ModTools History

History

In the middle of 2013, Yahoo decided to change the way Groups worked (Neo), which removed the ability of Edward's Mod Plug-in availabel at the time to interact with them and thus render it unusable.

Edward suggested on Central that he could write a new tool that would offer the same range of facilities. It was unanimously welcomed as we had confidence that Edward would be able to do it and do it well.

The new Mod Tools was funded by a crowdfunding appeal

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/yahoo-groups-moderation-tools?

Message from Edward on the Indiegogo site:

In the early hours of this morning we reached the $10K target which will allow me to develop and support the replacement for the modplugin, to work with the Neo interface changes.

This is excellent news and I am very grateful to all of you who have supported this, financially and otherwise. I will try to build something that reflects the trust and generosity you've shown.

Edward''

A new version was released in February 2016.

Freegle now provides a free licence to all Freegle groups.

In December 2016 the ability for Freegle Direct to host groups on the national website, without needing Yahoo as a background infrastructure, made ModTools a completely stand alone moderation tool for those groups which choose to leave Yahoo altogether.

Over the following years, and following the demise of Yahoo as a viable platform for Freegle groups, Edward refined and expanded ModTools. In early 2020 a revised version was released, removing references and connections to Yahoo and making the coding easier to carry forward in the coming years.