Yahoogroups took over Egroups last year and was a great service. It continued in the same vein as hosting a number of email discussion lists.
Simultaneously, it also provided clubs for browser based discussion lists, where you COULD receive messages by email but could not answer via email. I know my rating is the only ’’Not recommended one’’ in this section but times have changed. You decide.
Now the mighty Yahoo! decided that the two formats needed to be merged and how they portray a bad image of their portal is pathetic to watch. I shall list some of the negative points below.
Messages lost. Many of the clubs lost all their previous messages and the content is not available to new members or even old members for reference.
Members lost. Some of the clubs reported losing their members and there have been a lot of complaints of various people being unable to join/moderate lists. The group called clubmasters is a forum for all these people to vent their frustration. You will see 100s of messages there. Not that it helps their problems. But they at least vent their steam.
SLOOOOOW. Page loading time is horrible. At least 50% of the time you get ’’so and so list is temporarily unavailable’’ and do a page refresh and list is available. POst a message and you may not see it posted for a loooong time. I saw my first message posted in the groups format after the transition after 24 hours.
Just try using the site. It is unusable. Like a dinosaur trying to walk the streets of manhattan. Paints a sorry picture of the technologically advanced USA and looks like they hosted a site on a teenager’s home PC with limited bandwidth.