If you read my blog post from last week you’ve heard that we are merging yg-alerts and Moderator Central. Let me provide some details around what this means and why we’re doing it.

What does this mean exactly?
What this means is that we are literally going to change the name of the YG-Alerts group to “Moderator Central” and recreate the Moderator Central you are familiar with on the Groups Beta platform. You will still find all the valuable resources on the new Moderator Central group that you’ve come to know and love and we’ll have a lot more flexibility to add new features based on feedback and suggestions we get from all of you. From the new Moderator Central group you will still be able to access the message boards, the new moderator tours, the Groups team blog, and other all of the other channels that currently exist to exchange ideas and help each other. We are not removing any functionality that currently exists, instead, merging YG-Alerts and Moderator Central will give us the ability to:

- Refresh content on Moderator Central on a regular basis to make it more relevant & timely
- Create one centralized communication channel for moderators
- Open new channels for moderators to share their knowledge & collaborate with each other

Similar to how YG-Alerts is currently set up, only Groups team members will have the ability to post comments and send announcements though the new Moderator Central group. The Groups team will post a summary of all official communications through this new group with a link to the Groups team blog where you will find full details and have the ability to comment.

As mentioned above, once the new Moderator Central group is live, we’ll encourage you to submit your suggestions for what new features you’d like to see in the group and how we can make it more relevant to you.

Similar to how YG-Alerts is currently set up, only Groups team members will have the ability to post comments and send announcements though the new Moderator Central group. The Groups team will post a summary of all official communications through this new group with a link to the Groups team blog where you will find full details and have the ability to comment.

As mentioned above, once the new Moderator Central group is live, we’ll encourage you to submit your suggestions for what new features you’d like to see in the group and how we can make it more relevant to you.

If you aren’t already a member of YG-Alerts (soon to be the new Moderator Central group), I encourage you to become a member so you can stay looped in on all the latest and greatest Yahoo! Groups news.

Thanks!
Jami Heldt
Community Manager

The Yahoo! Groups Team is hosting our first-ever Groups Moderator Town Hall next month. It’s happening Tuesday, October 9th from 6–9 p.m. at the Yahoo! Campus in Sunnyvale.

Did you know we have a group set up specifically for informing Yahoo! Groups users about upcoming downtime and other potentially useful information about groups? We do indeed, it’s called yg-alerts and I encourage you to become a member today if you aren’t already.

YG-Alerts Gets a Facelift

In the coming weeks, not only will you be able to get email notifications with useful groups information and news on YG-Alerts, but you’ll also find valuable groups resources. We are planning to transform YG-Alerts into the *new and improved* Moderator Central. This Moderator Central will still be an announcement only group used to deliver important official news about Yahoo! Groups to users and will also be the place for new and experienced moderators to go to:

- Discover ways to improve your groups
- Exchange ideas and help each other
- Learn about new mod-oriented news and features

This change will make it easier for us to update and refresh content on a regular basis in attempt to delivery more relevant information to all of you. It will also provide us with a channel to communicate directly with Groups Moderators through the email notifications sent out from this group.* We’ll post more details about this change next week, for now I want to encourage you to become a member today to stay looped in on all the latest and greatest Yahoo! Groups news.

Thanks!
Jami Heldt
Community Manager

* If you only want to receive alerts for issues affecting users and site downtime you can edit your membership preferences to message delivery of special notices only.

Below are known issues that may be affecting some Groups users:

Spam (current forecast: stormy)

We recently announced improvements that we made to the spam filter (Spam Guard) within Groups. The changes we implemented were meant to reduce the number of both false positives (legitimate Groups mail that is wrongly tagged “spam”) and false negatives (real spam that doesn’t get tagged).

And while we’ve seen some positive effects on false negatives (i.e. more real spam is being caught), we’ve also gotten useful feedback from the community that many groups are also experiencing a rise in false positives. We’re currently exploring how we can further adjust our rules to stop these false positives without completely rolling back our changes (and therefore letting more spam through). We’ll update you when we have progress to report.

In the mean time, if your group is experiencing this problem with false positives, you always have the option to turn the spam filter off (although we hope only temporarily).

Finally, we’d like to take a moment to thank the moderators who have been using the new “delete as spam” button on the pending message moderation pages. By using this button (and by approving messages from the “pending spam” page that were falsely tagged as spam), you help make the system smarter, which in the long run will improve Spam Guard for everyone.

Issues with Hotmail (current forecast: cloudy with clearer skies on the horizon)

Hotmail, as many of you are aware, bounces significant percentages of email from Yahoo! Groups. Yahoo! Groups is delivering the messages to Hotmail; but instead of delivering these messages to their users, Hotmail is rejecting them. Fortunately, there is some good news on the horizon.

