Yahoo Groups Shutting Down - Dec 14, 2019 (UPDATED)

[morgandawn]

(Updated Oct 25, 2019)

Starting Oct 28, 2019 no new files (photos, documents, etc) will be allowed to be uploaded. Starting Dec 14, 2019, Yahoo Groups will be limited to emails only - functions like digest will be eliminated and all files and photos will be deleted. Admins will have limited tools and all groups will be invite only. And archives of existing messages will not longer be accessible.

What To Do?

I have a step by step guide here. The short version

1. Admins - back up your Groups and decide whether and where to move
2. Members - back up your Groups - don't leave this to the admins.
3. Everyone - consider documenting Yahoo Groups on Fanlore, help spread the word

The OTW has made an announcement. Their Open Doors preservation program is open to  providing storage of Yahoo Groups backups that are assembled by moderators and non-moderators alike. Details here.

Fans are gathering on a Discord Channel to chat and ask for and give help:  https://discord.gg/ek2xFyJ (updated invite)

Please follow the Yahoo Group Rescue Tumblr for updates

 

Comments

[xworks]

Thanks for the head's up.

[duskpeterson]

Morgan, in Yahoo Groups's list of "content," there's no mention of messages, and they go on to say, "On October 21st, you will no longer be able to upload any content to the site. To share info with members of your groups, you'll continue to be able to do so via email." It's not clear to me whether they're getting rid of the messages on the site (i.e., the only service they will offer in the future is email) or are getting rid of everything *except* the messages (i.e., the only service they will offer in the future is email and some sort of access to previous emails).

Either way, I'll be downloading the messages of the groups I moderate, so thanks much for the links. But do you have any additional thoughts on their garbled announcement?

[morgandawn]

messages will be able to be sent - no files uploaded. functions will be turned off for the messages - ex: digest, auto subscribe. admin tools will be reduced (they do not spell out what admin tools). they also imply that the archive view will disappear. whether this means the existing messages will also go away I don't know. and if they stay, will search work?

Date change?

[enchantedsleeper]

I was just checking the help page and it looks like the date might have changed - it now says "Beginning October 28..." So that gives us an extra week at least.

Also, if you can still log in to the associated Yahoo! account, it looks like you can use the Verizon Privacy Dashboard to download archived data from your Groups. This is per my Wired email newsletter this morning.

Re: Date change?

[morgandawn]

Will check out the Verizon Privacy Dashboard. So far I am getting "HTTP ERROR 404
Problem accessing /. Reason:

Not Found"

[amedia]

Depending on what happens to the old messages, this might render inaccessible the whole Sock Puppet War that took place over the course of years on one of the Rat Patrol groups. Not that it's a happy memory, but it's an important part of our history.

I tried to write it up once, but the sketch I was able to put together (it's linked from the Sock Puppet entry on Fanlore) was emotionally exhausting, and I never produced a final version. Now, if anyone wanted to pick up the job, the primary sources will be much more difficult to access. Dammit.

[morgandawn]

If you are on the mailing list, download the messages now. They can always be used as a resource for later

[shadowscast]

Hi! Regarding the PG Offline tool that you linked: in a Reddit thread about the closure of Yahoo! groups, a person identifying themselves as the author of PG Offline has posted:

evildrome
1 point · 11 hours ago

If you want to backup the posts, photos & files from this group you can use my program called PG Offline.

It has a 14 day free trial which will give ample time to download your group.

http://www.personalgroupware.com/downloads.htm

Handy "how to" video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4PIumS33e0

The software has become effectively free.

It has a 14 day trial after which you can no longer download from YG! but you can still read and search the downloaded archive.

So, if you can DL your group in 14 days, you’ve won a watch haven’t you?

The lack of a download facility after the group has been deleted by Yahoo isn’t exactly going to be an issue is it?

Cheers,

Wilson Logan (PGO Creator).

So it sounds like 1) we absolutely have the software creator's blessing to use the software free for this purpose (yay!), and 2) if I understand correctly, the software will still be usable when the 14-day trial period has elapsed, it's just that you can't download anything else from Yahoo! after that point.

[(Anonymous)]

after 14 days you can only view. Export will be disabled so you will be locked into his proprietary system.

http://personalgroupware.com/smf/index.php?topic=1316.0

[graycardinal]

[coming in by way of the Fanlore community post]

As I read this, I expect that the email archives will be deleted along with the rest of the non-email content come December.

