morgandawn | Yahoo Groups Shutting Down

(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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

my draft install instructions for the Chrome extension

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oRB7yF-QKqUEd76-dKxPh7ajlka4c7--EMnUIZDudrU/edit?usp=sharing

Thank you for detailing this. I'd given up on the current version of Chrome because I couldn't find the apps bar at all. Right click didn't work for me (I had tried that) but you inspired me to try again and keep looking. I don't know if it's because I have Win7(Pro), but the only way to get that toolbar was to go to Settings and enable Show Bookmarks Bar.

When I did this the first time with the old version of Chrome, I just used Save. I saved a copy first to be safe, and then manually changed the file extension to MBOX. This can then be imported to Thunderbird using the ImportExportTools NG addon. The imported MBOX shows up as a folder with the same name as the MBOX file, including the extension. The email messages have the timestamps and subject lines as normal, but sender email addresses are truncated. I still haven't figured out which 40 messages are missing from the download, though.

I also found a link that's supposed to be Yahoo providing download of Groups data. I've put in a request, will let y'all know what I end up getting:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/getmydata

The Yahoo help page that describes the privacy dash is here:
https://help.yahoo.com/kb/groups/download-data-privacy-dashboard-sln28671.html

The actual privacy dashboard for all Verizon properties is here:
https://verizonmedia.com/policies/us/en/verizonmedia/privacy/dashboard/index.html

Surprised me; I hadn't noticed when AOL became Verizon.

I don't know how long it will take for Yahoo to let me know that my data is ready for download, but I will certainly report back with what it gets me. I know when I did something similar with Apple it took several days, so I'm trying to be patient.

Thank you. I added the note about Thunderbird to the doc

Thanks! I've been trying to share the word with my groups. Figured out the missing messages were deleted from the archive. Yahoo numbers the messages, and the numbers don't change just because the member and/or moderator deletes a message that came before.

You can add FuRenR to the completely downloaded groups, then, barring the deleted messages. I don't know if anyone still has those.

Edited (completion) 2019-10-19 19:48 (UTC)

I don't know what this last part that you wrote means

"You can add FuRenR to the completely downloaded groups, then, barring the deleted messages. I don't know if anyone still has those."

M.D. not logged in

Oh, sorry. From context of some of the other comments, I thought you were keeping a spreadsheet of YahooGroups that have been fully downloaded or are in the process of being downloaded, so I figured it should be added to the list. If I misunderstood, I apologize. I was only trying to help where I can.

Yes I am updating the spreadsheet. Just juggling a lot of balls...or groups.

Completely understand that. I found the form and submitted it that way, though I wasn't sure how to answer the moderator question. It's a subgroup of another group, and over there someone's asked for permission to host everyone's stories on an archive, but I wasn't sure if that counted.

I also collated the best I could find for alternatives, but I made it my own post to try not to bombard you again over here:
https://chrystalline.dreamwidth.org/728.html

Looks great. Suggestions

1. Add in big bold letters - Adult Content not permitted on Groups.io (or Google Groups). Don't want people shelling out $110 only to be kicked off later

2. Suggest Dreamwidth as an adult content/fan friendly alternative. it allows explicit material, is free, threaded conversations, privacy locks and more. Image uploading is limited to 500MB free accounts and 1.5GB paid accounts

Good idea. Hope you don't mind I copy/pasted without much editing. I don't have a lot of traffic, having been mostly dormant for years, but I wanted to help.

Hi,
Just a lurker, just wanted to point out that the extension also works on Windows if you tweak it. You have to repackage it into a crx file using the YahooApplication folder. Once somebody creates a crx file it can easily be shared. It's not a large file.

Does that make it work with Opera? The addon does work as is with Chrome on Windows, but the addons bar is hidden until you enable Show Bookmarks Bar in the Settings. At least, that's how it was for me.

I finally got my official YahooGroups download. It took almost exactly two weeks, and I'm only in 7 groups. It's a zip full of zips: messages, files, links.

The messages are in numbered MBOX files. On the upside, they import to Thunderbird just as readily as the Chrome addon results. On the downside, each MBOX file has several dozen messages that are missing information. Sometimes date/time/sender/subject - those tend to have a single word as the sender and no subject and timestamped when I opened the imported folder. Looks like MadLibs in the Sender list. Sometimes the body of the message is blank. They're kind of a mess. I don't know how much of that is the import into Thunderbird, and how much is defect in the MBOX file, though I didn't see this kind of mess from the MBOX generated by the Chrome addon.

The Photos section is missing altogether. Apparently Yahoo is having Issues with the Photos section, and is unlikely to fix it since they're planning to purge it anyway. Import to Groups.io may not get the Photos section because of Yahoo's unfixed Issues.

The images that were in the Files section are there, but may or may not have their file extension. Some of them have the extension as part of the file name and are just missing the dot that makes it an extension. This goes for other files in the files section, as well. Files need to be checked against the archive to make sure they get their correct extensions so they're still usable.

Upshot is, for accurate archiving, the manual download of files and the Chrome addon or PGOffline are necessary. They can be uploaded to filesharing options like Dropbox or GoogleDrive or Microsoft OneDrive etc, or hosted at ISPs. Squidge.org has the advantage of being a listserver, so we could start over, and it provides filehosting and website hosting, so we could upload the old archives in addition to having the new archives, all in the same place. Of all the options I've found, this looks like the best to me.

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

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Chrome Extension

Re: Chrome Extension

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