Several of you have reported that when using Safari on a Mac the new "Updates"
feature within your groups you're unable to get past the pop-up.
If this is happening to you, here's how you can solve the problem:
-Upgrade Safari-
This "persistent pop-up" is only happening with the beta version of Safari
(3.0.4). To upgrade your browser, please go here:
(http://www.apple.com/safari/download/ )or, click on the Apple icon in the top
left corner and click on "Software Update" to check for the latest version of
Safari.
-Disable the update prompts-
To do this, go to the My Groups page: (http://groups.yahoo.com/mygroups )and
click on "Edit My Groups." From here, you can manually change your updates
settings, or, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and change all of the
settings for the groups on that page, at once.
If you've made these changes and are still having trouble, or, are using a
browser other than Safari, please be sure to report these issues to Customer
Care
(http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/ownmod/forms/general.html).
Melissa Daniels
Yahoo! Community Manager
Back in April, the ability to edit your membership information within a group
was frozen as a result of changes to the profiles system on Yahoo! (See
screenshots in this post:
http://www.ygroupsblog.com/blog/2009/08/18/update-to-the-members-page/ for
clarification)
Prior to April, you were able to edit the information that displayed in black
beneath your name within the Members section of your group. However, many of you
reported that after April the information displayed here was no longer correct
(as you have moved, changed your name or had a birthday), or, you simply just
didn't want it to show at all, but were unable to edit these fields.
Starting today, this feature will no longer be visible to group members or
moderators as we are removing it altogether. Instead, when viewing the
membership page, you'll notice that only the user's ID (or alias), status icon,
message link, and the edit icon appear. (See screenshots in this post:
http://www.ygroupsblog.com/blog/2009/08/18/update-to-the-members-page/ for an
example)
This feature will not be gone for forever, as we're working internally to ensure
that the information revealed is both correct, and what you want to share.
If you're a moderator who previously used this information to verify a group
member's age, you will no longer be able to do this by glancing at your
membership list. However, you will be able to click on a user's name and will be
taken directly to that user's profile (if they've opted to make their profile
public).
It's important to note that as a moderator you will never be asked to verify a
user's age (especially if you're running an adult group and wish to ensure that
people under the age of 18 are not attempting to join). This "check" is done
automatically by Yahoo's systems: if someone is under the age of 18, they will
not be able to access a site that is intended for mature audiences.
But if you're simply looking for a way to keep up with your members, and, learn
a bit more about your group members, you have a few options:
* Request that group members have a "public" and complete profile when
attempting to join your group
* Create a file that is sent out to all new members, asking them to provide
additional information about themselves
* Add the "Group Profile" application to your group. (To do this, you must
be a moderator or owner. Click on "Applications" in the left hand column of your
group, and then click "Browse Applications" and locate "Group Profile" from the
list. Click "Add" and then give the application a name and description and click
"Ok." Then, once you click on the application name, you'll be instructed on how
to start configuring your new group profile
We know this is an important feature for many group members and moderators and
assure you that this feature is not gone forever! We will be sure to update you
here and on the blog (http://wwws.ygroupsblog.com) as soon as the member detail
feature returns.
Melissa Daniels
Yahoo! Community Manager
Do you use Twitter (http://www.twitter.com)? If you use both Yahoo! Groups and
Twitter actively, we want to talk to you!
Please reply to this email or contact Melissa at yahoogroups [at] yahoo-inc
[dot] com.
Please include:
- Your twitter name/link to your Twitter account
- Your primary address
- Your name
- A list of the groups you own or moderate
- Why you'd like to participate in the beta
Thanks in advance, and we look forward to hearing from all the Twitter users
soon!
Melissa Daniels
Yahoo! Community Manager
Starting today, you'll notice a few more changes to Yahoo! Groups. This
includes: changes to CAPTCHA, the ability to post from the owner address, and a
fix for the problem preventing some users from being able to moderate groups via
email. More details can be found below.
CAPTCHA
We know that transcribing and translating the CAPTCHA codes can be difficult. As
of today, we're updating to a new CAPTCHA implementation, which includes the
ability to refresh codes you can't decipher (versus being forced to try and
fail), and the option of using an audio CAPTCHA for those who are visually
impaired. Not sure what CAPTCHA is? Find out more information here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha
Posting from the Owner Address
One of the most common requests we get from Moderators is the ability to post
messages from the owner address (as opposed to the moderator's personal
address). This feature will now allow moderators to mail to group members using
the GROUPNAME-owner@yahoogroups.com address, giving moderators and owners the
option to post in a way that clearly delineates them as moderators. Group owners
and moderators already have the option of rejecting messages from the owner
address, a feature we pushed a few weeks ago.