The whole point of this exercise seems to be to get Yahoo *out* of anything to do with hosting user-created material on its servers -- not that surprising right now, with Facebook in trouble for mismanaging data and both the FCC and Congress in a mood to impose new regulations on social media. In that context, pure mailing lists probably look a H*ll of a lot safer from a liability standpoint than hosted content archives, if you're lawyering for a social media site.

[kerithwyn]

Thank you! Seems to be working as intended so far.

[seagull2eagle]

One person on SGAHC offered some other resource options:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/SGAHC/conversations/messages/62394

ChrystallineOct 17 8:19 PM
So Yahoo Groups is shutting down "user created content" and specifying that email functionality will remain, but most folks I see are assuming this is just the beginning of the end and making plans to migrate.

Is everything on-list on other sites like Wraithbait, FFN, AO3? Could we get everyone to post their links?

Maybe we could see if the group could be a subgroup on AO3, like many other single-fandom archives have done:
https://archiveofourown.org/users/Open_Doors/collections

The one story I posted on list is on both FFN and AO3, and I'd be fine with having it added to a SGAHC-collection there.

I like the convenience of being able to download it into my Calibre database and mark favorites in my public bookmarks for others to hopefully discover and read:
https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrystalline/bookmarks

If you haven't heard of Calibre and FanFicFare, you've been missing out:
http://www.calibre-ebook.com
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=259221

Also, just FYI, I've looked into downloading the group messages. The only option I've found is a Chrome addon that only works with older versions of Chrome. The current version available from Google does not work with this. Gave me fits. Also annoying is that it insists on updating without my say-so. Just found an article explaining how to stop the updates but haven't tried it yet:
https://www.maketecheasier.com/disable-automatic-chrome-updates-windows/

The discussion that led me to the addon is here:
https://beta.groups.io/g/main/topic/yahoogroup_message_archive/146709?p=,,,20,0,0,0

The addon and instructions for use are here:
http://yahoogroupedia.pbworks.com/w/page/93006447/Chrome%20Application%20To%20Download%20Messages

The only place I found older versions of Chrome for Windows (I went with the oldest) is here:
https://www.slimjet.com/chrome/google-chrome-old-version.php

Other OS options found here:
https://techjourney.net/how-to-download-install-previous-old-version-of-google-chrome/

I've only tried with the FuRenR list so far, because it's the only list I'm in that has fewer than tens of thousands of messages. Out of 373 messages on the list, I only got 333 the first time. I assumed (mistakenly) that it just did 1-333, so I then downloaded 334-373, and ended up with overlap. I'm not sure which 40 messages it skipped, so I'll have to experiment with it to see how many messages I can get at a time without losing some. I don't know how long that will take me (and I have three more lists with tens of thousands of messages, so this could take a while) but if someone else figures out the trick (with lists you're in, obviously), please let me know.

Other groups are discussing where to move or just let the groups go. As quiet as it's been, I could see letting it go, but if the listowner(s) decided to go to GoogleGroups or Groups.io (upside: easy import from Yahoo; downside: get big enough it costs money), I would sign up to follow. Heard someone mention mobilize.io, which looks possible. Someone else had mentioned Slack, but that looks too business-oriented for this; I'm a big fan of free.

Also, by all means, feel free to forward most of this to other groups if you think it applies.

Chrystalline
https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrystalline/profile
https://www.fanfiction.net/u/355414/Chrystalline
http://cdlauryl.deviantart.com/

[morgandawn]

I am testing the Chrome add on on Chrome 77 and so far the "Save As" works (saves as raw text file)

[seagull2eagle]

How do we update our form entries from 'pending' to 'complete'?

I've finished with RRyaoi and am going on to YYH now.

[morgandawn]

Doh...I need to fix that. I'll edit the spreadsheet

[king_arthurs_muse]

Hi! Thanks for this! I'm the owner/admin for kingarthurfanfiction and I see that someone has added my group to the archive list. What does that mean? And thank you to the person who did it, because I have so little time to do anything! But I would like to participate in anything I can.

I am not going to keep the group active, but I do want the emails etc accessible. Let me know what I can do, if you have the time or anyone else does.

I'll read through this post in detail later today. I also just created an account at Fanlore, and will look at that too.

[morgandawn]

Post to your mailing list about your plans. And send me an email so I can put you in touch with the person downloading. The two of you can decide what to do with the email text files.

[renenet]

Thanks so much for the heads up and the helpful how to info! Following your suggestions today.

