Yahoo! Groups is undergoing some essential planned maintenance on Monday, October 3 starting at 8:30pm PT (Tuesday, October 4 at 4:30am BST) and lasting 4 hours. Groups will be unavailable during that time. The Suggestion Board will not be affected by this.

If there is any change to the schedule, we will inform you here with updates. We’re sorry for the inconvenience caused – we assure you this work is essential.

Hi everyone,

Because of a problem related to a fix last week, one of the servers, was still accepting messages (but not sending them out).

As a consequence, approximately 7% of messages that entered Groups last week were never actually posted to the group archive or distributed via email. This includes messages that were sent via email, through posts on the site, as well as messages that moderators approved.

The good news is that the problem should now be fully resolved and no messages sent today (7/19) should be affected. In addition, the messages that were stuck on the “out of rotation” server are being posted to the group archive and emailed out.

The bad news is that because of the sheer number of messages that were stuck, it’s going to take at least another day for these messages to all be sent and some of the sent messages will then have been delayed for up to a week. Plus, given this long delay, some users will have reposted the messages themselves to the group already, which means that the delayed message will then seem like a duplicate when it arrives.

Our apologies for any inconvenience and confusion caused by this error. We are already in the process of reviewing our systems to make sure a mistake like this never happens again.

- Yahoo! Groups Team

P.S. If you believe the problem has not been fully resolved and messages sent on the 19th (or later) have not posted, contact Customer Care using this form:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/members/contact/ygpostform1.html

We wanted to let you know that we launched a beta version of group chat today. To use group chat, just click on the new chat link in the left menu.

Chat functionality is enabled by default for most groups.  If you wish to disable chat in your group, here are instructions on how to do so:

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/members/chat/ygchatmod-01.html

To learn more about the new Chat feature, who can access Chat, and options for moderators, see the Chat Help page:

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/members/chat/

Enjoy, and please let us know what you think.

The Yahoo! Groups Team

Hi everyone,

Over the past few months, we have been evaluating your feedback on the new Groups experience that we have been testing with some groups for several months. Based on that feedback, we have decided to rollback the new Groups experience starting this Wednesday, January 12. We will instead iterate on the current interface going forward. Thanks for your feedback and thoughts throughout this process.

The Yahoo! Groups Team

Many of you have been writing us to share your concerns regarding our a recovery or back up system for Yahoo! Groups, so we thought we would dedicate a post to this issue.

The Yahoo! Groups platform is operated by collaborative a cross-functional team connected to Yahoo’s Service Engineering and Operations organization. Our success and progress is measured against a strict set of criteria that is applied to every Yahoo! website. As in all Yahoo! Properties, we are 100% dedicated to the availability and data integrity of Yahoo! Groups.

We strive to exceed a strict set of criteria to ensure every single visitor to Yahoo! Groups is able to reach the website at a rapid speed. For this reason, we have multiple monitoring systems which continually score us against this criteria; any time we’re missing the goal or have a problem on the site, we report it to our centralized Operations Center and Problem Management teams. Our ur 24/7 on-call staff identifies what went wrong and provide solutions for fixes. This process if followed by a postmortem with the Engineering and Product teams to analyze the failure and ways to prevent prevent the issues in the future.

The main Yahoo! Groups storage system (almost a petabyte of disk storage, total) is backed by a set of state-of-the-art, high performance fileservers which ensure every bit of data is simultaneously duplicated on at least 3 hard drives. Every 15 minutes, every file on the system is synchronized with a duplicate storage system in another geographic region to ensure that even if we’re hit by (for example) a disaster that cuts power to one of our datacenters, we’ll be able to go live in another geographic region with a complete copy of our data and with a minimum of hassle. Then, every hour, the fileservers take a snapshot backup of all the data just in case something goes wrong. We can recover data deleted within the last few hours very quickly. Anything written to one of our main filer systems is considered extremely safe, and we also back up all of our database systems to these filers every day.

