Users Revolt Over Yahoo Groups Update

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An anonymous reader writes “The new NEO format of Yahoo Groups is being rolled out to users and there is no option to go back. Users and moderators are posting messages asking Yahoo to go back to the old format. Yahoo is responding with a vanilla ‘thank you for your feedback we are working to make it better’ comment. Most posters are so frustrated that they just want the old site back. One poster writes ‘Yahoo has effectively destroyed the groups, completely, themselves.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Users Revolt Over Yahoo Groups Update

6 COMMENTS

  1. I’m Brenda, Nightowl >8#

    I’ve been trying to write the media and get your attention for over a week. But maybe I’m not going at it the right way.

    So I’m going to share some posts about people who are severely impacted by this buggy, broken Neo change to Groups, and maybe if I show you their despair, their sadness, their frustration, the way they are all being impacted by this destruction of our Classic Groups, then you’ll understand.

    NEO DOES NOT MEET THE NEEDS OF THE DISABLED, ELDERLY ETC:
    Read this post for an example of that, from Alison:

    “i am seriously ill and predominantly bedridden. i belong to two support groups for my illness. you have now completely prevented me from being able to take part in these groups. Please change your completely useless faulty interface so i can use groups on my smartphone from my bed immediately. I can not believe you would put something into place that would not work at all! I am completely fed up of yahoo, with your enail app being incredibly unreliable too.!
    Alison bell
    God bless”

    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/suggestions/4382669-i-am-seriously-ill-and-predominantly-bedridden-i-

    And she’s not the only one affected, there are countless thousands who are.

    IT DOESN’T WORK FOR THE VISION IMPAIRED:
    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/suggestions/4378578-the-new-format-is-not-screen-reader-friendly-for-b

    IT DOES NOT WORK FOR THE FREECYCLE GROUPS:
    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/suggestions/4362138-i-am-going-to-write-to-freecycle-org-see-if-we-c

    THERE IS NO WAY TO REGULATE SPAMMERS:
    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/suggestions/4383141-major-fail-new-format-doesn-t-allow-moderator-to-

    YAHOO DOES NOT UNDERSTAND THAT GROUPS ARE NOT A SOCIAL NETWORK:
    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/suggestions/4369100-yahoo-need-to-recognise-that-most-yahoo-groups-are

    TABLES AND OTHER FEATURES ARE NON-FUNCTIONAL:
    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/suggestions/4331396-i-can-t-edit-tables-save-edits-delete-tables-th

    DATABASE, CALENDAR, ETC., ARE NON-FUNCTIONAL:
    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/suggestions/4371542-return-to-the-prior-format-and-let-us-have-groups-

    GROUP ARCHIVES ARE MISSING OR UNACCESSIBLE:
    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/suggestions/4371221-our-huge-file-section-of-stories-is-completely-gon

    PHOTO SECTION IS A COMPLETE MESS:
    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/suggestions/4382103-the-yahoo-group-photo-albums-are-a-nightmare

    YAHOO NOW REQUIRES EVERYONE TO HAVE A MOBILE PHONE:
    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/suggestions/4370653-why-do-you-have-to-supply-a-mobile-phone-numberm-b

    YET NEO IS NOT FUNCTIONING ON MOBILE DEVICES:
    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/suggestions/4364888-the-new-interface-is-a-kludge-hard-to-use-and-nav

    SO USERS ARE FLEEING THE “YATANIC” IN DROVES:
    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/suggestions/4371376-rollback-neo-my-group-members-are-jumping-ship-

    Please help us get this news out into the public? Yahoo seems to just ignore our voices, and we’ve been trying to tell the world what has been going on and how everyone is being treated for over a week now! Please help us do that?

    NEO is nonfunctional, and if Yahoo doesn’t roll back this NEO and restore our Classic Groups, Yahoo will continue to lose their users, and more people will sell stock, until there will be no one left to visit their ad pages.

    Please also feel free to come to my group (it’s public to read) and see what I’m talking about.
    http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/modsandmembers/

    And you can go to the Feedback Thread and see the thousands of upset users for yourself:
    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451

    Thank You, and feel free to publish any part of this e-mail or the others I’ve sent, including my Yatanic poem which you can find here:
    http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/modsandmembers/message/3512

    Please help us, not for me, but for the thousands of people impacted by this mess.

    Thank you,

    Brenda
    Nightowl >8#

  2. I’m Brenda Fowler, Nightowl >8#

    I’ve been trying to write the media and get your attention for over a week.
    But maybe I’m not going at it the right way.

    So I’m going to share some posts about people who are severely impacted by this buggy, broken Neo change to Groups, and maybe if I show you their despair, their sadness, their frustration, the way they are all being impacted by this destruction of our Classic Groups, then you’ll understand.

    NEO DOES NOT MEET THE NEEDS OF THE DISABLED, ELDERLY ETC:
    Read this post for an example of that, from Alison:

    “i am seriously ill and predominantly bedridden. i belong to two support groups for my illness. you have now completely prevented me from being able to take part in these groups. Please change your completely useless faulty interface so i can use groups on my smartphone from my bed immediately. I can not believe you would put something into place that would not work at all! I am completely fed up of yahoo, with your enail app being incredibly unreliable too.!
    Alison bell
    God bless”

    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/suggestions/4382669-i-am-seriously-ill-and-predominantly-bedridden-i-

    And she’s not the only one affected, there are countless thousands who are.

