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I was looking through just 'some' of the Site Updates Mark reports on, and I don't know how he finds enough hours in a day to keep this site running. Between fixing Bugs, Changes,?SYSADMIN, New, Internals, Security, Beta, and anything else involved in keeping Groups.io running, not including all the Transfers of groups to here, makes me glad I'm retired! From what I've read, it appears he does this all by himself too. If Mark is making any money doing this, he surely deserves it.
Don
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I certainly have shared your wonder that what he does all by himself is
possible for one human being to accomplish, he is a marvel. Groups.io is the best discussion group network I have discovered by a huge margin. His
management of this service is incredible.
Sincerely,
David Dillard
Temple University
(215) 204 - 4584
jwne@...
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On Thu, 15 Feb 2018, Don wrote: I was looking through just 'some' of the Site Updates Mark reports on, and I
don't know how he finds enough hours in a day to keep this site running.
Between fixing Bugs, Changes,?SYSADMIN, New, Internals, Security, Beta, and
anything else involved in keeping Groups.io running, not including all the
Transfers of groups to here, makes me glad I'm retired! From what I've read,
it appears he does this all by himself too. If Mark is making any money
doing this, he surely deserves it.
Don
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This brings up a concern I have. I have a small group here that is functioning well, and am on the edge of moving a larger one. But I'm reading about the (understandably) longer wait times and how Mark is "the" one who has to do so much. But what happens when the load doubles or triples? Is there a backup staff for when the backlog gets ridiculously long? It seems way too much to depend on only one person - is that literally the case? If we move here to escape the ridiculous amount of down time at Yahoo Groups, will we run into the same thing as groups.io growth explodes? (BTW, I'm old enough to have used egroups way back when.... even then we were sad when Yahoo took it over.)
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Just my thoughts here -
Having moved several groups (and yes, I go back even to 1-List, before egroups :>P? ) -
the "backlog" that is happening now is much more because of the major issues in YG - and that's not anything that Mark can control (though he's working his butt off to accommodate it).
One group I moved was a year ago, and I've not seen much "hit" on support from Mark even with this Yahoo crunch. Another group I moved (I'm the web master of this chapter of an organization, so the decision of when to move was not mine; they did get scared enough last fall to begin the search and decision process and we were well into it when Yahoo started the death spiral last month. I'd scheduled the move with Mark several weeks earlier; then we felt that we needed to go sooner in order to get out intact. I asked him about moving it up, and we were out within 2 days.
While I'm sure that the Yahoo debacle is taking its toll on things, neither am I seeing a major negative impact other than being personally worried about Mark.
Ginny
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On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 06:36 am, Barb M wrote:
If we move here to escape the ridiculous amount of down time at Yahoo Groups, will we run into the same thing as groups.io growth explodes? (BTW, I'm old enough to have used egroups way back when.... even then we were sad when Yahoo took it over.)
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Ditto for me. I have the same concerns as Barb, plus, will the 1G option be free in the future? To keep it free, could there at some time be a cap on the number of messages? Right now there is no limit on the number of messages even if they in total exceed 1G.
Another thought that concerns me is that I believe I read that one or more of the creators of what is now Yahoo groups was bought out by Yahoo around 1999. What assurance do we have that the same thing might not happen with groups.io, except being bought out by maybe another company instead of Yahoo? Then, probably, we would once again have to cope with being inundated with advertisements, maybe higher charges for space, and maybe once again experiencing the slowness and other problems we now experience with Yahoo.
Stan
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On 2/16/2018 7:34 AM, Barb M wrote: This brings up a concern I have. I have a small group here that is functioning well, and am on the edge of moving a larger one. But I'm reading about the (understandably) longer wait times and how Mark is "the" one who has to do so much. But what happens when the load doubles or triples? Is there a backup staff for when the backlog gets ridiculously long? It seems way too much to depend on only one person - is that literally the case? If we move here to escape the ridiculous amount of down time at Yahoo Groups, will we run into the same thing as groups.io growth explodes? (BTW, I'm old enough to have used egroups way back when.... even then we were sad when Yahoo took it over.)
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I didn't complete my sentence correctly. I said "Another thought that concerns me is that I believe I read that one or more of the creators of what is now Yahoo groups was bought out by Yahoo around 1999." It should have been "Another thought that concerns me is that I believe I read that one or more of the creators of what is now Yahoo groups, which was bought out by Yahoo around 1999, is/are working on developing groups.io." Stan On 2/17/2018 1:56 PM, Stan Gorodenski wrote: Ditto for me. I have the same concerns as Barb, plus, will the 1G option be free in the future? To keep it free, could there at some time be a cap on the number of messages? Right now there is no limit on the number of messages even if they in total exceed 1G.