Moderation by Email
Also in this release is a fix for group moderators who were having issues
approving pending messages via email. Moderators affected by this issue were
using email clients that (in violation of internet standards) do not honor case
in reply to addresses, meaning that they would turn upper case letters into
lowercase. Since the codes that enable email moderation to work relied on the
reply address being the exact sequence of characters we were expecting, email
moderation commands did not work for these users. But we have now updated our
code in a way that will enable email moderation to work for even these email
clients, which should allow moderators to approve pending messages and members
via email once again.
As we continue to push out new fixes and releases, we'll keep you posted!
Melissa Daniels
Yahoo! Community Manager
Today you might notice things look a little different within Yahoo! Groups as
the "forward" button has been removed from the web interface.
Then:
http://www.ygroupsblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/forwardbutton.jpg
Now: http://www.ygroupsblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/noforward.jpg
This change was made as we recently discovered that this feature was being
exploited by spammers as it allowed for spammers to freely enter up to 50 email
addresses of their choice, as well as submit new content that may or may not
have any relation to the original message from the group.
While we know that the removal of this feature may be frustrating to some, we
believe it will also reduce the number of "spammy" messages that are being sent
out through the Yahoo! Groups system– which is a big win for all Yahoo! Groups
users.
Of course you can still forward a message yourself the old fashioned way by
copy/pasting but remember, before you send on a group message, you need to have
the "explicit permission of every group member whose content is being re-posted
or re-transmitted." (Review the Yahoo! Groups Guidelines here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/local/guidelines.html)
Also included in this release is the return of the audio CAPTCHA (we first
blogged about this back in November:
http://www.ygroupsblog.com/blog/2009/11/19/groups-updates-captcha-posting-from-t\
he-owner-address-email-moderation/) - an accessibility feature that makes using
Yahoo! Groups much easier for those that are visually impaired. To learn more
about CAPTCHA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA), and how Yahoo tests for
accessibility issues, check out this post on our sister blog, Yodel Anecdotal:
http://ycorpblog.com/2009/10/29/opening-eyes-to-accessibility/
-Melissa & The Yahoo! Groups Team
Today, we're excited to announce that we've begun rolling out a fix for the
long-standing message search bug
(http://www.ygroupsblog.com/blog/category/messages/message-search-messages/) .
This fix will immediately benefit a majority of groups impacted by this problem.
For the remaining groups, we'll continue moving them over to the new search
system over the coming weeks.
Q: How will I know if my group has been moved over?
A: Groups that have not been moved over will continue to see search results from
as recent as March of 2009, until they're moved to the new system
Q: When do you plan to have the full migration complete?
A: While we hope to have the full migration done as quickly as possible, we hope
to have all of the remaining groups migrated over in the coming weeks. Once the
migration process through, we'll update this blog post to let you know the
migration process is complete.
We know this migration took longer than anticipated but we're thrilled we've
made it past this hurdle together and you're able to give the new search system
a try.
-Melissa Daniels & The Yahoo! Groups Team
Starting today, some of you may notice an additional message in your inbox from
the Yahoo! Groups team.
We're currently beta testing a special version of group updates emails. This
beta email allows you to keep up to date with what's going on within your entire
Yahoo! Groups in one email. This email however does not include individual
messages so it is not a replacement to receiving your groups messages.
Unlike Daily Digests, group updates are only delivered when you or your Yahoo!
Group members do any of the following activities in your groups:
* Upload new photos
* Add a link
* Update (or create) a database
* Create a poll
* Add a new file
* Add an application or an application entry
This is a brand new feature that we're testing out on a small set of users—you
have the ability to unsubscribe (or re-subscribe) to these update emails at any
time. Please note that this update email will not include your group's message
activity.
To unsubscribe, simply click on the "Unsubscribe" link in the footer of the
email and you'll be unsubscribed.
Please note that this feature is in BETA —we're in constant development but want
your feedback to help us improve it, and we look forward to your constructive
criticism about this exciting new addition. Only a small set of groups will see
this feature in the coming days, but we'll gradually release this new email to
the rest of the Yahoo! Groups community in the coming weeks.
If your group has been enabled and you'd like to share your feedback, please
join this group: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ygroupsupdates/ where you
can share your thoughts with the team! We'll periodically ask for your thoughts,
but please feel free to offer your suggestions and share any issues as you come
across them in the group.
Thanks, and enjoy!
