Grouply

From Freegle Wiki

UPDATE: Message on Grouply's website:

"We regret to inform you that as of February 24, 2012, the Grouply service and all individual group websites built on the Grouply platform are no longer available.

When Oodle acquired Grouply in November 2010, the intent was to leverage the Grouply code base to add a community layer to the Oodle Marketplace while continuing to run Grouply as a standalone service. While the integration of Grouply with Oodle was successful, unfortunately, the economics are such that we can no longer justify supporting the Grouply service on its own.

If you are the creator or administrator of a Grouply group, you can request a copy of your group member list and select group data here.

Thanks for using Grouply."

This information hasn't been followed up since February 24th, so we are not sure of the current situation. Previous to this, the entry on this page of the wiki gave the information below.

This is an Admin message which explains about Grouply and which you can use for your members if you don't wish to be associated with them. Also below is a description of the process you might wish to follow to remove your group from Grouply.

Admin Message

ADMIN - PLEASE READ - Grouply is DANGEROUS!

For those of you who have never heard about Grouply, it sounds a great idea. Just sign up, enter your IDs and passwords for your groups, and they'll gather all the information for you in one easy to browse place. That's good advertising hype, and in essence, it's true - but the devil's in what they DON'T say!

Here's what they actually do. They record your IDs, then a computer automatically logs in as you to each group you've listed, reads EVERY post, including all the archives, and stores them on Grouply's servers. Lets stop there for a minute. Yahoo, and almost all other group hosts, specifically retain copyright in the traffic on their groups, unless it's already been copyrighted by someone else. When you sign up, you agree to them doing that. You, as the author, can send stuff you've written elsewhere, but that's it. It's there to stop groups being plagarised by anyone who wants to copy items. It's a fundamental part of the contract, and Grouply can't operate without breaking it! Incidentally, everyone who's signed up to Grouply can also read the posts (including members email details), without any membership checks - and that can include automatic spam robots.

OK, lets move on. Grouply also asks if you'll share your address book, so your friends can be told about this great idea. If you happen to be innocent enough to agree, Grouply becomes a spam machine. Every address in your address book is read automatically, then spammed with a customised invitation to sign up to Grouply. Now that's exactly what you expected when you ticked the box, isn't it. No? Well, they did say they were going to let your friends know...

So, so far, by signing up to Grouply, you've breached your Yahoo terms, breached the agreement with your ISP not to spam, and not even realised. Do you still think Grouply's a good idea?

Now, the moderators get one of the spam emails, perhaps sent to the owner address, perhaps to the group. Perhaps, if you're off moderation, the invitation just goes straight to the group! As moderators, we have to immediately suspend your group access. You'll be set to special notices, prevented from submitting posts, and you'll be reported to Yahoo abuse. We have no choice in the matter. In fact a case can be made for immediate removal from the group. The reason is that the moderators administer the group. We're the ones who are responsible for keeping the group on track , especially regarding Yahoo's conditions if operation. If we don't act, we run the serious risk of Yahoo just closing down the group. It does happen! So, we can't be gentle, no matter how much of a mistake it was; no matter how naive you may have been, because, ultimately, it is the group as a whole which must come first.

So, please, please, ignore Grouply!

Thank you for reading this.

Opting Your Group Out of Grouply

If you would like your group to be removed from the Grouply site, access the Grouply blog [1] and click on the bottom 'Proceed to Group Owner Controls'. Check the Yahoo group box and enter your group name. You will be sent an email to your -owner address with an authorisation code. Cut and paste this into the next Grouply page presented. You will then be given some options but also click on the 'Advanced Options' so you can fully remove your group.

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