In case you haven’t heard, Yahoo! Groups, though not the powerhouse it used to be, is going away. Forever. As in going, going, GONE. Fornevermore.
We’re shutting down the Yahoo Groups website on December 15, 2020 and members will no longer be able to send or receive emails from Yahoo Groups. Yahoo Mail features will continue to function as expected and there will be no changes to your Yahoo Mail account, emails, photos or other inbox content. There will also be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services. You can find more information about the Yahoo Groups shutdown and alternative service options on this help page.
Once upon a time, especially for unpublished and newly published writers, it was the place to be: advice was free and freely given, questions were asked, writers were quick to proof-read your work, and you could trust most people.
My most published piece, I learned via Yahoo! Group messages, had been plagiarized. An editor from a young writing publication stumbled onto the fake article and thought it sounded familiar. Sure enough, the words were nearly word for word what I had published years before. She posted to our Yahoo! Group and immediately the group rallied around me as I fought each publication the plagiarist used. I was depressed because for years I’d been telling people it’s relatively rare to be plagiarized AND because since it was in another country, different laws applied: to fight would cost big bucks.
It took some work and a bit of time, but the offending articles came down and my reputation remained intact. All the while, this amazing group of writers (all ages, genders, and at different stages of writing) who had grown to know me and my work since February 1999 through this little group we used, cheered me on, spoke honestly, and asked daily how I was doing. And we all learned how to deal with it. Together.
Together we cheered other’s successes. There were quite a few first books, first place contest winners, a screenplay, editors, publishers, and writers who became editors and publishers. In fact, the same group had grown into several groups as we added specific groups for markets, critiques, a newsletter, and the infamous Page a Day group (don’t ask).
Things change. We evolve; we adapt. This will be no different. We’ll discover something that works better than the last. And if we do it right, we’ll do it together.
How to download your Yahoo! Group information:
Go to your group page. Click on the teeny-tiny print near the bottom of the left hand column that says PRIVACY DASHBOARD. Then click on Yahoo! Next, you will have to re-login. After you log in, scroll down until you get to DOWNLOAD A SUMMARY — follow directions from there and … wait. It’ll come.