-Melissa & The Yahoo! Groups Team
Yahoo! Groups members and owners may experience intermittent downtime beginning
at 1pm PT on Thursday, April 1, 2010 while the Groups team performs regular
maintenance on some of the systems. During this time Yahoo! Group members and
owners may not be able to access the Yahoo! Groups site or receive Yahoo! Groups
mails.
We will update you as soon as the maintenance is complete. Thank you for your
patience!
A quick email to let folks know we're aware of the email formatting problems
affecting many groups and our engineering team is working on the issue. We'll
post updates on the status of the problem to the blog as we have them:
http://www.ygroupsblog.com/blog/2010/05/13/email-formatting-issue/
Sorry for the hassle.
Apologies to everyone for the spam post that slipped through yesterday, but it
is a good reminder of the dangers of email spoofing.
If you are worried about spoofing in your own groups, you can prevent it by
choosing to moderate messages from all members (including yourself and other
moderators!). Moderating all members is a two step process:
1. Set the group to moderate messages by default:
- Click "Management" in the left nav bar
- Click Messages under "Group Settings"
- Click "Edit" next to "Postings & Archives".
- In the "Moderation" section, choose "Moderated and click the "Save Changes"
button
2. Make sure no members of the group are set to unmoderated (if they are, this
individual setting will override the group default setting). The easiest way to
check to see if any members are unmoderated is to:
- Click Members in the left nav bar
- Click the "Export" link in the upper right of the page
- Scroll through the Export page that is generated to see if anyone is set to
"Unmoderated" (the other options are "Moderated", "Normal", and "Can't Post).
If any members are set to "Unmoderated", you will then need to manually change
their posting settings. You can do so by:
- Going back to the Members Page
- Find the member whose setting needs to be changed.
- Click on the "Edit Membership" link (or pencil icon) next to their name.
- Near the bottom of the page, click the "Edit" link next to the "Posting
Messages" setting.
- Select any of the settings other than unmoderated and click the "Save Changes"
button.
Meanwhile, I also wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself. I'm Layla
the new Groups Community Manager and thrilled to be here. I will be
communicating with you on a regular basis through this group, as well as on the
Yahoo! Groups Blog:
http://www.ygroupsblog.com/blog/
- Layla
P.S. As an fyi, Moderator Central is actually set to moderate all messages by
default (and has been all along). Unfortunately, a mistake was made when we
recently approved a new moderator account (it was erroneously set to
“unmoderated”). It was this mistake which allowed the spoofed message to go
through yesterday. But the problem has been corrected and won’t happen again.
Meanwhile, we have deleted the spam post (and the spam group it was promoting).
We're aware of the problem that many groups are facing where messages posted via
email are being rejected. We'll update the blog as soon as we have more
information about the problem and when it will be resolved:
http://www.ygroupsblog.com/
Hello, everyone:
I wanted to give you a heads-up. On Monday, August 9 from 2-5pm Pacific Standard
time, (22:00 - 01:00 GMT) Yahoo! Groups will conduct some tests to comply with
our annual Business Continuity Planning Certification (BCP).
BCP ensures that, should we suffer a major technical outage, we can minimize the
impact on your groups by quickly switching to a fully operational copy of the
site in another location.
Please note there may be a brief period of errors on your group's homepage. Some
groups might also experience message-posting delays for up to 2-3 hours.
There is a possibility that messages in a few groups will be queued up and
delivered at a later time, but don't worry our team is working hard to decrease
this possibility.
We truly appreciate your patience in this process.
Have a fantastic weekend
Layla & The Yahoo! Groups Team
Hello everyone:
As some of you have noticed and communicated with us, over the weekend we
experienced some server issues that impacted about 1/8 of our groups. These
issues included:
*Messages that were queued up but not delivered
*Message search was still not working for a few of our groups
Our team has been working hard over the weekend and all of today to eliminate
issues related to message delays—but they have not been able to completely
eliminate the message search problems.
Our sincere apologies for the inconvenience — sometimes servers have minds of
their own! Our team is has continued to put this on the top of our priority
list. Thank you for your continuous support, understanding, and feedback in this
process.
Dear Moderators:
Chances are by now you have read our blog post on August 13th:
http://www.ygroupsblog.com/blog/?p=695
Your continuous feedback and support is vital to our success and that is why we
are letting you know before anyone else the details of the exciting upcoming
changes.
Starting today in the US, we're introducing new features and product updates to
Yahoo! Groups. These changes will arrive in phases and will help you
communicate and manage your groups more effectively.