    IT DOESN’T WORK FOR THE VISION IMPAIRED:
    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/suggestions/4378578-the-new-format-is-not-screen-reader-friendly-for-b

    IT DOES NOT WORK FOR THE FREECYCLE GROUPS:
    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/suggestions/4362138-i-am-going-to-write-to-freecycle-org-see-if-we-c

    THERE IS NO WAY TO REGULATE SPAMMERS:
    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/suggestions/4383141-major-fail-new-format-doesn-t-allow-moderator-to-

    YAHOO DOES NOT UNDERSTAND THAT GROUPS ARE NOT A SOCIAL NETWORK:
    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/suggestions/4369100-yahoo-need-to-recognise-that-most-yahoo-groups-are

    TABLES AND OTHER FEATURES ARE NON-FUNCTIONAL:
    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/suggestions/4331396-i-can-t-edit-tables-save-edits-delete-tables-th

    DATABASE, CALENDAR, ETC., ARE NON-FUNCTIONAL:
    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/suggestions/4371542-return-to-the-prior-format-and-let-us-have-groups-

    GROUP ARCHIVES ARE MISSING OR UNACCESSIBLE:
    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/suggestions/4371221-our-huge-file-section-of-stories-is-completely-gon

    PHOTO SECTION IS A COMPLETE MESS:
    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/suggestions/4382103-the-yahoo-group-photo-albums-are-a-nightmare

    YAHOO NOW REQUIRES EVERYONE TO HAVE A MOBILE PHONE:
    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/suggestions/4370653-why-do-you-have-to-supply-a-mobile-phone-numberm-b

    YET NEO IS NOT FUNCTIONING ON MOBILE DEVICES:
    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/suggestions/4364888-the-new-interface-is-a-kludge-hard-to-use-and-nav

    SO USERS ARE FLEEING THE “YATANIC” IN DROVES:
    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/suggestions/4371376-rollback-neo-my-group-members-are-jumping-ship-

    Please help us get this news out into the public? Yahoo seems to just ignore our voices, and we’ve been trying to tell the world what has been going on and how everyone is being treated for over a week now! Please help us do that?

    NEO is nonfunctional, and if Yahoo doesn’t roll back this NEO and restore our Classic Groups, Yahoo will continue to lose their users, and more people will sell stock, until there will be no one left to visit their ad pages.

    Please also feel free to come to my group (it’s public to read) and see what I’m talking about.
    http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/modsandmembers/

    And you can go to the Feedback Thread and see the thousands of upset users for yourself:
    http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451

    Thank You, and feel free to publish any part of this e-mail or the others I’ve sent, including my Yatanic poem which you can find here:
    http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/modsandmembers/message/3512

    Please help us, not for me, but for the thousands of people impacted by this mess.

    Thank you,

    Brenda Fowler
    Nightowl >8#

  3. Regarding Yahoo Groups – I moderate a group of 6,000 members for an organization called Freecycle. It’s not that we are resistant to change, it is that NEO has NO functionality. It simply does not work! Mods basically lost all ability to oversee their group. We can’t approve messages, edit messages, reject messages with a comment, add groups of people, home page html and photo disappeared, etc. I can only approve one pending message at a time before the system FREEZES up! The list of bugs and glitches goes on and on. What frustrates so many of us is that clearly they never did beta testing on it – because if they did they would have found all the issues prior to rollout. Yahoo simply did not do their homework. They had a great format and basically destroyed it in a day. Yahoo claims they have millions of users, their user number and potential advertising numbers are going to change dramatically in one month if nothing is fixed because we can’t continue in NEO format and will be forced to take our groups somewhere else.

    • This is BIG news!

      There are Freecycle groups like yours in every TOWN.

      I can’t speak for the US but the UK alone has 4 500 000 Freecycle and (similar) Freegle customers using systems based on nearly 1 000 Yahoo Groups. They need Moderator tools, data integrity and data confidentially as well – nobody wants their details given out to every crook in town.

      It happens that the roll-out has barely affected them yet – I just hope Yahoo! can head off a mass exodus.

      [Gentle Reader – these comments are coming from loyal long-time supporters of Yahoo!]

      David

  4. The issue here isn’t mere change – it’s Functionality.

    Level 1: The new code didn’t work. After 5 weeks of improvement, a lot of it still doesn’t work, or it doesn’t work on all Platforms. Ironically, given Marissa’s love of Mobile, it works worst on handheld devices.

    Level 2: There are old and disabled people for whom it will never work because it’s clean-looking cleverness defeats their Screen Reader software. This cuts people off from their lifelines, and (unlike the rest of us) they don’t have the tech means to migrate to a superior product.

    Level 3: There are sophisticated features within Groups that may never work again. That’ll mean goodbye for the groups who need those features that Yahoo! no longer values.

    But that’s all practical stuff. What has really riled the Yahoo! Community (whose Moderators alone outnumber the Chinese Army) is the total absence of warning, of top management visibility and (in the early days) of practical help.
    To their credit, junior Yahoo! staff are putting their shoulders to the wheel with bug-fixes and occasional personal contact, but Marissa was resigning the Logo while a core-product burned around her like Nero’s Rome.
    Come on guys, come clean with the Boss and she’ll give you a good steer on how to claw this fiasco back, and her’s how:-

    Behind all the anger are solid unswervable Yahoo! supporters who are keeping logical lists of functionality and a positive attitude. Rely on these guys. For example:
    http://tinyurl.com/n3pll29
    is a sober, thoughtful wiki kept up to date by the best brains in the user community. Talk to them, please.
    David

  5. yes, yahoo groups has become quite awful. i used to read the e-mails of the groups i belong to online, but today this isn’t possible. when i click in order to get the next message i get an advertisement.
    i’m seriously considering to unsubscribe from my group – not because i doný like them anymore, but i’m quite fed-up with this yahoo nonsense!

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