One reason Hotmail bounces messages is a problem best described as “too many hops”. Because of the size of Yahoo! Groups (we send more mail than anyone else in the world) and the way our backend systems are designed to handle this scale, messages are frequently passed through many different servers, with each of these servers representing “a hop”. Unfortunately, Hotmail rejects mail that exceeds a certain number of hops. This is a reasonable step to take (as a way to protect against infinite loops), except that Hotmail (and Exchange Server by default), has set their limit so low (at 15 hops) that many Yahoo Groups messages, particularly those posted to moderated groups, exceed the limit and are bounced. Hotmail has been unwilling or unable to raise this limit, either for all email regardless of the source or for Yahoo! Groups mail in particular.

To address this problem, we are reconfiguring our systems to reduce the number of visible hops and expect this “too many hops” problem to be resolved by our next release.

However, this change will likely not eliminate all problems with deliveries to Hotmail (though it should significantly reduce the number). Unfortunately, it is all we can do on our end. As with all situations where email messages are bouncing, we are delivering the mail, but it is being rejected by the ISP or web mail provider. Which means it is ultimately up to them to correct the situation by providing their users with all the messages they are supposed to receive. So if you are a Hotmail user who has not been getting all of their Groups email, please complain to Hotmail and ask them to stop blocking messages from Yahoo! Groups.

If you are experiencing an issue not listed in this weather report, we may be aware of it but not reporting it based on the number of users affected. If you’d like to report an issue to us please do so via the Customer Care Help Form. Otherwise, feel free to post your questions or comments below.

Thank you,
Jami Heldt
Groups Community Manager

photo by tiennieknits

Folks who love sewing sure do love chatting about it. And boy do they love to keep the dialogue going (and going). For proof, look no further than the Yahoo! Groups crafts directory. It’s bursting at the seams — chock-full of groups filled with lively posts.

Make your way through the listing, and you’ll discover hundreds and hundreds of groups dedicated to crocheting, knitting, lace making, sewing, spinning and weaving, quilting, and more. My fingers cramp from just browsing the lists, let alone trying to do anything they’re discussing.

These are quality groups, too. Many of them have been nominated for our prestigious Best of Yahoo! Groups page. Here are a few who’ve gotten nods and also caught our eye (ouch, disturbing figure of speech for a sewing group):

Crochet Corner: A group of caring, compassionate crocheters (of all skill levels), sharing stories, tips, advice, and photos of their projects.

Monthly Dishcloths: Home of twice monthly knit-a-longs, where members receive daily lines of a pattern.

Sewing Gifts On Time: A forum for sharing ideas and sewing techniques for crafting gifts and seasonal items.

How about you? Any fun groups have you in stitches? Whether they’re centered on sewing or something completely different, we’re just looking for ones that have a common thread: groups that have thriving, dynamic communities.

Comment here and tell us about your favorites.

Darrell Jones

Yahoo! Writer (who’s all thumbs)

In response to feedback we’ve heard from many of you, I’m happy to announce that next week we’ll launch Yahoo! Groups Weather Reports. These timely updates will be posted on a periodic basis, bringing you the latest news on known issues that may be affecting Groups users.

We’ll also use these reports to notify you about upcoming downtime, as well as other potentially-useful information affecting you.

If there are specific details you’d like to see in these reports, please let us know by commenting below.

Thanks!

Jami Heldt
Groups Community Manager

It’s a tough job, but hey — somebody’s gotta do it. I’ll help you find today’s thriving pop culture groups.

As much as I prefer long nights by the fireplace browsing Yahoo! Groups that focus on prime numbers, tax law, or weevil fossils (be still my beating heart), fact is, somebody has to get the word out on all those current-trends groups too. It’s only fair. So let me be the one to do a little investigative journalism for you.

First off, note that there’s no shortage of great groups out there in Ya Ya land (uhhh, Yahoo!) covering the hottest heartthrobs, divas, super models, blockbusters, and run-away sensations. But rather than force you to suffer through page-after-page of full-color photos of Beyonce, Leonardo, the cast of High School Musical 2, and the likes, here’s a hint: We’ve compiled a handy page of The Best of Yahoo! Celebrity and Entertainment Groups.

It’s your shortcut to a shortlist of favorites that groupies go ga-ga over. These are shining stars that do a wonderful job of creating dynamic communities around everything from Hollywood to Woodstock III (surely there’ll be one?). We’ve even organized them for you, including Music Artists, Actors & Actresses, and TV Shows and Movies. Plus there’s our Pick of the Week.

Also be sure to nominate your group for this page. There’s a link for doing so on the Best of Yahoo! Celebrity & Entertainment Groups page (please include a link to your group, so we can easily find it).

Now go feel the pulse of entertainment groups. We’re updating the line-up regularly, so bookmark it and come back often for more inspiration.

Darrell Jones

Yahoo! Writer & Paparazzi Wanna-Be