Here's a quick snapshot of what to expect:
•One place to do it all: Stay up-to-date and never a miss a beat with the new
homepage. Click here to have a sneek peak: http://bit.ly/a1NLpH
•Simplified posting: Easily post messages and photos to your group.
Click here to have a sneak peek: http://bit.ly/a1NLpH
•Keep up with the conversation: Read and respond to entire conversations
effortlessly. Click here to have a sneak peek: http://bit.ly/cIOzvO
•Intuitive, faster photo sharing: Share, upload, and view tons of photos in a
snap.Click here to have a sneak peek: http://bit.ly/amK52h
•Instantly get in touch: Chat with fellow group members without leaving your
group. (18 and older only)
Click here to have a sneak peek: http://bit.ly/bfJkXW
And this is just the beginning of additional enhancements to come. Initially
features such as Polls, Files and Links will remain the same, but we'll be
improving them too, and adding new things along the way. Think of Yahoo! Groups
as your improved home, and discover the beauty of each room as we renovate and
add in modern accents. Stay tuned to the blog for news on all the upcoming
changes. And please share your feedback on our Suggestion Board and the blog. As
Group owners and moderators, your support is especially important to this
transition.
We hope you are as excited as we are about these upgrades that will allow Yahoo!
Groups to continue to be the best place for your communities to live – and
thrive – online.
Layla & The Yahoo! Groups Team
Hi everyone:
Thank you for your constructive and immediate feedback. It is always great to
see how passionate you are about Yahoo! Groups. Our team was particularly
touched by comments from Linda, Jesse and Denver Murray. We are counting on
your continuous support in having 100% of our groups remodeled.
I want to remind you that Yahoo! Groups was one of the very first online social
networks, and our features were robust enough to provide continued support for
our users' needs. However, as the way we interact online has changed, we've
worked with you guys to evolve Yahoo! Groups and incorporate features that will
help you communicate and manage your online communities more effectively.
A few of you seem a bit confused about our new Groups Home Page so let me
clarify:
•Navigating content areas in a left hand control area has emerged as a common
design practice. Additionally, with everything going on in your groups, making
the main view be a summary of all these activities was a natural way to ensure
members can stay up to date.
If you are a visitor (not logged in) you will still be able to view the group
description & group photo as before. If you are a group member who is logged in,
all you have to do is to click on the i icon right next to the right of your
groups' name.
•Privacy issues: respecting users privacy is fundamental to Yahoo!. Privacy
settings are unchanged in this latest release. However, knowing who the members
are in your group and who can see your contributions is important. As before,
moderators have the ability to change their settings to hide access to member
list if they wish so, the only addition we have made is the introduction of
avatars if the member has created one.
Polly:
•Search should no longer be broken, if you are still having issues, could you
kindly send me a screen shot of the issue you are experiencing and I will follow
up with you and our engineers directly.
Claire, Elliah, Johnflynch1, Judith and Akierian
•I suggest you contact customer care with your mentioned issues
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/members/contact/forms_index.htm\
l?last_url=http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/members/index.html
Layla & Yahoo! Groups team
Hi everyone,
check out our most recent blog post:
http://www.ygroupsblog.com/blog/?p=958
Some messages have been delayed (possibly as many as five days) due to an outage
on one of our mail machines. We are in the process of sending out the delayed
messages and expect to catch up in the next few days. You do not have to resend
any messages.
Thank you for your patience.
As some of you have already noticed, there are currently two problems with email
that have emerged in the last two hours.
- Some users that have unsubscribed from groups have begun receiving emails
again.
- Users that have changed their email settings have begun to receive messages in
their old setting (e.g. digest users getting individual again).
The problem is only affecting groups with more than 500 members and our
engineers have identified the issue and hope to have a fix in place shortly. We
apologize for the inconvenience
For group owners interested in trying the new Groups experience that we
have been building, you can now visit our Blog to learn how to opt
groups in to try the new groups:
http://www.ygroupsblog.com/blog/?p=997
Cheers,
The Yahoo! Groups Team
Some of you may have experienced intermittent message search issues over the
last few days and continuing today.
Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Fortunately, our technical team has been able to identify the problem and is
already taking the necessary steps to fix the issue as soon as possible.
We will be sure to update you as soon as the issue has been resolved.
Thank you for your patience
Hello Everyone,
Yahoo! Groups is doing some house cleaning and next on the list is improving
group search. As of next week we will start the process of deleting any group
that has been created over the last 10 years that contain no messages, photos or
files. If you have a specific groups that has no content in it you can avoid
this deletion process by simply posting one message to your groups messages
feature, uploading a photo or file.
Thanks!
