yahoogroups conversion of egroups

January 26, 2001 8:14 AM

yahoogroups conversion of egroups is in full swing. I've been through the conversion from onelist to egroups, but now with this they're mandating a conversion to the Yahoo ID and killing off the old sign-in system - which was email address + password. Why *must* I have a Yahoo ID?
posted by artlung (30 comments total)

Does anyone know if there is an easy way to pull data out of EGroups lists and Yahoo Clubs? Yahoo deleted a club recently without warning because of the ongoing Bonsai Kitten brouhaha, and I am not comfortable having data stored by Yahoo that they can delete at any time.
posted by rcade at 8:20 AM on January 26, 2001

Why *must* I have a Yahoo ID?

So that Yahoo can claim to have X-million members, and probably so they can track you more effectively.
posted by sudama at 8:22 AM on January 26, 2001

I'm on about 40 different eGroups list.....what a pain in the ass it was to fix filters this morning - and with no warning.
posted by bkdelong at 8:56 AM on January 26, 2001

Yahoo really just wants more page views. You get a yahoo Id . You get yahoo email and whatever else yahoo has to offer. It makes it easier for you to use all their other services. Its all about the page views baby.
posted by neo452 at 9:06 AM on January 26, 2001

what pisses me off is that somone already had the userid "cheesebot". now what kind of FREAK would pick cheesebot for a userid?
posted by cheesebot at 9:49 AM on January 26, 2001

This issue prompted me to actually get a MeFi account. Argh! Why must Yahoo take over the entire internet and force everyone and their dog to get a Yahoo ID while they're at it? (And my choice of ID was already gone. Drat.)
posted by gi_wrighty at 9:54 AM on January 26, 2001

Is anyone else noticing that groups.yahoo.com seems to be the only Yahoo property *working* this morning? I haven't been able to access anything for the last hour...
posted by Tubes at 10:08 AM on January 26, 2001

Yahoo mail is "jes' fine."
posted by sonofsamiam at 10:10 AM on January 26, 2001

Yahoo may be all well and good and kindly intentioned, but their methods of appropriating good, solid e-services (yack, did I just e-something?) and forcing their users to join the Yahoo borg collective suck massively.

It started back with GeoCities, and longterm GC members found that the takeover didn't do anything for them but eliminate services and cause troubles.

After Yahoo took over Webring, Ringsurf very nearly ran into troubles (Blogger style) keeping up with the influx of refugee rings. Topica has seen a massive growth in advance of this Yah'ing of eGroups. In the online journal world, notifylist.com is booming too.

You would think that Yahoo might take a look at the competitors to their services, notice that they are suddenly booming, and take heed that this means that people are not happy with their take it over/make it over/damn the users methods. The fact that no one there has done so makes it evident to me that they don't give a good damn. It's not about conforming to what the users want; it's making them conform to the Yahoo way. And that's just bad business.
posted by Dreama at 10:26 AM on January 26, 2001

I meant yahoo mail was working. They don't have any services that are outstanding, and I don't think they have any name loyalty among the good people of the net, just recognition.
posted by sonofsamiam at 10:29 AM on January 26, 2001

Crappity crap! I can't get to anything but the damn "Groups" from where I'm at. Crap!
posted by Tubes at 10:30 AM on January 26, 2001

Move to SmartGroups. Yeah. they've been acquired as well (by Freeserve) but you don't get the assimilation of Yahoo.
posted by holgate at 10:43 AM on January 26, 2001

You will be Yassimilated?

(Actually the only thing I use there is the Fantasy Sports stuff, which is always slow)
posted by tj at 11:10 AM on January 26, 2001

Does anyone know offhand what sites Yahoo has that they haven't switched over yet? They had Webring and egroups for a while before switching them over and yeah, angering almost everyone using them.
posted by beefula at 11:17 AM on January 26, 2001

I realize that they want to keep their Yahoo! interface consistent, but *really* That's got to be one of the ugliest layouts I've seen since ... well, since eGroups changed up awhile back. bleh. I'm sick of Yahoo already.
posted by sarajflemming at 11:34 AM on January 26, 2001

Why do you need a Yahoo ID, anyway?

