Update 11/20/08 1:13 PM PST): In case any you fee like you are seeing things, the Groups Labs/Grouplets link in the left hand navigation did indeed re-appear for a couple days this week and then disappear again. We will fully restore this link the week after Thanksgiving. Thank you for your continued patience.

Because of some technical issues, we have had to again roll back the recent release that included the Groups Labs/Grouplets link in the left hand navigation.

However, if your group had already begun to use grouplets, don’t worry; your grouplets are still there, and you and your members can still access them through this direct link:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/YOUR_GROUP_NAME/grouplets/subscriptions

(NOTE: you’ll need to replace "YOUR_GROUP_NAME" with the actual name of your group.)

We hope to have the left hand navigation links restored soon.

Thanks for your patience.

For a complicated set of reasons that has to do with the way Yahoo’s registration system interacts with the Groups membership systems, users who create Yahoo! ID’s and choose the Ymail or Rocketmail domains (rather than yahoo.com) may have trouble joining groups (via the "Join This Group" button on group home pages) or starting groups. These users may get caught in an endless loop when asked to create a profile.

If anyone you know is caught in this loop, they can get out of it by first creating an "alias" in this way:

Go to: https://edit.yahoo.com/identity/manage
Click "Add Alias" and enter your desired Alias in the box provided and click "Save" directly to the right. If the Alias you want is available, it will then appear automatically as an Alias. If the Alias is already in use, you’ll receive a message that says "This alias is not available. Please try entering another."
(Note: The Profiles Blog has some useful tutorials on this if you want visual instructions).

Once they have successfully created an alias, the user should have no trouble either starting a group or joining one.

UPDATE (11/11 12:40 pm PST) : After being rolled back last week, the release is now being pushed out again and the links should be live again on all group home pages view within the next few hours.

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You may have already noticed the new "Groups Labs" heading and "Grouplets" link in the left hand navigation of all groups.

Groups Labs is a new area of Yahoo! Groups where we can test out new features before fully incorporating them into groups.

Grouplets, our first Groups Labs release, are new kinds of applications within Yahoo! Groups that allow owners and moderators to create and customize applications specifically for the needs of their group. Currently, we are offering eight types of grouplet templates (Address Book, Birthday List, Favorites, For Sale, Give Away, Group Profile, Jobs, and Places Map) and the ability to add as many different grouplets to your group as you like (though you always have to start from one of these templates).

You can learn more about Grouplets from this earlier blog post and from our Groups Labs Help Page .

We would love groups and users to try out these features and to tell us what you think. To provide feedback, send email to groupslabs@yahoogroups.com (or join the Groups Lab group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/groupslabs if you want to participate in an ongoing discussion).

However, please keep in mind that the features within Groups Labs are all "Beta" features, and they are more likely (compared to standard Yahoo! Groups features) to have usability issues, to be down at times for maintenance, or even to be removed altogether if it turns out there is no interest in them or significant technical problems.

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Update: Two additional points:

- The Groups Labs heading and Grouplets link cannot be removed from the navigation and display to all members.

- However, only a moderator can add grouplets to a group. And if no grouplets have been added, when a member clicks on the "Grouplets" link, they will simply see a message that "Your group has not enabled any Grouplets"

You do so much for your community.
We’d like to give something back.

Save your seat for the Yahoo! Groups Moderator Town Hall

————————

Join Yahoo! Groups for a special evening, just for moderators, where you can:

- Hear the latest Yahoo! Groups news.

- Exchange ideas with other moderators.

- Participate in a panel discussion with the Yahoo! Groups team.

- Enjoy complimentary food and beverages.

————————

Yahoo! Groups Town Hall — New York City

- Grand Hyatt New York
- Tuesday, November 18
- 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

Click here to register now

Update: Apologies for the belated notice, but this problem was actually fixed Monday (11/3) afternoon (PST)

We’re aware of the issue affecting some groups with recent activity (including pending messages) not appearing on the group home page. We are currently working to identify the root cause of the problem and to address the issue. We appreciate your patience. Thank you,

- The Yahoo! Groups Team

My name is Melissa and I’m the Community Manager for the profiles team and work with Jami, the Groups Community Manager.

Jami mentioned that many of you have had questions about the new profiles system and I wanted to share an update with you all.