Layla
This holiday season, Yahoo! is rallying teachers, students, and its entire
Yahoo! Groups community to join together in support of education. In partnership
with Donorschoose.org, Yahoo! will donate up to $350,000 to bring classroom
projects to life across the country.
You can read more about this initiative on our Blog:
http://www.ygroupsblog.com/blog/?p=1104
Happy Thanksgiving everyone
The Yahoo! Groups Team
As all too many of you experienced this week, a misconfiguration in one of our
sets of MTA servers caused many messages this week to be delayed or to fail to
post altogether.
The good news is that the problem should have been resolved this morning, July
8th, around 2 am Pacific Daylight time (9 am GMT).
But if you are still seeing problems with messages posted after that, you can
report the issue here:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/members/contact/ygpostform1.htm\
l
Meanwhile, if messages posted before then still have not been delivered, you
should assume that the message will not be delivered and repost.
Our apologies for the problems and inconvenience.
- Y! Groups Team
Because of a problem related to the fix to our MTA servers last week, one of the
servers, which was supposed to be fully offline, was still accepting messages
(but not sending them out).
As a consequence, approximately 7% of messages that entered Groups last week
were never actually posted to the group archive or distributed via email. This
includes messages that were sent via email, through posts on the site, as well
as messages that moderators approved.
The good news is that the problem should now be fully resolved and no messages
sent today (7/18) should be affected. In addition, the messages that were stuck
on the "out of rotation" server are being posted to the group archive and
emailed out.
The bad news is that because of the sheer number of messages that were stuck,
it's going to take at least another day for these messages to all be sent and
some of the sent messages will then have been delayed for up to a week. Plus,
given this long delay, some users will have reposted the messages themselves to
the group already, which means that the delayed message will then seem like a
duplicate when it arrives.
Our apologies for any inconvenience and confusion caused by this error, which
was ultimately caused by the combination of the mistake with the server and a
failure of the monitoring systems meant to detect such problems. We are already
in the process of reviewing our systems to make sure a mistake like this never
happens again.
- Yahoo! Groups Team
P.S. If you believe the problem has not been fully resolved and messages sent on
the 18th (or later) have not posted, contact Customer Care using this form:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/members/contact/ygpostform1.htm\
lhttp://tinyurl.com/postingproblem
If you do, please provide as much detail as possible on when you posted the
missing message and how; and if the message was posted via email, please include
the message header (from your "sent" folder). Thank you.
Just a quick note to folks that we're aware of the reports of "missing
messages", and we're investigating. We'll post an update once we know more.
- Yahoo! Groups Team
An update to let folks know that we believe the issue with messages not posting
to Groups has been resolved. The root cause was a misconfiguration on one bank
of servers that caused messages to fail to route properly. The problem was fixed
Monday at 10 am PDT (5 pm GMT) and our scripts and process have been updated to
prevent such a misconfiguration from happening again. (Note: We waited to send
this update until we were confident that this was the only issue and the problem
was fully resolved).
The problem affected ~10-15% of messages posted to Groups between Friday
afternoon and Monday morning PDT (and would have affected messages posted via
the web or email). Messages posted after Sunday at 10 am PDT (or approved by
moderators after that time if the message in question required moderation)
should have posted to group but would have been delayed until Monday morning.
Messages posted (/approved) before Sunday at 10 am should have been bounced back
to the sender after 24 hours with a message saying the mail server was
unreachable or unresponsive.
But at this point, whether or not you received a notification that your message
failed to deliver, if a message you sent this weekend has not yet posted to the
group, we would recommend that you resend the message.
Our apologies for any hassles and inconvenience caused by this issue.
- Yahoo! Groups Team
P.S. If you believe the problem has not been fully resolved and you are still
having problems posting messages, go to
http://tinyurl.com/groupscontactushttp://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/members/contact/forms_index.htm\
l
and choose the "Problems Posting Messages ..." category. From there you will
find information that may help resolve the problem or you will have the option
to contact us.
Yahoo! Groups will be unavailable for 4 hours from Monday, October 3rd starting
8:30 pm PT to Tuesday, October 4th 12:30am PT, due to planned maintenance. If
there is any change to this schedule, we will update the information here.
Thanks,
Yahoo! Groups Team
Just a friendly reminder...
Yahoo! Groups will be unavailable for 4 hours from Monday, October 3 starting at
8:30 pm PT (Tuesday, October 4 at 4:30am BST) due to planned maintenance.
Several of you have reported issues on the following:
-Email Delivery
-Chat
-Bounce History
Just a quick note that we are aware and we are investigating. Thanks for your
patience.
Y! Groups Team
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