[doranwen]

I've had a couple of the groups I'm backing up start downloading messages later than the earliest. In one case, the earliest it would start downloading was 16891 - messages from February 2003 - but the group began in April 2002… (A LOT of messages to not be backed up!) I can see them listed in the calendar, but they're not available to be seen, much less backed up. So if anyone else encounters this, it's possible that the earliest messages cannot be accessed anywhere at all for whatever reason, and thereby will not be able to be backed up unless Yahoo figures out what's going on with them (which I highly doubt they care about doing).

[doranwen]

Do you know if there's anywhere to call for people to see if they're a member of restricted groups with inactive moderators? I've applied to join several, just in case, but chances are good that the mods don't even check that email anymore and will never approve the membership. However, some of those have several hundred members and there's a chance that one of them might see the notice if there were a central place to link to with a post that people could send out, kind of "if you are a member of one of the following groups, please contact us right away to help with archival!" that sort of thing. I can handle joining any public group and grabbing all the messages (I haven't even been following the message restrictions recommended by the program, but haven't had a single lockout from Yahoo so far despite grabbing two 50+k archives straight…), but the private ones where the mods have abandoned them, those seem to be lost causes. :(

[morgandawn]

What I can do is put together a Google form where people can submit the mailing list and it shows up on a spreadsheet (like this one: https://tinyurl.com/yyncxewj )

It will then be up to fandom to start pushing out the message

[capsulecorp_tm]

Thank you for ALL of this, I have a few mailing lists I need to archive for business and tax purposes more than fandom but...eh, it all applies. Bookmarking this post.

[duskpeterson]

Morgan, on the doc page "Yahoo Groups Being Archived," it says: "To see a list of Groups being archived go to: https://forms.gle/4dvTgq5LFuGjrHKj8" But that URL just leads me back to the form where you add groups that are being archived. Is there a list yet?

[morgandawn]

fixed. the url is

https://tinyurl.com/yyncxewj

[zippitgood]

Hi, I'm downloading several groups I'm a member of right now and had a question. Is the payment for the program a one time payment or is it a subscription?

[morgandawn]

Wilson the developer said it is a one time payment including all future upgrades. But you can ask him on his his forum (link is on the PG Offline Tutorial Guide)

[duskpeterson]

First of all, this should help a lot in tracking down fandom lists at Yahoo Groups:

Fan Email Lists.

It's a site put together by alice ttlg, listing all the known fandom e-mail lists in the early 00s. This Internet Archive cache shows the site as of December 11, 2003. (To find the lists of Yahoo Groups, skip down to Yahoogroups.) The site lists 1,080 fandom groups at Yahoo Groups. (Edited to add: The Yahoogroups listings appear to have left out the multifandom groups at Yahoo Groups - those are a few hundred more groups.) In each case, the site includes the list URL, associated website, fandom, genre/type, and description.

After that point in Internet Archive's cache record, the site switched to an "Advanced Search" system for the full list, which no longer works, but you can still see later e-mail lists by clicking on "Last 30 Days: Any Genre."

Not all of the lists still exist, of course.

I made intensive use of this site in the early 00s, and my recollection is that it rarely missed noting a fandom list. (Alice is still around, by the way. You can find her contact information here, under "Contact the Populli Webmaster.")

I just went through the list of twenty fandom groups that I still belong to. Of those twenty, only one (Master & Apprentice) has anyone posting about the shutdown. I sent posts to the other nineteen, but I'm deeply concerned that the archives of major lists will be lost. For example, nothing had been posted (till I posted) at two of the largest multifandom slash lists: Allslash (614 members) and RareSlash (1294 members). Heaven only knows what other major lists are out there, not to mention quirky little lists that should be preserved.

What I'm thinking is that we (by which I mean, a group of sizeable volunteers) could go about this in a systematic manner, contacting all of the moderators of fandom lists, since their Yahoo Groups emails are on the list pages. Then we could make an attempt to save any lists whose mods weren't responding, but whose lists seemed worth saving.

Is this idea worth pursuing, do you think? Or is OTW already doing this? :)

[morgandawn]

Great list. Where are the moderator emails? Are you talking about the subscribe emails?

[duskpeterson]

Also: Some folks have been asking, "Where can we continue our lists?" I'm astonished to see that Squidge.org is still around. It has been hosting fandom since 1994; a lot of fandom lists moved over there from Yahoo Groups because Squidge.org had more fan-friendly policies. You can read about its history here:

https://www.squidge.org/Squidge.org/About_Squidge.org.html

You can see its lists here:

https://lists.squidge.org/wws
https://lists.squidge.org/wws/lists
https://fanlore.org/wiki/List_of_Squidge.org_Mailing_Lists

And they're at Dreamwidth:

https://squidgestatus.dreamwidth.org

I haven't used Squidge.org recently, but I did have a list there briefly in the 00s, and it worked fine then.