Another thought that concerns me is that I believe I read that one or more of the creators of what is now Yahoo groups was bought out by Yahoo around 1999. What assurance do we have that the same thing might not happen with groups.io, except being bought out by maybe another company instead of Yahoo? Then, probably, we would once again have to cope with being inundated with advertisements, maybe higher charges for space, and maybe once again experiencing the slowness and other problems we now experience with Yahoo.
Stan [excess quote trimmed by moderator]
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That would be Mark Fletcher who is, AFAIK, the one-man band behind . I've voiced the same concern, now exacerbated by the demise of #Wikispaces. When I first started a free wiki on it, the founders controlled the company. Then they were bought out and the result soon after was an annual fee. After all, somebody has to pay for the buyout... After a couple of years without profit or supposedly faced with substantial costs to update their technology, the new owners have decided to cut their losses.
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Stan, "Another thought that concerns me is that I believe I read that one or
more of the creators of what is now Yahoo groups, which was bought out
by Yahoo around 1999, is/are working on developing groups.io." That's about the most open of secrets. It's the core of the Groups.io product announcement (linked from the Groups.io About page): What assurance do we have that the same thing might not happen with
groups.io, ... We have none, and are not likely to ever have such. At least not covering years in the future. I may as well fret that Kia will sell off its US operations and leave me with inferior maintenance and warranty for my hamster car. I'm sure many Saturn owners will answer that with, "well, yeah". In Y!GMF I had to act (as moderator) to squelch idle speculation about Yahoo Groups' value to Verizon / Oath / Yahoo. Let's not run this GMF too far off topic in a similar direction. Shal -- Help: /static/helpMore Help: /g/GroupManagersForum/wikiEven More Help: Search button at the top of Messages list
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"What assurance do we have that the same thing might not happen with groups.io, except being bought out by maybe another company instead of Yahoo?"
Th only thing in life that is guaranteed, is death and taxes.
Don
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¡°After a couple of years without profit or supposedly faced with substantial costs to update their technology, the new owners have decided to cut their losses.¡± ? The theory in the Groups.io model is, paid subscribers will pay for the free subscribers and more. If there is enough volume in paid subscribers, it will offset the free subscribers and Mark¡¯s overhead, and Mark will make a living. ? Don
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"I may as well fret that Kia will sell off its US operations and leave me with inferior maintenance and warranty for my hamster car. I'm sure many Saturn owners will answer that with, "well, yeah".
I'm a Saturn owner, and I can attest GM dealerships still work on past lines of cars...They can still work on my 1970 Chevy C-20 if I needed them too.
Don
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On 02/18/2018 01:41 AM, Don wrote: Th only thing in life that is guaranteed, is death and taxes. Death is the only thing that is guaranteed. I know of one country that has neither an income tax, nor a property tax, nor a sales tax. jonathon
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Having been in IT for over 40 years, this is my take on "how does he do it?" and "do we care that it's only Mark?"...
- Mark does not have to go to a half dozen meetings everyday to tell other people what he's doing and hear others bitch about what they are doing.
- Mark obviously has a well defined (well greased) development environment where it's easy to focus on a specific functional area, modify/test changes, and push those changes out to the running site.? (I'd love to look over his shoulder for a while...)
- Mark obviously has a lot of experience with deploying and maintaining a set of servers that work together to make groups.io work.
- Mark takes pride in "his baby" and is committed to having it work "right".
- Mark commented somewhere that the site was paying for itself.
So do we care?
- Well, yes and no.? If something were to happen to Mark, the site would continue as is, at least for a while.
- If I'm losing sleep worrying about the longevity of groups.io, I'd want to know what the business continuity plan is if Mark is incapacitated.
- As we've seen with Yahoo and other group sites, a group needs its own contingency plan too.
Anyway, I'm not losing any sleep and I have backups of key info from my groups.? But I am curious what Mark's continuity plan is. Toby
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On 2/19/2018 9:45 AM, Toby Kraft wrote:
So do we care?
* Well, yes and no. If something were to happen to Mark, the site
would continue as is, at least for a while.
* If I'm losing sleep worrying about the longevity of groups.io,
I'd want to know what the business continuity plan is if Mark is
incapacitated.
* As we've seen with Yahoo and other group sites, a group needs
its own contingency plan too.
Anyway, I'm not losing any sleep and I have backups of key info from my groups. But I am curious what Mark's continuity plan is.
