Semi OT: Yahoo Groups are closing

[marczellm]

https://help.yahoo.com/kb/groups/SLN31010.html?impressions=true

 

The Yahoo Groups website is being killed, the user uploaded content will be deleted. I thought to notify y'all because I'm a member of the Keith Emerson and the ELP-DISC group and both have a lot of sheet music etc. in the Files section. So if you are in any groups that have valuable content for you, archive it now.

 

There are archiver tools available:

 

http://www.personalgroupware.com/

https://github.com/IgnoredAmbience/yahoo-group-archiver/ for the tech savvy

[CEB]

I"m a member of the Hammond Zone and Clonewheel group. There was a lot of info out there.

[Outkaster]

Yeah problem is it has been moved to Facebook which is clearly one of the worst ways to get information because of it's formatting. Yahoo groups used to be huge.

[marczellm]

Hammond Zone seems like it has moved to a new platform:

https://groups.io/g/hammondzone

 

The archive of messages were preserved back to 1997. Groups.io has a Yahoo group migrator tool I hear.

[Outkaster]

Yeah almost all the activity for the hard core techs has moved to Facebook or sometimes the organ forum. The old techs I don't see post are Rick P. , Tom Petro and Bill Brown. They all have businesses that are legit and not hobbyists so that's probably why.

[Lou Gehrig Charles]

Yeah problem is it has been moved to Facebook which is clearly one of the worst ways to get information because of it's formatting. Yahoo groups used to be huge.

 

 

Indeed! I loathe the way Facebook is laid out. Absolutely despise it.

 

Yahoo groups have been dying for years already; I was in some really active groups 15 years ago (or so) and a few of the groups would send me fifty messages a day... Per group. Then they trickled to just a few a day and now sometimes a month goes by with no new posts. This seems to be the norm nowadays; none of my groups do much any more.

[Outkaster]

Yeah some of the message boards even. Look at Harmony-Central but it's cleaned up now and every easy to post over there. I always kept my account open.

[Mighty Motif Max]

What I hate is that many of these groups have been inactive for a long time but are full of information found nowhere else. Like the dedicated D-70 group etc. Do you know if the Personal Groupware application works for groups you aren't a member of? The reason I ask is that I was virtually unaware of Yahoo Groups until recently (no wonder they have lost popularity), and have found some with useful keyboard repair information, patches, etc but they have been dead for a while.

 

Also, anyone interested in working together to archive whatever useful groups we can? I am going to attempt some but I'm sure there are tons out there. So much history and information that's going to be lost. Perhaps a free forum board could be created with the posts recreated, in read-only format or something at a later date.

[Lou Gehrig Charles]

Anyone remember Yahoo "Clubs"? Clubs was sort of like Groups, but more like a message board... And you could post photos to it as well (as you could with Groups). Eventually they merged the two since there were so similar.

 

Truth be told, Yahoo has been letting Groups wither for years. Go to Yahoo.com and you don't even see a link for Groups; its been gone a long time. At least it is on my computer. It has become a big hassle just to get to the Groups home page but maybe in my case its because I go there so seldom, I forget how to do it.

[Doerfler]

I"m a member of the Hammond Zone and Clonewheel group. There was a lot of info out there.

 

 

I "met" many members here over at Clonewheel before migrating here 7 years or so ago. Wonder if traffic here will pick up once those groups close.

[Dave Bryce]

Folks from those groups are definitely welcome here, of course. We could even create new forums for them, if it would be helpful.

 

dB

 

 

[konaboy]

sad to hear. i used to be the mod of the Nord Electro group in the early 2000s

[RABid]

The only group I ever participated in was the Emu Command Station group. It was a great group but I have not been there in a few years. I need to go by and grab the downloads before they disappear since I still have two Command Stations.

[miden]

Folks from those groups are definitely welcome here, of course. We could even create new forums for them, if it would be helpful.

 

dB

 

 

Yes indeed! And we even have attachments now, so it'd be a great time for folks to join up here

[Mighty Motif Max]

Folks from those groups are definitely welcome here, of course. We could even create new forums for them, if it would be helpful.

 

dB

 

 

Looks like there's an Ensoniq Fizmo group that's lasted for 21 years and is still active. Would that be a possibility?

[elif]

The LTSpice group contains a wealth of information. I am hopeful that this is saved/migrated to another platform, etc.

[Dave Bryce]

 

Folks from those groups are definitely welcome here, of course. We could even create new forums for them, if it would be helpful.

 

dB

 

 

Looks like there's an Ensoniq Fizmo group that's lasted for 21 years and is still active. Would that be a possibility?

Sure, why not?

 

dB

 

[eric]

Wow, a blast from the past. I was a moderator at Clonewheel for a few years. Bruce Wahler and I kind of traded duties for a bit. I ran out of time about when that platform was becoming a bit of a dinosaur. Have not even logged in for years.

[Mighty Motif Max]

Folks from those groups are definitely welcome here, of course. We could even create new forums for them, if it would be helpful.

 

dB

 

 

Looks like there's an Ensoniq Fizmo group that's lasted for 21 years and is still active. Would that be a possibility?

Sure, why not?

 

dB

 

OK. I will contact the moderator. On another note, the archive program I'm using is the PG Offline one mentioned in the OP's first post. I will be buying the full version so no worries there. It has the ability to export the message data to an SQLite table, HTML, or a few other things. I also can download all attachments, photos, and links. Thoughts on potentially integrating this should a new forum be made?

[Doerfler]

Wow, a blast from the past. I was a moderator at Clonewheel for a few years. Bruce Wahler and I kind of traded duties for a bit. I ran out of time about when that platform was becoming a bit of a dinosaur. Have not even logged in for years.

