When folks started fussing and whining about 'neo', I didn't understand. My Yahoo ID was working as always, no changes.
In fact it still is but who knows for how long.So I created a new Yahoo email account and joined with two of my Yahoo Groups. In order to see what other owner/moderators were seeing, I made this new ID an owner on one of the groups and started testing.
Perhaps since I belong mainly to tech groups, I wasn't seeing all of the issues a lot of others were seeing. We don't really use the database option and don't rely on lots and lots of photos as these are used mainly for screenshots to aid in troubleshooting.
There was a 'glitch' in the bouncing members section, as it was showing some folks as bouncing that are no longer members, even a few that had been banned for bad conduct.
Otherwise all functions worked as they should. Things were somewhat harder to find, but by exploring, looking and testing I managed to find just about everything. One thing of note, most everything now seems to using JavaScript. So if users have disabled scripts by using an add-on like '
noscript' for Firefox or a similar add-on for other browsers, the Yahoo Groups interface is virtually unusable.
Once noticeable thing that seemed to put a lot of folks off was the fact that the Home page has now been moved to the About page and customization that was done previously is almost 'missing in action'.
The customization does not seem so important to folks in tech groups, although it is nice. Using the neo profile, the first thing that I noticed when I got to the home page is a large somewhat blurry photo of a keyboard section with the name of the group in the lower left corner.
From comments by others and looking at some other groups with my neo ID, I have the impression that a large number of groups have basically the same photos, depending on the type of Group.
What seems odd to me is that both of my Yahoo email accounts that are IDs for Groups have neo in the web address. Both email accounts work the same. Another thing, I belong to several groups that originated in Canada and they are still showing the old 'classic' format, but I have heard from some folks in UK groups that say they are on the neo format.
In December 2007, Yahoo supposedly had over 109 million members across 8.8 million groups. Recent estimates by some put those numbers much higher.
I guess with that many members and groups there is bound to be a lot of problems changing everyone over to a new format.
By now there could be more or less, as supposedly a lot of disgruntled folks have closed their groups and moved elsewhere. According to
Wikipedia, nearly half a million group members have left Yahoo due to the "neo" format. The number grows each day. Keep in mind, Wikipedia can be edited by almost anyone, including unhappy folks.
Yahoo's mail servers have been glitchy off and on for as long as I have been a member of groups. It is just one of Yahoo's 'gotchas' and that hasn't improved yet. However, some folks seem to think it is neo related, but I think it's just the same as always.
So why did Yahoo change the Groups from the old 'classic' to the new 'neo' format? My best guess is the underlying code has slowly been corrupted with too many programmers making too many 'improvements' over the years. Like when 'too many cooks spoil the broth', it has just gotten too much to try to fix. Most of us know, there comes a time when the old is out and in with the new.
Technology marches on, and if we don't march with it, we get left behind.
Martha