On the topic of disaster recovery We build the website in a way that ensures that production problems (i.e. loss of a single computer component, or a poorly performing code release or datacenter issue ) won’t compromise your experience. We’re constantly exercising this capability so that our backup systems will be ready. Anything we’re not certain of is worked on until we’re 100% confident it’s ready for us to use. We never deploy anything without geographic backups, and EVERYTHING is monitored.

We have a dedicated team working 100% to ensure the site continues to run without issues, however new challenges are bound to confront us every now and then. We’re committed to reacting quickly, working to prevent future issues, and making sure everyone in our community knows what to expect when trouble arises.

Thank you for your continuous support.
The Yahoo! Groups Team

A year ago, during the third day of my unimaginably long labor, I wondered whether I would survive to see this day: my daughter’s first birthday.

As the nurse finally wrapped that tiny, helpless newborn in a blanket and handed her to us, we watched the nurse walk away as we worried about how we were going to help this little creature transition into a moving, exploring person. As if the nurse had read my mind, she turned around to say, “Don’t worry, motherhood is natural. You will figure it out. Human beings have been doing this since the cave ages.”

Yes, true — but didn’t cave people have family around to help? And could we really assume that human beings had been parenting correctly for millions of years? Wouldn’t bad parenting explain a lot of evil behavior in the world? What if we fail in disciplining our child, what if we are not able to serve as good role models, and, worst of all, what if we cannot get this whole breastfeeding thing right and she starves or we manage to overfeed her via the bottle? What if we drop her during her bath? What if…

Before releasing us from the hospital, my OB/GYN stopped by to stress the importance of having my mother around to help when I arrived home. When I told her this was not possible, she replied, “Then find a support system somewhere,” wrote down the names of support groups, and handed the paper to me. I looked down and saw a bunch of parenting groups that were mostly hosted on Yahoo! Groups. Then it hit me — my husband and I had access to a resource previous generations did not have access to: online resources like Yahoo! Groups, which facilitated parenting communities both offline and online.

For more than a decade we have benefited from a number of online tools. It began in 1978 with bulletin board systems (BBSs) that had dial-up modems and flashing lights; evolved into Usenet newsgroups and all of the alt.* discussion forums; then into Majordomo mailing lists; and finally into user-friendly online communities such as Yahoo! Answers and Yahoo! Groups, which are full of fun, rich features.

Community development has prevailed on the otherwise “bad reputation” Internet, and we have been able to tap into the kindness of our fellow parents’ knowledge. You can post your questions and receive immediate guidance, support, and, most of all, benevolence.

Did you know that currently there are more than 81854 groups formed around parenting on Yahoo! Groups? There is a group to meet virtually any type of need.  If you are a single parent, you no longer have to feel alone — there are groups such as Single Parents.

If you are having a difficult time becoming a parent and are considering adoption, there are groups such as adoption parenting.

If you are in a mixed marriage and considering raising your children bilingual, you can find answers to your questions on groups such as Multilingual Munchkin.

I would like to take a moment to thank all those parents that have participated on the numerous parenting-related Yahoo! Groups and shared their wisdom and support.

What was the most useful piece of parenting advice you ever received, and would you give that same advice to future parents? Have you formed or belonged to a Yahoo! Group that has made a positive impact on your life? Don’t be shy — share your story with us. You can either leave a comment or be our next Guest Blogger.

Did you know that Yahoo! Groups is home to over 46,768 teaching-related and educational groups?

With over 1,000 members, Kinder Korner is dedicated to Pre-K through 2nd grade teachers. It’s a place for them to share ideas, ask questions, and get support. According to the owner of Kinder Korner, the best teaching ideas naturally come from other teachers, and there’s always someone in that group willing to help.

This holiday season, Yahoo! is rallying teachers, students, and its entire Yahoo! Groups community to join together in support of education. In partnership with Donorschoose.org, Yahoo! will donate up to $350,000 to bring classroom projects to life across the country.

