Monday, September 02, 2013

Movin' on Up

Not to the eastside but to Google.  We owners and moderators of POD (PERS Oregon Discussion) have not made a formal decision to leave Yahoo Groups, but things are going disastrously bad since Yahoo rolled out the update called NEO.  It is happening to random people right now, but all but one of our moderators have been affected (infected) by the NEOization of Yahoo Groups.  In short, NEO is a disaster.  It prevents the most basic control, it destroys the formatting of messages and replies, it opened the floodgates to spam (more than 100 in the past three days), and it makes management a nightmare.  To prevent some of the worst issues (the spam), I've shut the group down to any unmoderated content.  It keeps out the chaff, but it is a pain for moderators and the members trying to post legitimate questions and add content.  While we plan to give Yahoo until the end of September to sort itself out, I'm not optimistic.  To prevent the complete destruction of the group, I have already created a new POD on Google.  To get to the site go to https://groups.google.com/d/forum/persoregondiscussion .  You will have to join the site, but we are starting to take legitimate, unmoderated, PERS-related questions from all members there.  You must be a member to read and to post.  Things work similarly to the way the old Yahoo worked.  There are a few differences and as we note them and implement them we will post a document (a FAQ) comparing the old functions in Yahoo with the new way to do things in Google.  Most of the 125 or so members of the Google group seem to like it so far, so I would encourage anyone interested in keeping up with PERS information in real time to join the new group.  I'm going to remove the link to the Yahoo group from here, principally because I don't want new members to join there; I want them to join Google.  You can join Yahoo easily enough if we end up keeping the old group, but the actions and behavior so far make it highly unlikely that is going to happen.  This last week of NEO has been the biggest time-sink of my life, having wasted no less than 50 hours trying to work around, avoid, undermine, seek help, going outside of Yahoo, and creating the new group, all to maintain continuity for all members and other interested parties.

Please join the Google group.  It has some wonderful search features that simply don't exist on the Yahoo side.  I wish the move didn't have to happen - and in the end in might not - but being prepared is the only way I know to being able to Move on Up.

Again, thats https://groups.google.com/d/forum/persoregondiscussion

Thanks

6 comments:

Unknown said...

On my browser short cuts bar I now have a G-POD (for Good-POD and Google-POD) bookmark and a Y-POD (for Yucky-POD and Yahoo-POD). It appears that I am the only POD moderator (so far) to escape NEO and being sucked down the rabbit hole. Thank you Marc for the tremendous amount of time you have put into this mess. And thank you for making us a good new home.

peg

M.E. said...

I second comments by Peg. Also, because of your reminding us that health insurance premiums can be deducted partly on Sch.A, you saved my newly retired sister a lot of money. She had forgotten to deduct her premiums and is doing an amended return now. Thank you all for the timely information. M.

mrfearless47 said...

Thanks both of you for your kind comments. I had to do something as Y-POD was going downhill more rapidly than an out of control school bus. I wanted something readily accessible, not something that required some hand-rolling, which neither Greg nor I have time to do (although we both could if necessary). Google Groups is a good solution for our needs. Now we just need to figure out a way for a mass move rather than just a one-by-one move. I'm working on that now.

janedoe said...

How can we unsubscribe to the Yahoo group?

janedoe said...

have we been automatically UNSUBSCRIBED to the yahoo group? if not, how can i do this?
(thanks for getting us out of there, so sick of the spam)

mrfearless47 said...

I'd rather no one unsubscribed from the Yahoo Groups. Every post is now moderated and NO NEW messages will get through. BUT, I want people to have access to the archives and files until we figure out how to move them to Google. If you want to be sure you never get another email from Yahoo Groups, log on to the YPOD group and change your message option to "NO MAIL". That means you'll only get information by logging onto the site. This keeps the site active and available to us to use until all the pieces that need to flow to Google get moving. Thanks, Marc