Thursday, September 09, 2010

by Mark Beckwith

[love]

Tuesday I ranted about how, for the second time, Yahoo!Groups had somehow reclassified the Nevus Outreach Support Group into their "Adult" section, i.e. "this group contains mature content" and "you must be 18 to enter", complete with targeted "Adult"-based banner advertising, custom tailored to our apparently "mature" requirements.

I was upset, to say the least.

Imagine my surprise, after beating around this bush for several YEARS, to be emailed finally by Charisse Nicole, an actual person at Yahoo! (I think) who apologized, admitted they did change our group's classification, and admitted they have a problem on their end and they have not figured it out. All stuff I could have told them, and did, (multiple times) over the past few YEARS.

Now we all understand each other.

Charisse assured me it could happen again, if it has not already.  Since they know their systems are re-classifying groups willy-nilly, yet they can't figure out why their systems are doing it, I suggested to Charisse that we could help by letting them know when it happens next.

I would therefore like to ask everyone who uses the Yahoo!Groups-based Nevus Outreach Support Group to be vigilant, and contact me if they notice that our group has been hijacked into the "Adult" section once more.  Charisse said they have removed the "Adult" advertising until they get it sorted out.  The clue will be if you get stopped at a screen that discusses "mature content" and "must be 18 to enter".

Thanks in advance for your vigilance.

[/love]

Charisse's email in its entirety:

Dear Mark,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Groups.

I apologize that your Yahoo! group has been reclassified as adult after we verified it did not have adult content and moved it from the adult category. I have moved your group out of the adult category once again.

We are currently experiencing an issue where our systems are automatically recategorizing groups. Our Product Team is investigating the issue, however, they are having difficulty identifying the cause. They are treating this issue as a priority and hope to have an fix in place soon. In the meantime, we have turned off any adult sponsored ads so your group members are not exposed to adult content.

For the latest news on this issue, please feel free to visit the Groups Blog at:

http://www.ygroupsblog.com/blog/2009/07/08/bug-update-782009/

Due to this issue, your group may continue to automatically be categorized as adult. If so, please let us know, and we will be happy to move it again but be assured that we will not turn on the adult ads until we are able to resolve this issue. Again, I apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience while we work to resolve this issue.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Groups.

Regards,

Charisse Nicole

Yahoo! Customer Care