[morgandawn]

I need an active editor on a "where do we go from here" doc. got 3/4 of the rough draft done.

[doranwen]

Two quick questions, assuming you're the one who put together the Google Form for archiving documentation:

Some of the groups I have been backing up are marked restricted and requiring mod approval to join. However, as soon as I *apply* to join, I'm able to view the messages (though not files/photos), and that is still true even if I'm denied membership. Should I mark this group public or private? None of the options seem to properly fit…

For the question "Have Moderators Announced An Archive/Transfer Plan?" what do I do if they're talking about it and haven't decided yet? I've been putting "no" because it's not a "yes" yet, but that requires me going back to deal with it; it's definitely not the same "no" as in "there's been no activity for five years and who knows if the mods are even alive anymore". I almost want a "It's Under Discussion" button to select, lol.

[morgandawn]

In that case, mark them Semi-public: Who the heck knows how Yahoo is managing group access and whether what we're seeing on the Group info page is accurate (or if the moderator changed the Group access). I am going to add a Notes field to the form to capture stuff like that.

And adding a Under Discussion button is a great suggestion

A helpful tool

[sakura_no_miko]

So, I've been having some fun, since my Yahoo ID goes back to 2005, and inactive accounts have been purged. Originally, I signed up for a Yahoo account but I linked my hotmail up to receive messages. So I had the hotmail account, but not the Yahoo ID.

What I had to do was set up a new Yahoo account, link that same ID, and then run this tool to make it all sync up:
https://joshuatj.com/2018/07/18/your-email-address-is-not-linked-to-a-yahoo-id-yahoo-groups/

And it let me back to the old mailing lists I was subbed to 15 years ago.

Re: A helpful tool

[(Anonymous)]

Also, some of the groups I'm in have been overrun with spambots. One is unfortunately filled to the brim with p*rn ads and pictures, with the actual fandom stuff buried several years back. Ugh. Anyone else run into this issue?

[doranwen]

I'm actually running out of groups to backup. I've looked at everything I can find from search, and they're all one of the following:
- locked (and very few of those have allowed viewing of the archive upon applying - I'm not sure how the ones that did, did)
- nothing but spam (it's not worth it to me to set it all up to download just 15 posts of teens going "come join my group!" and then stop because the rest is spammage)
- only for certain types of content that I'm not into
- fandoms I'm not into (I'm happy if someone else backs them up, they just have to be interesting to me for me to put the effort into doing it myself).

I've added all the ones I can't get into (that haven't outright denied my application to join, as a couple have) to the spreadsheet as suggestions (and am delighted to see that one's already been claimed and backed up).

I've tried every combination of words for the following fandoms (I'm now resorting to slowly browsing through long lists in various categories in hopes of finding promising ones): Tolkien, Pretender, X-Men Movies, Smallville, Narnia, Dr. Quinn, Lois & Clark, Women's Murder Club… I even ran across a Black Sash group, which is so obscure it doesn't even exist on AO3, and I'm planning on requesting it this year for Yuletide!

Any suggestions for how to find more fandoms to back up, without spending hours (that I don't really have) browsing through the directory of groups in an attempt to find good ones? As long as it's a fandom I'm remotely into (anything in my interest list on the profile) I'll happily turn my computer loose on it.

EDIT: I forgot Narnia…

[morgandawn]

A few fans are going through old lists of Yahoo Groups looking for ones with automatic member approval a s should have a that list soon. We also have a few on our Google Spreadsheet...those have not been vetted yet. I'll try to post the info as soon as I get it

[starfleetbrat]

Hi, here via an post elsewhere. Any chance of an updated discord link? That one says the invite is invalid. : )

Thank you for organizing this post...

[the_ped]

I had originally dedicated this last weekend before any changes went into affect to archive my still in existence groups.

And then it turns out I'm in an area of California impacted by the "Public Safety Power Shutoff"(PSPS), eyeroll. Ah well, I'll get back to this after the latest fire problems pass.

But thank you, Dawn, for organizing this page... And everyone whom is here helping.

[shadowscast]

I finally received the data which I had requested from Yahoo directly through the "privacy dashboard". I describe the results in this entry.