We appreciate all your feedback and comments and have been working hard over the past week to make a few changes to improve your profiles experience.

We understand that some of you miss the old profile; however, Yahoo! is committed to build upon this new profile and we hope you will send us your suggestions to make it even better.

Now to the changes we’ve already made. Some of you may have noticed that while perusing your friend’s profiles you previously came across empty profiles, making it difficult for you to learn more about a specific user. We’ve repopulated ALL of the profiles (whether they’ve logged into the new system or not) with the information that a user had previously entered, and set anything that was public before, back to public. This includes display images and limited profile information and details.

What this means for you, as a user, is that now when you’re in a Yahoo! Group or a chat room, you’ll be able to learn a little more about the user you’re talking to, whether they’ve updated their profile or not.

In addition to this, we’ve also updated some of the error messages you were seeing to alleviate some of the confusion. Before, if you searched for your own ID before you migrated over to the new profiles system , you saw a blank profile. Now, you’ll be taken right into the new profiles system and will have the opportunity to update your information right there.

If you come across an alias that hasn’t been linked to a main ID, you’ll be told “This user has chosen not to link this Alias with their profile on Yahoo! in order to maintain their privacy.”

We also heard from you that linking aliases wasn’t clearly explained, so we’ve updated the text to do a better job of explaining what’s going on, and how to make yourself (and your aliases) discoverable.

You all have been incredibly patient and we appreciate all of the feedback you’ve provided us over the past few weeks. We know that there are several other improvements you all would like to see, and we’re working hard to incorporate them into the new profiles system.

For more information on the changes to profiles, please visit the profiles news blog .

Melissa Daniels
Yahoo! Community Manager

We would like your input on potentially modifying or removing the Guideline prohibiting the use of Yahoo! Groups for commercial or advertising purposes . Our original goal in establishing the Guideline against commercial use was primarily to prevent spammers from using Yahoo! Groups. We still intend to strongly enforce this prohibition but believe that the broad prohibition on no commercial or advertising use of Groups may not be the best approach. We have not made any final decisions and would need to figure out how it would work, but we wanted to get your input as we consider potential alternatives.

Here are the two changes we are considering:

POSSIBLE CHANGE #1: Removing Guideline # 6 (The ban against using Groups for commercial or advertising purposes).

POSSIBLE CHANGE #2: Adding a line to Guideline # 4 (Stay on topic) to let group owners know that if they post off topic commercial messages they may run the risk that it is considered spam, which is not allowed.

What do you all think of this proposal, do you have any concerns? Please share with us by posting in the comments area below.

Thanks!
Yahoo! Groups Team

Big thanks to everyone for posting all of the great input and suggestions on the new Abandoned Groups Guideline we’re developing.

Next steps are for us to continue making our way through all of the comments you left and incorporating our thoughts, then drafting the post. Once we have the internal sign-off, we’ll share the new Guideline with all of you.

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts on how best to resolve this on-going issue!

Best,
Yahoo! Groups Team

As shared in recent posts, the Yahoo! Groups team has been busy working to strengthen and improve the Groups site by building a new technology platform that will allow us to release features and fix bugs much faster than ever before. This work made possible the recent updates to Photos and is a first step toward all of the changes described in the blog post, what’s in store for Yahoo! Groups . We also have members of the team focused on developing some entirely new features; including a new kind of application platform we call "grouplets".

Those of you who have experimented with the PeopleMap have already gotten a sneak peak at our first grouplet, and yesterday we pushed a new release that offers eight new kinds of grouplets (Address Book, Birthday List, Favorites, For Sale, Give Away, Group Profile, Jobs, and Places Map) and the ability to add as many different grouplets to your group as you like (though you always have to start from one of these templates).

As with the PeopleMap, the "secret sauce" of all these applications (which have essentially the same "back end", only with different fields pre-selected as defaults) is the ability for you as a moderator to customize the grouplets to fit the exact needs of your group. So, for example, a parents group might want to use the Places Map application to create a list of after school programs in a particular neighborhood, while a local dog owners group might use the same grouplet to create a map of parks with dog runs.

