I've been trying to do their survey on charging that Joe told us about - 22 pages it says, and it stalls on every page. Absolutely laden with cookies. Anyone else tried it?
>Mr. Addison, > >I've been a lurker on thos group for quite a long time. I've learned >much, and generally don't post. I thought I should forward this post >concerning free group limitations and Yahoo changes as a public >service announcement. > >Joe Blow > > >take the survey! >http://promo2.yahoo.com/sbin/Groups/survey.cgi > After losing everything previous a couple of times, I finally managed it by using two different browsers at the same time, working through the pages in parallel. At the end, after all that, when it said submit, one of the browsers gave me this: >Internal Server Error >The server encountered an internal error or >misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request. > >Please contact the server administrator, >[EMAIL PROTECTED] and inform them of the time the >error occurred, and anything you might have done that may >have caused the error. > >More information about this error may be available in the >server error log. Sheesh! This is an example of the wondrous service they're going to charge us for? I guess it is. It accepted the other browser though. (heh) What it amounts to is a "premium" (paid) service with "enhanced features", which turn out to be more or less what it used to be before they started all the ads-pollution. Thus, removal of ads and sponsor message footers from messages, but it doesn't say they'll be removed from the archives searches. Presuming so might be rash. This is a comparison: ------- Message archive storage: Free: 2MB (Equivalent to about 100 1-page Microsoft word documents) Premium: 25MB (Equivalent to about 2,000 1-page Microsoft Word documents) File storage: Free: 10MB (Equivalent to about 25 PowerPoint presentations of about 10 pages each) Premium: 20MB (Equivalent to about 75 PowerPoint presentation of about 10 pages each) Group Size Limit: Free: Unlimited (but subject to limitation) (see next) Premium: Unlimited Members import: Applies to the number of members you can add/invite per day or month and per group. Free: Limited: 25 additional members per day or 100 new members over 6 months Premium: Unlimited No ads: Advertisements removed from email messages Free: N/A Premium: Yes ------- Well, the "Free" service looks like it might be worth approximately what it'll cost. It certainly wouldn't do for us. "Unlimited (but subject to limitation)" don'cha just love it? The premium service looks like it won't be worth whatever it might cost. This was one of my responses: Would I be prepared to pay for a premium service? No. Reasons: Yahoo! already gets more than enough good value out of our membership via site visits, ad exposure on web pages (inserting ads in messages and in archive searches etc is excessive), and via user information from membership lists, cookies, etc. I also said it would be outrageous to charge for such an inadequate archives service with such a small limit that can't even do a one-time search and has no advanced search features. ------- From one point of view, of course it's Yahoo's prerogative to do whatever they like. But from another, as I mentioned before, they've brought us all in here under false pretences. It's a bit like advertising a free movie or something and then charging the audience to leave at the exit door afterwards. Not quite, but still. A lot of list owners have done a LOT of work building their lists and promoting them, sowing refs and urls and excerpts all over the web and so on. Hard to undo and redo. We've all got a big investment in our groups now, and any hint at the start, when they took it over from eGroups, that they might change the game like this would have led to different decisions. So I think it's unethical. And greedy. More than a million groups, paying what, $10 a month? $20? Go figure. There wouldn't be nearly that many groups if there'd been prior warning of this. Though I doubt many of us have exactly trusted Yahoo. The point above on the user information Yahoo gathers on us is a valid one. For one thing, any host service will give you a regular traffic report on your site, which is essential info that helps you tailor the site and contents to the users. If list owners could get similar info on site traffic at the list websites it would really help us, and I don't think it'd cost Yahoo anything - they obviously have the info anyway. For example, this list's membership is truly global, but I don't know too much more than that. The email addresses in the membership list tell me a little bit, not much, just enough to confirm the global aspect of it. If I knew more there'd be all kinds of things I could do to improve coverage for members who don't come from (a) the US, (b) the English-speaking world, (c) the industrialised countries. Maybe not through the list itself, in view of Yahoo's lack of responsiveness, but there are other ways that could be parallel and complementary. Even as it is, Europeans and Australians, for instance, very well represented in the membership, are under-catered for. There's no mention of providing any such thing in the so-called Premium service. So, in other words, sod Yahoo! But it's not so simple... mumble mumble... Anyway, I think it might be useful if members who felt they could bear it would go to the survey site and make their opinions known. Worth a try, eh? Best Keith Addison Journey to Forever Handmade Projects Osaka, Japan http://journeytoforever.org/ ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Get your FREE credit report with a FREE CreditCheck Monitoring Service trial http://us.click.yahoo.com/ACHqaB/bQ8CAA/ySSFAA/FGYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Please do NOT send "unsubscribe" messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