Because Yahoo says so.

Anyone need any more on that?
posted by baylink at 11:59 AM on January 26, 2001

Personally, I'm waiting for metafilter to offer hello kitty themes like Yahoo does.
posted by gluechunk at 12:31 PM on January 26, 2001

i met a girl once via the yahoo personals. lived with her for almost a year. *shrug* that's reason enough for me to be wary of yahoo for the rest of my life.
posted by th3ph17 at 12:49 PM on January 26, 2001

Really, as far as mailing lists are concerned, nobody should ever have stopping suporting Listserv®. Not free, unless you're lucky enough to be a parasite on someone else's Listserv server (and, admittedly, most are), but you get what you pay for.
posted by aaron at 12:54 PM on January 26, 2001

This issue prompted me to actually get a MeFi account.

Why *must* you have a MeFi account?
posted by webmutant at 12:55 PM on January 26, 2001

That hello kitty theme is too funny. Nothing like the happy pleasure of kitty cat logos to help me deal with the grief around a horrible tragedy.
posted by mathowie at 1:07 PM on January 26, 2001

Is it just me, or is it now impossible to be a member of any eGroups mailing list without having your Yahoo profile rather publicly attached to each list, if not each message? All anonymity is gone. Worse, once you mesh your eGroups account to a Yahoo account, your Yahoo address shows up in full on each list's subscriber list, for easy and convenient spamming.
posted by aaron at 1:12 PM on January 26, 2001

PSA: To unsub from any yahgroups-assimilated list, you can send an e-mail message to [e-mail].
posted by Dreama at 2:18 PM on January 26, 2001

Is it just me, or is it now impossible to be a member of any eGroups mailing list without having your Yahoo profile rather publicly attached to each list, if not each message? All anonymity is gone.

no, only the info you choose to give out in your yahoo profile... I hardly see this as an attack on your privacy...
posted by dagnyscott at 2:22 PM on January 26, 2001

I remember when Yahoo did this with geocities and then later with webrings.org. It really screwed up both systems. It's so much harder to join and find webrings with the yahoo system, which also makes you stick this ugly yahoo banner/webring thing on your page. I'm sure Yahoo has its own selfish reasons for doing this but I like independent operations that work just fine without being incorporated.
posted by Mllebleu at 5:23 PM on January 26, 2001

Same with geocities. I preferred the earlier organisation of the pages. Now to search for anything on geocities is terrible. Not that anyone would want to
posted by asamee at 8:50 PM on January 26, 2001

I had enormous problems with a Geocities account I created independent of my pre-existing Yahoo ID. You'd have to log out of one to access the other. I use my Yahoo mail for work, not play, and the geocities thing was strictly non-work-related. I presume this is the eventual fate of egroups.

Dagny, you're assuming that someone is interested in showing the same data to everyone on the joesbestfriends list as to the hotsexwithbonsaikittens list.
posted by dhartung at 9:02 PM on January 26, 2001

Actually, Yahoo has that base covered, too. You can create up to six additional profiles for each Yahoo account, and that way you can vary the amount of information you provide.
posted by Aaaugh! at 10:23 PM on January 26, 2001

"Why *must* I have a Yahoo ID?"

Ya! What the hell? All I want to do is use their free service. You'd think since it was 100% free that they can't exspect me to make big huge sacrifices like this.

If they want to make this free stuff available then they should do so on MY terms.

When I'm in charge Yahoo will have to let users set their own policy. And they'll have to give us coupons for free burgers. And a puppy.

Companies that expect me to play by thier rules when they give me free stuff just piss me off!
posted by y6y6y6 at 8:54 AM on January 27, 2001

You are *such* a contrarian, y6. I thought that was my gig...

So, what is the received wisdom on mailing list/etc managers these days, for the anti-corp crowd?
posted by baylink at 10:00 PM on January 27, 2001