Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo Groups Plagued by Downtime, Technical Issues for Almost a Week (bleepingcomputer.com)
Yahoo Groups were nonfunctional all last week, according to customers complaining on the company's support forum and Twitter. From a report: Yahoo Groups, which is a hybrid between a classic discussion board (forum) and a mailing list, was recently acquired by Verizon. The issues appear to have started last Sunday, November 17, when users began complaining that they could not access the site, and when the site was up, users could not start new discussions and post new messages. In addition, when posting messages and starting new topics was possible, Groups would not send email notifications to the other group participants. Similarly, Yahoo Groups would not create web posts for replies people sent in via email.
It used to be quite good until MM became CEO and they switched to infinite scroll, inserting ads into the lists, and other inconveniences. They sacrified usability for a modern look. When they "improved" the UI many users and admins complained but Y! refused to rollback. Their user based dropped quite a bit.
carrier pigeons have been downed by high winds. Yahoo groups? Who the heck is still using that?
Actually many groups such as bayscan, Parachute Mobile, various clubs as it is convenient in sense of mailing lists and a place to put photos, files, and various documents. Some of these people have tried other groups such as IO and Google groups though overall doesn't seem to cause a huge migration from yahoogroups. Of course for IT/Linux/Unix/Network gurus always have something better but most people are not such gurus (analogy of why most people buy tickets to ride an airplane instead of flying their own). Google groups is ok but from what I have experienced not much better. Also many yahoogroups have been around for decades so there's a lot of legacy. What may obliterate yahoogroups is if they extensively change the format where it becomes not usable (kind of like hotmail).
Laugh what you want but geocities was of great value. Sure it never had the luster of what an IT/Linux/Unix/Network guru can build, it had that primitive 1990s feel, many of the sites were stinkers but many had very useful information pages on various subjects. These were written by actual people who put in their personal time to share knowledge. Unlike now most webpages that show up on searches are sales/marketing websites that aggregate the same stuff over and over.
mfwright@batnet.com