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?

[duskpeterson]

Thanks! But there's a distinction between files and messages in Yahoo Groups, if I recall correctly?

[duskpeterson]

Whoops, sorry, I missed seeing your edited reply. Yes, it's all very confusing. I expect they'll be barraged with "Wha?" questions.

[morgandawn]

Search will not work so accessing old messages will be difficult.

http://personalgroupware.com/smf/index.php?topic=1304.0

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.

[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

Re: Date change?

[morgandawn]

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

Not Found"

Re: Date change?

[enchantedsleeper]

That's odd. The link works completely fine for me...

Re: Date change?

[morgandawn]

click on the yahoo logo in lower right hand corner and it takes me to

https://api.login.yahoo.com/

are you a Verizon customer

Re: Date change?

[enchantedsleeper]

Nope, I'm pretty sure their services don't extend to the UK.

I get taken to: https://login.yahoo.com/account/challenge/recaptcha (that's an approximation of the link, it's session-specific so it won't work a second time) and then after doing the Captcha, got taken to: https://yahoo.mydashboard.oath.com/lite

[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.

[morgandawn]

Are you downloading? I need someone to test a Google form

[morgandawn]

also, can you look over these instructions
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FC0cKXyKx01VkNYPrNpUwKla0SqaBboULnQJprsuCaE/edit?usp=sharing

[morgandawn]

Let us know what you think of these instructions
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FC0cKXyKx01VkNYPrNpUwKla0SqaBboULnQJprsuCaE/edit?usp=sharing

[duskpeterson]

Not yet, I'm afraid. Exterminators are due today.

[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.

[(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

[shadowscast]

Thanks for the info and the link!

In the meantime, I've discovered another limitation of the free version: it will only export 1000 messages, max, in the nice-looking human-readable html format.

But also, I've discovered that the format the data is saved in, .db3, is not actually proprietary, and there are other (freeware) readers that can open it.

[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/

[(Anonymous)]

What readers?

[shadowscast]

I downloaded SQLiteStudio from: https://sqlitestudio.pl/index.rvt?act=download

and successfully used it to open the .db3 file that PG Offline had created out of my downloaded Yahoo group. The interface was pretty confusing, but I was able to see the list of messages and open them.