of Groups in an apparent attempt to "Facebook" Yahoo! Groups.
Here is an example of the new format:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Y-Mail/
And also see--does not display properly in Firefox 2.x but does display properly in Firefox 3.x:
http://groups.yahoo.com/overview/
A significant number of Group functions were destroyed in this new format implementation along with buggy code (see below). Additionally, privacy settings for a group were ignored so that ALL postings and ALL email address were PUBLICLY VISIBLE. Screen readers--used by the blind and visually impaired--cannot read the screens in the new format.
Yahoo has restored many of the "remodeled" Groups back to the "classic" format--although some (as noted in the group above) are still stuck in the new format--and many groups lost postings, data in their group's databases and images--one person lost 600 images--in the transition back to the "classic" format.
The majority of comments on the Yahoo! Groups Suggestion Board about the "remodel" are negative. See:
http://suggestions.yahoo.com/detail/?prop=groups&fid=210745
As are the majority of the comments in the following thread at the Yahoo! Groups Suggestion Board. See:
http://suggestions.yahoo.com/detail/?prop=groups&fid=212098
See also:
http://www.ygroupsblog.com/blog/?p=927
http://www.ygroupsblog.com/blog/?p=807
A Yahoo! Group has been started to help make people aware of the situation with the current implementation of the "remodel", gather both Groups owners and Groups members to inform them of the issues and to provide information about alternative options available for groups.
See: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/modsandmembers/
A summary of the situation (posted by the modsandmembers group owner at:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/sorry-your-system-does-not-meet-minimum-system-requirements#comment-356163 ):
>>Yahoo has been destroying Yahoo Groups for 3 weeks, with the "new and improved" remodel, despite despite thousands of us raising our voices in every area of the Internet and Yahoo that we can reach that we do NOT want this remodel, and want them to continue to retain the Classic Groups Format as an option.
They have screwed up privacy settings, making information suddenly public that had ben private for year. They got rid of message numbers, made archives next to impossible to access, lost archives completely in some cases, and used such bad coding that archive posts were completely rewritten with content missing. And the coding errors alone are a story in themselves!
They have removed 30+ features, and made it a facebook-like interface. The threading is all screwed up, and the reply to send option is gone. In fact, even the quoting option is gone. Moderators have no control of their options, as the management section does not work much.
The home page is changed, the picture there is the size of a postage stamp. The home information page is hidden behind a tab called About. The photos in albums are rearranged, pulled out of albums, and in many cases renamed or resized. Some people even lost photos, one person lost 600.
Put quite simply, Yahoo Groups is no longer useable for most groups, or blind people, or other disabled people who need to use that interface. Elderly people can't figure it out. Heck, I'm not elderly and *I couldn't figure it out.
People are leaving in droves, some in the tens of thousands, with up to 500 groups each. This is a story, trust me, we are trying to get our voices heard in a group I created for it, http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/modsandmembers/
We are writing everyone we can from advertisers to CEOs and heads of departments. We are commenting on every thread we can find on the net about Yahoo's "new improved" model. <<
List of functionality destroyed and bugs in the new Yahoo! Groups software:
See: http://www.ygroupsblog.com/blog/?p=807 , "Lena" September 9, 2010 @ 5:23 am:
1. Destroyed: Messages Expanded (to read messages in chronological order from top to bottom).
2. Destroyed: Message history grid on the Home page for prospective members.
3. Destroyed: Quotes in replies via group website. Members who receive messages or digests via email will have no idea what the member who posted on group website replied to.
4. Destroyed: Option of fixed width font for viewing ASCII art, computer programs and tables in plain text messages.
5. Destroyed: View Source in Messages for ordinary members (necessary for tracking trolls in all groups, not only where I'm a moderator).
6. Destroyed: Messages sent in HTML (on groups which allow attachments) are shown in Messages on group website as plain text, losing formatting.
7. If the browser doesn't support JavaScript then only last page of the list of topics or messages is displayed. It's impossible to go to any other page. Only last 15 topics or messages are available.
8. Bug: quote signs ">" in Messages not shown, so it's impossible to distinguish quotes from replies.
9. Bug: quote signs ">" are stripped from messages posted via group website, so it's impossibe to reply correctly (with conventional quoting).
10. Bug: links "Start a Group" and "Settings" in the upper right corner in white font on light-grey background practically invisible (Firefox, 800*600 screen).
11. Bug: on Home page Subjects ("topics") of threads completely unreadable if non-English (in my case Russian language, Cyrillic alphabet, koi8-r charset) because of wrong assumption of iso-8859-1 charset during conversion to Unicode.
12. Bug: bodies of most messages in non-Latin alphabets completely unreadable in Messages while viewing a thread. Subjects and summaries in the default "Conversation" view also completely unreadable. Subjects are still unreadable after expanding a message. Subject of a reply sent via group website also completely unreadable.
13. Bug: if a message is posted from group website, IP-address of the poster is not included in the header. The X-Yahoo-Post-IP header contains for example 66.196.85.46 (that IP-address resolves to proxy3.grp.re4.yahoo.com).
14. Bug: in Messages " symbols shown as & q u o t ; , apostrophes ` as & # 3 9 ;
15. Bug: while trying to expand a message:
[unresolved translation for key l10n.groupstoobs.components.error.timeout]
Terrie
http://tlbtlb.com/
tlbtlb@mail.com