Yahoo! Groups Content Purge

thumb|A sample screenshot announcing the purge -- the happy people portrayed in this banner do not likely represent most fans' opinions regarding this decision.|450px|left
On October 16, 2019, Jason Scott, the founder of Archive Team, tweeted that Yahoo! had - with very little fanfare - announced it would be shutting off posting to Groups from October 21, 2019 (this date later became October 28, 2019 An archived snapshot of the October 16 announcement shows the October 21 date, while a snapshot from the following day shows the new date."a representative for Yahoo owner Verizon asked for a correction regarding the date that the Yahoo Groups site will no longer accept new posts from users: from October 21 to 28. Yahoo's initial post said October 21, as archived versions of the webpage confirm, but has now been changed to read October 28. When asked about the change, the representative then claimed that the original date was an error on Verizon's part. Whatever happened here, it looks like Yahoo Groups users have another week to post to the site." -- by Jordan Pearson (Oct 16 2019 and permanently deleting all Groups content from December 14, 2019. Notably, there was nothing about this coming change published to the front page of Yahoo! Groups.
While initial fandom-wide discussion of the announcement described this as a complete shutdown of Yahoo!Groups, careful reading of the announcement indicates that Yahoo! will continue to maintain mailing lists of group members and that members will still be able to send and receive list-wide messages via email (although features such as "digest" subscriptions will be eliminated and moderators' management features will be reduced).
Fans immediately began seeking resources and support for archiving the soon-to-be-deleted content, with posts on Dreamwidth encouraging group moderators to contact Open Doors and providing pointers toward software utilities designed to preserve a list's email archive.
See FanloreProject:Yahoo! Groups.
==November 2019 Message from Yahoo! Groups: "Evolution of Yahoo Groups"==
On November 5, 2019, Yahoo sent this message to members:
==December 1, 2019 Letter to Verizon from Open Doors==
Two weeks before the scheduled December 14, 2019 shutdown, the OTW Open Doors Committee sent an open letter letter to leadership at Verizon to requesting that they extend the deadline for deletion of existing archives of Yahoo Groups files and messages by at least six months.
See: Open Letter to Verizon: Extend the Deletion Deadline for Yahoo Groups
==Lists of Fandom Yahoo! Groups==
* Fan Email Lists – Alice's Fan Email Lists, cached by Internet Archive; Alice's website back online until January 2020
* (Paula)
* please add!
==Effects on Fandom==
==Fan Comments==
==Memes and Fanworks==
==Links to Information==
* Yahoo Groups Shutting Down - Dec 14, 2019 (UPDATED) (Dreamwidth, October 16, 2019)
* Fanlore: A PSA about Yahoo! Groups (Dreamwidth, October 17, 2019)
* PSA: Yahoo! Groups (Tumblr, October 17, 2019)
* OTW: Yahoo Groups Closure – What You Can Do (OTW site, October 20, 2019)
* Want to alert your mailing lists of the impending Yahoo-Gedden? Attempting to join a mailing list to help download files?
==Further Reading (Industry, Mainstream Press)==
* Yahoo Groups Is Winding Down and All Content Will Be Permanently Removed by Jordan Pearson (Oct 16 2019)
* Yahoo is deleting all content ever posted to Yahoo Groups by Jon Brodkin (October 17, 2019)
* Yahoo Groups Will Close and Remove All Content by Kaila Hale-Stern (The Mary Sue (Oct 19th, 2019)
* by Kaitlyn Tiffany, from "The Atlantic" (2021)
==References==
Category:2019 Events
Category:Yahoo! Groups