I truly dislike the use of Yahoo Groups in a manner that would best work with a forum message board. Yahoo is great for small groups to commiserate or for large groups as announcement or mailing lists only, but for large communication loops it’s just a horrible medium. You can’t follow threads, topics scroll off the page, the archives are horrible, and you have several unrelated topics coalescing at one time. It’s just a mess. And your options–individual e-mails (prepare for a flood), digest (search for the needle in a haystack), or no mail (spend valuable time surfing to the Yahoo site) are dreadful. I much prefer getting one e-mail that says, “Someone has replied to the [insert title] topic. Click here to read the reply.” How easy is that? Too easy. Which makes me wonder why people continue to use Yahoo. It’s not hip or cool to have a Yahoo loop. Why torture and torment people by using them?
You’re not alone. I unsubscribed from a Yahoo group two days ago for all the reasons you pointed out. The loop was an unorganized mess and there wasn’t a thread on it worth hunting for.
by Wendy February 22nd, 2005 at 6:51 pmI much prefer message boards myself. Especially ones where you can hit a button for posts since last visits and easily scroll through them. But I was surprised when I had this discussion with a very web savvy friend just the other day. She hates message boards. Prefers everything email. Boggled my mind. That said, yahoo is terrible. Especially their search function. Takes forever!
Also a dial up friend chimed in that digested emails were easier for her because she grabs them, logs off, then reads them. I forget about dial ups sometimes
Except when I go visit my parents…then I remember why I HATE it so much. Note to self: Must find free wifi spot with good coffee for next visit.
I was surprised that RWA chose yahoo for their new “official” email loops though.
by kacey February 23rd, 2005 at 7:41 amI know, double commenting. What’s up with requiring the email address now? Is that something new in 1.5 ? or something you turned on to help with spam?
by kacey February 23rd, 2005 at 7:46 amOld Skool. *ggg* Lots of folks are just too used to it and don’t want the hassle of change.
by Alison February 23rd, 2005 at 8:41 amIt’s something I turned on to help with Spam.
But WP should be remembering you and when you come back to comment, all your information should already be in the boxes. If you’re reentering your info every time it might be a cookie problem. Let me know. 
by SylviaI vote for Message boards!!
by Sasha February 23rd, 2005 at 2:22 pmI love the message boards when they are available. They are so much cleaner. I tend to do a lot of deleting from the Yahoo Groups. One of my pet peeves from the YGs is the person who replies to a digest but doesn’t bother changing the title to let me know what topic they’ve replied to.
by Teresa February 23rd, 2005 at 5:25 pm