8 ms·

Extensive history is about to be lost. Despite being broken, many organizations still use it. Examples from that post: A police cooperative in Washington DC

by Diagon 7y ago

Extensive history is about to be lost. Despite being broken, many organizations still use it. Examples from that post: A police cooperative in Washington DC that was using them as a network to communicate with their respective neighborhoods with over 17,000 members. A phone company in the UK that assigns phone numbers using the groups and now will lose all those phone designations when it’s deleted. A Birding group in new Delhi with 2,000 members that has collected data and research on birds for TWO DECADES. An Adoption group in France, that has been using it for years and years to communicate and share history and photos and more. They also would have found: Numerous support groups for people who are suicidal or depressed. Numerous medical groups for people to communicate more effectively with their doctors. Numerous Vet groups with 24 hr care advice for sick pets. Numerous support and help groups for the Elderly. Numerous Historical groups for WW2 Veterans, Vietnam Veterans, and etc. Numerous science groups that have used them for years and have all their research there. Numerous fan fiction groups or arts groups that have shared their work for years.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tedunangst 7y ago
> A phone company in the UK that assigns phone numbers using the groups and now will lose all those phone designations when it’s deleted. Wow, somebody invented a database that's even worse than an Excel file on a network share. (Also, how are they going to assign new numbers when archive.org takes over? Is archive.org going to give them write access?)
- mtmail 7y ago
  “My understanding is that [the group] will still function as a mailing list, which is for all practical purposes, what people use this as,” https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/17/20919630/yahoo-groups-uk-ofcom-simwood-numbers https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/17/20919630/yahoo-groups-uk...
  - Diagon 7y ago
    That's right, but (our main concern) is that the archives are being deleted. With no further history being recorded, it's utility for some purposes is limited. I have also come across some complaints that even as a list-serve it can be problematic. Posts, for example, are no longer coming in order.
    - Alex3917 7y ago
      But as a mailing list, each subscriber has the entire archive, at least from the date they joined. And any one of them can make it publicly accessible at any point in the future. In practice it will undoubtedly result in the destruction of enormous amounts of human knowledge, but at least in theory not much is getting immediately lost.
      - philpem 7y ago
        The difficulty in a lot of cases is finding someone who has a complete copy of the group. Yahoo Groups also had file, photo and database features, and archives of those are likely to be incomplete. You'd have to go through the member list (primarily early members) and find someone who still had a copy of all the messages. The other problem is making it available - I ran a Yahoo group for many years, and have Mbox and Maildir format archives. I'm still looking for a decent web-based browser for these. HyperKitty (Mailman's archive browser) came close, but seems to require most of Mailman to be installed in order to work. In my case, I managed to archive a bunch of groups related to amateur radio -- and I will be placing these on archive.org as soon as I have a spare moment to zip them up. A difficult-to-access archive is better than no archive at all, the important part is getting the data into a safe place.
        Diagon 7y ago
        I have the same problem. I used some old script back in 2006 to download a couple of groups in ... I think it's Mbox format. It's just not clear what to do with it.
        7y ago
ec109685 7y ago
Not to be flippant, but wouldn't one of the members of these groups have a copy of the group in their email? Given gmail and whatnot store things virtually indefinitely, couldn't the contents be recovered that way? -EJ
- Diagon 7y ago
  Some of these groups are decades old. For them, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who was there for the whole history of the group and kept them all. Also, yahoo was often a headache, dropping emails to individuals - you'd have to go to the website to read them. And furthermore, there is a lot more than emails stored on the platform: files/images/links/calendars/databases ... To add to all this, it's not an individual project. Most people done' have technical competence. They need someone to help. That's what the Archive Team has been trying to offer (if not for Verizon).

by Diagon 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

tedunangst 7y ago

> A phone company in the UK that assigns phone numbers using the groups and now will lose all those phone designations when it’s deleted. Wow, somebody invented a database that's even worse than an Excel file on a network share. (Also, how are they going to assign new numbers when archive.org takes over? Is archive.org going to give them write access?)

mtmail 7y ago
“My understanding is that [the group] will still function as a mailing list, which is for all practical purposes, what people use this as,” https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/17/20919630/yahoo-groups-uk-ofcom-simwood-numbers https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/17/20919630/yahoo-groups-uk...
- Diagon 7y ago
  That's right, but (our main concern) is that the archives are being deleted. With no further history being recorded, it's utility for some purposes is limited. I have also come across some complaints that even as a list-serve it can be problematic. Posts, for example, are no longer coming in order.
  - Alex3917 7y ago
    But as a mailing list, each subscriber has the entire archive, at least from the date they joined. And any one of them can make it publicly accessible at any point in the future. In practice it will undoubtedly result in the destruction of enormous amounts of human knowledge, but at least in theory not much is getting immediately lost.
    - philpem 7y ago
      The difficulty in a lot of cases is finding someone who has a complete copy of the group. Yahoo Groups also had file, photo and database features, and archives of those are likely to be incomplete. You'd have to go through the member list (primarily early members) and find someone who still had a copy of all the messages. The other problem is making it available - I ran a Yahoo group for many years, and have Mbox and Maildir format archives. I'm still looking for a decent web-based browser for these. HyperKitty (Mailman's archive browser) came close, but seems to require most of Mailman to be installed in order to work. In my case, I managed to archive a bunch of groups related to amateur radio -- and I will be placing these on archive.org as soon as I have a spare moment to zip them up. A difficult-to-access archive is better than no archive at all, the important part is getting the data into a safe place.
      - Diagon 7y ago
        I have the same problem. I used some old script back in 2006 to download a couple of groups in ... I think it's Mbox format. It's just not clear what to do with it.
      - 7y ago

ec109685 7y ago

Not to be flippant, but wouldn't one of the members of these groups have a copy of the group in their email? Given gmail and whatnot store things virtually indefinitely, couldn't the contents be recovered that way? -EJ

Diagon 7y ago
Some of these groups are decades old. For them, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who was there for the whole history of the group and kept them all. Also, yahoo was often a headache, dropping emails to individuals - you'd have to go to the website to read them. And furthermore, there is a lot more than emails stored on the platform: files/images/links/calendars/databases ... To add to all this, it's not an individual project. Most people done' have technical competence. They need someone to help. That's what the Archive Team has been trying to offer (if not for Verizon).