Yahoo survey (Re: Yahoo Group Storage Space downgrade?)

[Kelley]

> Dan:
> > Does anyone know if Yahoo is
> > proceeding with any such restructuring
> > of their groups, or planning to?
> 
> Saitaina:
> > Yahoo has been pushing this idea around
> > for about a year or so now.  <snip> 

Dan:
> Thanks, Saitaina. I had not been aware of the previous work done 
> around this when I posted the query, but will certainly look into 
> it.

Sorry, Dan, you kind of got sandbagged on that one; I wanted to 
comment and got sidetracked before this post went up.

To explain to everyone, in May of 2002 Yahoo put out a survey to 
gauge the interest in having 'pay' groups.  At the beginning of 
Sept., they put out what seems to be the same survey again.  I 
responded to it both times, but didn't save a copy of the questions 
the first time, and didn't save a full copy of them this time.  But, 
I've searched a bit and found a copy (one version) of the '02 
questions, which I'll upload to the files here, along with what I 
have of the latest one.

I say 'one version' because answering one question one way would give 
you set of options A on the next question; answering it a different 
way would give you set of options B, etc.

I assume that Yah *will* be going with some form of pay groups at 
some point, but I say this because of all the 'changes' that have 
been happening, really, since Yah took over eGroups, but mainly since 
the first survey went out:  

There's no longer any evidence of how much space we have for 
messages: HPfGU (and all groups started before '01) used to have 512 
MB of message archive space.  Groups created after Jan or Feb '01 
(think it was '01, but might have been '02) only had 32 MB.  As 
messages were posted, you could see on the Messages page (top right) 
what percentage of your 512 you'd used.  They've dropped this, so 
very difficult to estimate how much space we'd need (for a pay group).

This is one of the reasons for the Archive groups; we'd been 
extending them beyond just the messages from the old Club to current 
main list messages as a precaution in case we reached our message 
space cap and had to begin deleting the earliest messages to stay 
within limits (or heaven forbid, Yah deleting our messages). 

They've reduced the space for photos, too, I believe, though that 
hasn't really had much of an impact on us.

Just before OoP they began making some "software" changes that were 
causing horrific delays, in particular delays in changing your email 
setting for the groups; people who joined in the OoP surge and forgot 
to change their default from Individual mails to anything else were 
going insane.  They'd gone in and changed their settings (or had the 
elves do it), and days later were still getting individ emails (and 
you all remember how bad the posting volume was at the time).  

There were also delays between a person joining the group and 
actually getting added to the members list, too.  Sometimes they were 
never added; this is a problem when it comes time to take them off 
moderated status -- if we can't find them on the members list, we 
can't 'de-mod' them.  We'd have to contact the person and ask them to 
unsub and resub.

I think this stuff coincided with the "Yahoo Sponsored Links" you see 
everywhere now, but can't remember for sure.

Apart from the delays, there's the terrifically fun formatting 
wonkiness we've got now -- one line of text normal, next line has one 
word, next line normal, etc.  Sigh.  Oh! -- There's also now the 
difference in searching the archives:  it used to search much bigger 
batches of messages, thus would take less time (especially if you had 
to go quite a way back).  Now, the batches it searches are much 
smaller, between 150 and 300 messages or so, and we all know how long 
it takes now.

The 'software' changes also affected the elves in other ways -- we 
can't sort the members list by "Joined" and "Last" anymore; we've 
been working around that, but an annoyance all the same (and I don't 
believe this is a problem in all groups, either, but it is on the 
main list, which is where the elves need it).

One of the most irritating effects from this 'software' change 
(that's what the Yahoo person told me it was when I phoned them) was 
that all groups now have a limit of 15 moderators.  This is a 
tremendous headache when you have a mod team of often 30 or more 
people.  I can't see why they'd impose this new limit if they're not 
planning to introduce pay groups (in which they'd likely make that a 
new feature -- unlimited moderators, for a Fee!).

Anyway, all these things (plus many that I can't think of offhand) 
have been happening in one form or another since the first survey.  
I'm sure we'll see more of these 'changes' coming again soon since 
this last survey.  

There have been some minor good changes in the midst of all this, but 
*far* fewer than the negative stuff -- the new 'links' at the top:

Yahoo!  My Yahoo!  Mail    Welcome, kelleyscorpio   Groups Home - 
                           [Sign Out, My Account]    Help


The "What's New" info on the homepages of groups -- how many new 
members, posts, files, etc., in the last week.  A few other things, 
too, but these improvements are dwarfed by the increased 
limitations / cut back features & functions / problematic stuff.  

But, my point is, since the negatives are far outweighing the 
positives, I'm guessing Yah will make the things they've taken away / 
decreased / etc. available features of the pay groups.  We'll see.  
Don't imagine any of this will be happening very soon, given the 
length of time between survey one and survey two.

If anyone has more or different info on this, please let us know.

--Kelley