The Homepages for Homerooms program is fun and simple. Public-school teachers can participate by posting projects on the DonorsChoose.org website and request items they need for their classrooms to flourish – books, art supplies, you name it! Teachers who already have projects on DonorsChoose.org can participate as well. After setting up projects, teachers and students can encourage their community to make Yahoo! their homepage in support of a favorite project by going to http://yahoo.homepagesforhomerooms.com/projects. Yahoo! will also promote the program across the Yahoo! network. Every week from November 19 to December 23, Yahoo! will give up to $600 to projects that have generated the most homepages, with a total donation of $25,000 each week.

As a bonus, every week that 50,000 people set Yahoo! as their homepage, Yahoo! will double their contribution and fund $50,000 worth of projects that week. And if 500,000 make Yahoo! their homepage by the end of the five week campaign, then Yahoo! will kick in an extra $100,000 the last week!

The program is a no-cost, easy way to support teachers and students. By setting Yahoo! as your homepage, not only can you stay up-to-date on what’s happening in the world, you can feel good about supporting teachers through the DonorsChoose.org program (a 501c3 organization called the “future of philanthropy” by the New York Times).

How can you get involved? It’s easy!

1) Find a project you’d like to support by visiting http://yahoo.homepagesforhomerooms.com/projects. If you’re a teacher, you’ll find materials to help you quickly set up a project and spread the word.
2) Click “Support this project” and follow the easy steps to make Yahoo! your homepage. Each person can take this action once during this five-week campaign.
3) Spread the word to all teaching-related and educational groups, teachers, colleagues and friends – and help Yahoo! fund more and more classroom projects across the country!

This week, we released updates to both the current Yahoo! Groups and the new Yahoo! Groups experiences.

Included in the current Yahoo! Groups release were:

•Fixed issues in reactivation email for users with bouncing email addresses
•Issues getting to the Advanced Search page

The following were in the new Yahoo! Groups experience release:

•Return of message numbers!
•For users an alias in their groups, the alias should appear now in Group Chat
•Sending as owner and reply-to sender now work correctly on the web site
•Resolution of issues with deleting photo albums and photo comments

As always, thank you for your feedback.

The Yahoo! Groups team

I have a group that I have not used in the past 6 months. How can I make sure that it will not be deleted in the recently announced group cleanup?

Only groups older than 6 months without messages, photos, or files will be deleted. This will not affect groups started in the past 6 months; groups with messages, photos, or files; spam groups with messages, photos, or files; or email addresses.

If you do not want your group to be included in this cleanup, please post a message or upload a photo or file.

I would like to switch my group to the new Yahoo! Groups experience, but we use a lot of applications. Are applications supported in the new Yahoo! Groups experience?

Yes, applications are fully supported in the new Yahoo! Groups experience. In fact, you will be able to access them directly from the left navigation bar. Learn more about Applications in the new Yahoo! Groups experience.

How can I moderate messages from some group members and not from others?

You can elect to moderate only new members or only select members in your group. Learn more about how to choose moderation settings for messages.

I keep getting spam messages from groups that I never signed up for. How can I stop getting them?

If you are receiving spam messages from groups that you never joined, please send a report to the Yahoo! Groups customer care team and unsubscribe from the group.

Why are messages from my groups being put into the spam folder?

You can use filters to make sure that you receive messages from your groups in your inbox, rather than having them end up in your spam folder. Learn more about how to set up email filters.

Hello everyone:

Yahoo! Groups is doing some house cleaning. As of next week we will start the process of deleting any group more than six month old that contains no messages, photos or files. By deleting these empty groups, we will help improve the performance and usefulness of group search.

If you have a specific group that currently has no content in it that you wish to save, you can avoid this deletion process by simply posting a message to the group, uploading a photo or file.

Thanks!