Ditto. I too am concerned about the continuity of IO. If I transfer the group I value the most, I guess a good backup would be to not delete the Yahoo group and just send a dummy message to it now and then to make sure it is still running, or maybe even include the yahoo group as a recipient in messages generated in IO. If IO develops problems then I could notify the members we are moving back to the Yahoo group. Stan
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Going back to YG as a viable option seems to be like trying to start your outboard motor when your boat sank in 20 feet of water. PG Offline was a method to retrieve YG archives, it would be useful if it could be modified to do the same for groups.io archives. KEN "It has always seemed strange to me," said Doc. "The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success." STEINBECK - CANNERY ROW On 2018-02-19 09:55, Stan Gorodenski wrote: Ditto. I too am concerned about the continuity of IO. If I transfer
the group I value the most, I guess a good backup would be to not
delete the Yahoo group and just send a dummy message to it now and
then to make sure it is still running, or maybe even include the yahoo
group as a recipient in messages generated in IO. If IO develops
problems then I could notify the members we are moving back to the
Yahoo group.
Stan [excess quote trimmed by moderator]
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Ken, But if IO has lost its continuity, develops really severe problems, or is bought out by a company that imposes huge charges to have a group, then I think one had better find out how to start a boat under 20 feet of water. Maybe the motor could be encased in a shroud with air intake and exhaust outtake pipes 20 ft. long so the motor could be started under water. (ha, ha). Stan On 2/19/2018 11:25 AM, SP4149 wrote: Going back to YG as a viable option seems to be like trying to start your outboard motor
when your boat sank in 20 feet of water.
PG Offline was a method to retrieve YG archives, it would be useful if it could be modified
to do the same for groups.io archives.
KEN [excess quote trimmed by moderator]
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C'mon guys, We can "what if" till the universe contracts just before the next big bang and we will not solve the issue of "What if groups.io falls down and drops dead". That's really? your questions. Forget about "What if Mark? ________ ?"? You are really worried what you will do in place of groups.io. There is no obvious answer that I am aware of but also I'm not searching and neither are you for that answer. I'm not searching for the? answer because I'm sure that groups.io will attract competitors in relatively short time. It should become obvious to savvy tech people that groups.io actually seems to be draining the (Yahoo) swamp and with thousands of groups ready to flee Yahoo prior to its' groups' group crashing and burning a viable groups.io competitor seems almost a sure thing to happen. I'm simply going to run my groups, read this and some other forums, contribute to some bug reports and not worry? I think that we should all concentrate on what a benefit we have here and start to be positive about it. -- Bob Bellizzi
The Corneal Dystrophy Foundation
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Right. Your ships are on fire and you're worried that the lifeboats might sink. lol
On Mon, Feb 19, 2018 at 1:35 PM, Bob Bellizzi <cdfexec@...> wrote: C'mon guys,
We can "what if" till the universe contracts just before the next big bang and we will not solve the issue of "What if falls down and drops dead".
That's really? your questions.
Forget about "What if Mark? ________ ?"? You are really worried what you will do in place of .
There is no obvious answer that I am aware of but also I'm not searching and neither are you for that answer.
I'm not searching for the? answer because I'm sure that will attract competitors in relatively short time. It should become obvious to savvy tech people that actually seems to be draining the (Yahoo) swamp and with thousands of groups ready to flee Yahoo prior to its' groups' group crashing and burning a viable competitor seems almost a sure thing to happen.
I'm simply going to run my groups, read this and some other forums, contribute to some bug reports and not worry?
I think that we should all concentrate on what a benefit we have here and start to be positive about it.
--
Bob Bellizzi
The Corneal Dystrophy Foundation
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I totally agree.
Cherrill It is fun to be in the same decade as you.
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On Feb 19, 2018, at 2:35 PM, Bob Bellizzi < cdfexec@...> wrote: I think that we should all concentrate on what a benefit we have here and start to be positive about it. -- Bob Bellizzi
The Corneal Dystrophy Foundation
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On 02/19/2018 09:35 PM, Bob Bellizzi wrote: You are really worried what you will do in place of groups.io.
There is no obvious answer that I am aware of There is an obvious answer. To setup an internet site that one has complete control of. Mailing list server plus static website generator. I'm sure that groups.io will attract competitors in relatively short time. I've seen more companies entering the mailing list vending market promptly crash and burn, than I'd like to remember. Competitors are not only far and few between, but are getting more difficult to find. Remember when Group.LY was pitching itself as better than YahooGroups. a viable groups.io competitor seems almost a sure thing to happen. Explain why list-owners are migrating to Groups.IO, rather than GoogleGroups, or FreeLists. jonathon
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Don Grass
Shal Farley
Toby Kraft
SP4149