Did not see this posted yet so here goes.

On the off chance anyone still uses YahooGroups. They announced that they will be changing the service and due to the wording that means either they are taking down Image and file hosting. Or they are taking down YahooGroups totally. Far as I can discern it is just the file and image hosting going away.

As some know. YGroups, and the e-group it was before Yahoo bought it and renamed it, used to be a really big place for RPG gatherings and discussions before the rise of Forums took the fore.

Some of the groups, like the Gamma World one I am a moderator on since before Yahoo, is one. Also the old Metamorphasis Alpha PBM and way back a Rifts PBM I ran. There was a Star Frontiers group, and many many many many many more. So if you had any favourite groups you liked. Now is the time to get on and back up anything there you want to save just in case it all is gone in a month or so.

Initially things were fine. But I think part of the problem. One that would be mirrored later by YouTube. Is that YGroups suffered from rampant covert group purges and account lockouts. Usually with no warning and a pain to even try and get an answer or an account unlocked. This happened to me many years ago and was the reason I pretty much quit the site. Moreso because there was no ryme or reason to the purges. Fan groups, business groups, art groups, game groups. One day they are fine. The next gone. Or the group owner is gone and the group is now possibly locked down depending on settings for post permission. To this day my original account is locked for no reason.

Had some great times there though while it lasted.

Checks his old AOL account.

A number of the ones I'm in have been migrating to another groups.io, which seems like a good spot so far.
As it was, I was hardly going to Yahoo groups anymore, it was just too clunky.

Quote from: Simlasa;1114810A number of the ones I'm in have been migrating to another groups.io, which seems like a good spot so far.
As it was, I was hardly going to Yahoo groups anymore, it was just too clunky.

Yeah I gave up on Yahoo groups years ago, it was great for niche interests to gather, but was already an outdated format in the early 2000s.

My one holdout was a local group who mostly used it to coordinate get togethers. That group transitioned to Groups io about 2 years ago, and what a difference. I'm starting to see Yahoo groups I was interested in but not enough to deal with Yahoo, starting to migrate.

The really sad bit is some of the admins of long established yahoo groups refused to see the writing on the wall and are now having to scramble to find a home for in some cases decades of collected information, denial convincing then then that there would be a last minute reprieve. Facebook groups are also taking the place of many yahoo groups. Personally I don't think Facebook is a good format for detailed or technical discussions, but it is available and easy so there is that.

I did some more checking and according to y-groups they will only be deleting the files, photo, and attachment sections, and setting every group private, and reducing some options from the sounds of it.

I backed up some stuff first from two friends groups as both had passed away and the groups are now fallow.

Quote from: Omega;1114858I did some more checking and according to y-groups they will only be deleting the files, photo, and attachment sections, and setting every group private, and reducing some options from the sounds of it.

I backed up some stuff first from two friends groups as both had passed away and the groups are now fallow.

That is everything that Yahoo groups was worthwhile for. In some cases huge collections of hard to find technical data for obsolete equipment. It is kind of like saying we are going to tear down the library, but don't worry we are just burning the books, the new place will still have benches you can sit on. The Photobucket fiasco was similar thousands of tutorials were destroyed across the internet when they decided to revoke their free hosting.

Quote from: Toadmaster;1114907That is everything that Yahoo groups was worthwhile for. In some cases huge collections of hard to find technical data for obsolete equipment. It is kind of like saying we are going to tear down the library, but don't worry we are just burning the books, the new place will still have benches you can sit on. The Photobucket fiasco was similar thousands of tutorials were destroyed across the internet when they decided to revoke their free hosting.

The files section didnt even exist initially and when it was introduced it was pretty small. Like 5 megs if even that. Currently its at 100 megs. Well.. till December 12.
The Photo section is a complete mess and is an absolute hell to save images from. Y-groups photo section has been a mess from the beginning. Either ruining images by resizing and converting to jpegs as it used to. Or the current system which half the time fails to actually download the image. (which may still be messed up. I dont know.)

I agree a-lot of stuff will be lost. A friend of mines game dev files are all on their Y-group. Im going to have to back those up as he passed away a few years ago.

A better analogy is that the Library announced they are getting rid of the RPG and comic book collection sections. Which my old library actually did.

Also saving anything on Y-groups was just begging for tragedy as they STILL do covert purges of groups without warning. So dont cry that its going away now. Lots of people had years of stuff deleted out of the blue. Often with a complimentary account lockout for the added Fuck You.

Never just save stuff on the internet. It is way way too ephemeral. Sites vanish and things like archive and wayback may not have saved it. I know tons of stuff totally lost. By old PBM business page is gone. My old page with games for the blind is gone. Hundreds of art and story sites are gone.

I heard about this last month and used the tool PG Offline to archive the groups I was part of. Sad that it has come to this. Same for all of the other internet stuff that has been lost over the years. Geocities, Fortunecity, Photobucket, etc.

It's all ephemeral. Generations from now archaeologists will be trying to reconstruct our civilisation from the only printed materials remaining, K-Mart catalogues.

Anyone else having trouble even viewing messages on the site?

Also I was reviewing the things to be deleted and one of those is Conversations. And unless I am wrong, and I hope I am, then that means the groups message archive will be deleted too?

This really bugs me as both the Gamma World and the FRUA groups existed when the system was still e-Groups well before Yahoo bought it up and fucked it up. Though to be fair. I believe at some point they just cut off all archives after a point about 10 years ago.