 

Bruce is registered here but hasn't posted in quite a while. I believe he posts as "drawbars". The current moderator of the Clonewheel group, well, that's another story.

 

[Dave Bryce]

 

OK. I will contact the moderator. On another note, the archive program I'm using is the PG Offline one mentioned in the OP's first post. I will be buying the full version so no worries there. It has the ability to export the message data to an SQLite table, HTML, or a few other things. I also can download all attachments, photos, and links. Thoughts on potentially integrating this should a new forum be made?

Brother Jim is already looking into the options. I think SQLite table may be one of the things he's checking. He sez it may take a few days.

 

dB

 

[Mighty Motif Max]

I would encourage anyone who's a member of one of these groups to try and archive it/them using either tool in the OP before the lockdown on the 28th. Not sure what that will affect. I am using the PG Offline, and it seems to be doing a good job. IF YOU DO archive anything, can you please start a thread with a list of archived groups you've done (all of us should use the one thread)? That way we can keep track a little. I am super super busy for the next couple weeks (bad timing) but I'm going to archive as many as I can. Feel free to submit requests also. Not totally sure what will be done with all of the data but it's saved anyways. Be aware that I live in a fairly remote area and my connection isn't always the fastest. For large, really old groups (i.e. a non-music one I'm working on right now that's been around since 2001 and has probably 50,000 posts), they may take a day or so. This isn't a fast process, and that's why I would ask anyone who's up for it to please start archiving ASAP.

 

Do you know if the Personal Groupware application works for groups you aren't a member of?

Answering my own question - no. You must be a member of a group to archive it. Sadly with some of the dead 'restricted"/closed groups that means you would have had to have been a member prior to it fading out; there"s no one to approve you now.

OK. I will contact the moderator. On another note, the archive program I'm using is the PG Offline one mentioned in the OP's first post. I will be buying the full version so no worries there. It has the ability to export the message data to an SQLite table, HTML, or a few other things. I also can download all attachments, photos, and links. Thoughts on potentially integrating this should a new forum be made?

Brother Jim is already looking into the options. I think SQLite table may be one of the things he's checking. He sez it may take a few days.

 

dB

 

That's great! I will go ahead with my archiving effort, in-between busyness.

 

[marczellm]

I have already archived the Keith Emerson group and am in the process of archiving ELP-DISC. I'm using the python script, not PGOffline, so the messages will be in JSON format - I don't know what the output format of PGOffline is. I can write software to convert it to some other format if needed.

[marczellm]

OK. I will contact the moderator. On another note, the archive program I'm using is the PG Offline one mentioned in the OP's first post. I will be buying the full version so no worries there. It has the ability to export the message data to an SQLite table, HTML, or a few other things. I also can download all attachments, photos, and links. Thoughts on potentially integrating this should a new forum be made?

Brother Jim is already looking into the options. I think SQLite table may be one of the things he's checking. He sez it may take a few days.

There might be a legal issue with putting up the contents of a private discussion group to a public forum though.

[AnotherScott]

Do you know if the Personal Groupware application works for groups you aren't a member of?

Answering my own question - no. You must be a member of a group to archive it. Sadly with some of the dead 'restricted"/closed groups that means you would have had to have been a member prior to it fading out; there"s no one to approve you now.

...

Brother Jim is already looking into the options. I think SQLite table may be one of the things he's checking. He sez it may take a few days.

 

If there are relevant groups that Jim (or whoever) would like to archive but can't get into for lack of having already been a member, maybe those of us here who are already members of those groups can help. We can change our passwords and then forward our login info for those groups to anyone who wants to archive.

 

If it helps, I see I've been a member of these:

 

AN1x-list (also relevant to users of AN200 or PLG-150AN)

CloneWheel

DSS-1

FCB1010_uno

KnobTweak

KORGM50USERSGROUP

KurzList

MojoMusicians

NordElectro

nordstage

Roland-Controllers

Roland-XV

SonicCell

vk_corral (for the Roland VK organs)

yamaha_s_series

 

 

 

 

[marczellm]

What kind of files did the Roland XV group have? I might be interested

[Dave Bryce]

FWIW, brother Jim does not work cheap or free...so if we're going to do anything on our end, the easier it is, the better.

 

As far as legal issues, I have no idea what the ramifications are...but I obviously have no wish to get MPN into any sort of trouble.

 

dB

[Mighty Motif Max]

OK. I will contact the moderator. On another note, the archive program I'm using is the PG Offline one mentioned in the OP's first post. I will be buying the full version so no worries there. It has the ability to export the message data to an SQLite table, HTML, or a few other things. I also can download all attachments, photos, and links. Thoughts on potentially integrating this should a new forum be made?

Brother Jim is already looking into the options. I think SQLite table may be one of the things he's checking. He sez it may take a few days.

There might be a legal issue with putting up the contents of a private discussion group to a public forum though.

 

The FIZMO group specifically is not truly private. The conversations are viewable by anyone; it's just that you need to be a member to post, download files or view photos. I would think that with the moderator's approval (and obviously not including the email addresses), there shouldn't be any problems.

[Mighty Motif Max]

FWIW, brother Jim does not work cheap or free...so if we're going to do anything on our end, the easier it is, the better.

 

As far as legal issues, I have no idea what the ramifications are...but I obviously have no wish to get MPN into any sort of trouble.

 

dB

 

Ok. I read through the Community Standards guidelines. Basically, we would need to be okayed by any members who care at this point before reposting, but that's it.

[AnotherScott]

providing an archive of pages that were publicly available should be fine, archive.org (the "wayback machine") does it all the time.

 

That's the thing about the internet, nothing's ever gone... except the thing you need. ;-)