Re: [dita] loss of Yahoo dita-users archive; does the TC want/need to respond to this in any way?

[Kristen James Eberlein <kris@eberleinconsulting.com>]

Thanks, Nancy, for reminding me to put this on the agenda.

The dita-users list is owned by Michael Priestley and the following (current or former) TC members are moderators:

• Don Day, Individual member
  
• Kristen James Eberlein, Eberlein Consulting
• Maria Essig, Healthwise
• Tom Magliery, Just Systems
  
• Keith Schengili-Roberts, IXIASOFT

I've already investigated alternatives to Yahoo!Groups. I'm probably going to advocate that we will migrate the list to Groups.io. Groups.io offers comparable functionality to Yahoo! plus a lot more, including:

• Ability to easily extract all data from the group
• Ability to use semantic labels to classify content and improve search
• Ability to create subgroups (don't know if we need this)
• Ability for subscribers to choose more precisely what content is sent to their e-mail client -- For example, a person could choose to "mute" a particular thread and it will not be sent to their e-mail clients. All messages, however, are displayed on the Web site.
• No need to create a Group.io login; subscribers can simply use their e-mail. There also is an option to authenticate using Facebook or Google.

Most critically, we can purchase a premium subscription ($110) for the first year, and Groups.io will migrate the group. The only thing that is lost is attachments to messages; the messages and files will be migrated, but the links between the two is lost.

Best,
Kris

Kristen James Eberlein
Chair, OASIS DITA Technical Committee
Principal consultant, Eberlein Consulting
www.eberleinconsulting.com
+1 919 622-1501; kriseberlein (skype)

On 10/18/2019 10:40 PM, Nancy Harrison wrote:

Hi,

Yahoo is about to dramatically reduce the functionality of Yahoo groups, by removing their archiving functionality. They will continue to serve as email exchanges, but once the email are transmitted, they will no longer be saved or archived. Given the frequent use we make of the dita-users group for engaging with DITA users, do we in the TC need to respond to this? I can't remember whether we, or someone acting as a TC member, started the dita-users group, but I know we've used its archives to research customer attitudes about various features, etc.

Just wondering if we should put this on next week's agenda.ÂÂ I'm guessing that if someone was willing to moderate a googlegroups account, the archives could probably be moved over to it.

regards,

Nancy

_____________
Nancy Harrison
Infobridge SolutionsÂ
nharrison@infobridge-solutions.com