Keep in mind that grouplets are still in early beta, and we aren’t yet providing links to them from the group home page, but you can try them out and add new grouplets to your group by going to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/YOUR_GROUP_NAME/grouplets/manager

Your group members can then access any grouplets you have added by going to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/YOUR_GROUP_NAME/grouplets/subscriptions

(NOTE: Keep in mind that in both cases you’ll need to replace "YOUR_GROUP_NAME" with the actual name of your group.)

We look forward to hearing what you think, whether the feedback is about the idea as a whole, about specific grouplets, or about ideas for new grouplets and new features related to grouplets.

To provide feedback, send email to groupslabs@yahoogroup.com (or join the Groups Lab group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/groupslabs if you want to participate in an ongoing discussion).

Please keep in mind that grouplets are still in early beta, which means:

• You can expect to see bugs.

• You can expect to see missing features and usability problems.

• You can expect down time and even the removal of some grouplets (if it turns out there is no interest in them or unforeseen technical problems).

In short, hold off on introducing grouplets to your group if you are concerned about experiencing any of the inconveniences listed above that come along with trying out a beta feature. If these kinds of inconveniences don’t scare you, we’d love to hear what you think.

Meanwhile, here are a few of the new options and features that we already know we want to add to grouplets in the coming months:

• The ability to upload photos to grouplet entries.

• The ability for members to comment on entries.

• The ability to add new types of fields such as multiple choice questions, composite fields, and multiple instance fields.

• A notification system that can alert group members to new activity in grouplets.

• The ability to import data into grouplets from the database, offline spreadsheets, or other sources.

• The ability to move data from one grouplet to another.

We look forward to hearing what else you want!

Thanks!
Yahoo! Groups Team

Abandoned Groups, or groups whose owner has gone inactive, have been an issue within the Groups community for some time. While it may seem as though this is a simple issue to address, it’s actually fairly complicated. There are several factors involved that make it difficult for us to re-assign ownership responsibilities without the original owner’s consent.

In order address this on-going issue, we are going to create a new Guideline regarding owner responsibilities to lay the groundwork for transferring the ownership of a group where the group owner is not fulfilling his/her responsibilities. For example, this Guideline might inform group owners that they are responsible for monitoring group activity to make sure the group remains true to its purpose and that pending messages and members are processed in a timely fashion.

Our general philosophy at Yahoo! Groups is that group owners are free to run their groups in any way they want, as long as their actions do not violate the Yahoo! Terms of Service . However, we never intended this to mean that a group owner could essentially abandon a group, without first making sure that someone was in place to take over. And we have heard from many users on the Groups Suggestion board who have urged us to help them when a group owner stops being an engaged owner. When members have invested significant amounts of time and effort into a group, we understand they feel it isn’t fair for their group to be ruined because the owner disappears. We agree.

At the same time, we need to make sure any system for transferring ownership of a group is not abused by those who might try to “steal” a group and does not punish group owners who are simply taking a short vacation (as opposed to those who are truly absentee).

So while we’re still working out the details and the timelines, we are considering implementing a process along the lines of the following:

• Group owners who do not take any action in their group for an extended period of time may receive a notification that they are risk of having another member promoted to co-owner status.

• The owner will then have some period of time to respond to this notification. If the owner responds, then nothing will change in their group.

• But if the group owner fails to respond within a specified time frame, then another group member will be promoted to co-owner status. If the group has moderators, the new owner(s) likely will come from that list. If there are no moderators, then the new owner will be automatically selected from the Group membership based on some combination of seniority and participation. Alternatively, we are also considering giving group owners the ability to name someone as their predecessor should their activity/moderation be inactive for the specified time frame (similar to a living trust).

As we work to define the best terms for this Guideline, we’d like to hear your thoughts on the process we’ve proposed above.

• What should the specified time frame be that a group owner is absent before someone else within the group be promoted?
• Should Yahoo! promote a moderator that exists within the group or should the current owner have to name someone who will take over in the event they go inactive when they start the group?
• What other criteria should we use for deciding who becomes the group owner in a situation where there is no active moderator or “trustee”?
• What should happen if the original group owner does reappear, months, or even years later?
• What other concerns or suggestions do you have that we haven’t addressed here? Please share with us by commenting below.

Thanks for your help to shape this important new Guideline!
Yahoo! Groups Team