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Alternatives to Yahoo! Groups?

Posted by timothy on from the lots-to-pay-for dept.

smagruder asks: "Yahoo! Groups is driving this group owner crazy. Even if I could put with their intrusive (pop-up, interstitial, embedded-in-text) advertisements (and I'd rather not), YGroups has been experiencing a major serious bug over the past several months that they are continuing to ignore--that is, posted messages are sometimes not getting added to the group archive. Thus, many owners are considering moving their groups elsewhere, but where? Is it possible to replicate YGroup's features using currently available open source software, or is there another free service alternative?"

4 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. Lycos still runs groups by R2.0 · · Score: 4, Informative

    and they're free. A lot of Excite Groups refugees went there. Can't speak to the group owner experience, but as a user it's fine.

    --
    "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
  2. Re:Just use USENET by EricLivingston · · Score: 4, Informative

    I disagree. Usenet certainly does replicate one key feature of these "group" sites (Yahoo, Lycos, etc), which is the messaging, but there are a few other features that make the group sites better for true group communications, such as:

    1. Shared calendar - nice for keeping track of upcoming events and such
    2. Images/Documents folders - very nice for storing static content that shouldn't "cycle off" a typical message list, or be lost in hundreds of messages. Having lasting-value documents mixed in with highly perishable messages is a pain in the neck I've found.
    3. Private membership - or even just knowing who's a member: difficult to do with Usenet

    Yahoo groups, anyway, also has shared links, group polls, and even a "database" function, whereby one can, I gather, create tables and populate data fields in the group context, though I've never used it.

    So, certainly for some groups, Usenet would be fine if all they want is messaging. But for other groups these additional features are valuable and unavailable from Usenet (as far as I know).

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  3. Don't Get Me Wrong by smagruder · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I submitted this article, but I'd like everyone to know that I actually give YGroups (formerly EGroups, formerly OneList) a lot of credit in helping me build a large, increasingly potent group for EJB developers. I really like the general design of YGroups and the control it gives to the owner/moderator. And yes, I like that the group is web-based but also works like an e-mail list. I want all these qualities in an alternative.

    YGroups was a very promising place to place discussion groups, but the service has gotten too buggy and too ad-happy. And Yahoo makes it exceedingly hard to provide feedback, and when one finds a way to send feedback, it gets ignored.

    Thanks in advance for any cool ideas.

    Best regards,
    Steve

    --
    Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
  4. topica == free by madHomer · · Score: 4, Informative

    Topica runs groups for free. I actually prefer them over yahoo because they have a "one click" unsubscription URL at the bottom of each email.