Yahoo groups data update
Oct. 27th, 2019 07:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowscastRegarding getting the data from Yahoo groups:
I finally got the data which I had requested from Yahoo directly by following their not-very-clear "request your data" instructions (involving going through the "privacy dashboard"). (I requested the data on 2019-10-16 and I got it on 2019-10-26.)
It arrived as a zip file, which, when unzipped, had a folder for each of the groups I was a member of (not just the one I moderated).
Each of the group folders had three folders in it: files, links, and messages (also zipped, initially).
Unzipping the "files" folder yielded all of the files that had been in the group's files section, with subfolders intact. So that's pretty handy, I guess.
Unzipping the "links" folder yielded files which Windows tells me are of the type "internet shortcut", but which I cannot figure out how to open. Anyway, each one is about 200 bytes.
Unzipping the "messages" folder yielded one file with a name like: 2215412.mbox.00001
(Update: Whoops, when I wrote that I had only looked at the smaller group. For the larger groups, there are multiple mbox files, with the suffixes 00001, 00002, etc. Each one had a maximum file size of about 10,244 KB—so I guess the bigger message archives got broken into chunks, which makes sense.)
At first I wasn't sure what that was, but after some googling I figured out that it was a saved-emails file format.
I downloaded Thunderbird, an email client, and followed the instructions found on this page:
https://www.wintips.org/how-to-open-mbox-files-in-thunderbird/
After doing that, I was able to view all of the group's email messages in Thunderbird.
Update: After writing this post, I saw that there's now a Yahoo Groups Fandom Rescue Project Tumbler, which has a post with essentially the same information I just discovered for myself: Yahoo Groups Deletion: Requesting Your Groups
But they mention that not all files from the "files" section of the groups seem to be necessarily always included, so that's a warning.
Andmorgandawn has the same info in a Dreamwidth post: Yahoo Groups Deletion: Requesting Your Groups
Update 2: I think I've figured out what's up with the missing photos. See this comment below.
I finally got the data which I had requested from Yahoo directly by following their not-very-clear "request your data" instructions (involving going through the "privacy dashboard"). (I requested the data on 2019-10-16 and I got it on 2019-10-26.)
It arrived as a zip file, which, when unzipped, had a folder for each of the groups I was a member of (not just the one I moderated).
Each of the group folders had three folders in it: files, links, and messages (also zipped, initially).
Unzipping the "files" folder yielded all of the files that had been in the group's files section, with subfolders intact. So that's pretty handy, I guess.
Unzipping the "links" folder yielded files which Windows tells me are of the type "internet shortcut", but which I cannot figure out how to open. Anyway, each one is about 200 bytes.
Unzipping the "messages" folder yielded one file with a name like: 2215412.mbox.00001
(Update: Whoops, when I wrote that I had only looked at the smaller group. For the larger groups, there are multiple mbox files, with the suffixes 00001, 00002, etc. Each one had a maximum file size of about 10,244 KB—so I guess the bigger message archives got broken into chunks, which makes sense.)
At first I wasn't sure what that was, but after some googling I figured out that it was a saved-emails file format.
I downloaded Thunderbird, an email client, and followed the instructions found on this page:
https://www.wintips.org/how-to-open-mbox-files-in-thunderbird/
After doing that, I was able to view all of the group's email messages in Thunderbird.
Update: After writing this post, I saw that there's now a Yahoo Groups Fandom Rescue Project Tumbler, which has a post with essentially the same information I just discovered for myself: Yahoo Groups Deletion: Requesting Your Groups
But they mention that not all files from the "files" section of the groups seem to be necessarily always included, so that's a warning.
And
morgandawn has the same info in a Dreamwidth post: Yahoo Groups Deletion: Requesting Your GroupsUpdate 2: I think I've figured out what's up with the missing photos. See this comment below.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-10-29 01:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-10-29 04:50 pm (UTC)It's not that everyone knew how to do things. I was just scanning through a group yesterday where for the first three months of its opening people were still trying to figure out how to transfer their subscription from another account, trying to figure out how to get email vs digests and other preferences, and so on. But I think that there was, perhaps, a greater likelihood of asking for help with problems as well as some basic stuff, and an effort to work things out.
For example, I'd be willing to bet that if you chose a random sample of fans who have been in a fandom for at least 5 years, at a minimum half of them wouldn't not know how to create an HTML link. I think that would have been much less true around 2000 or 2005 -- even though chances are the same number of people would actually understand HTML coding. You simply had to learn to work with the tech back then and be prepared to do a variety of things yourself. And because it was all computer based, you had to have some basic skills.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-10-31 02:53 am (UTC)I tend to forget that I'm really more tech savvy than most people—perhaps because I'm less tech savvy than a lot of the people in my close circles (but that's because my close circles are unusually techie!). But for instance I know how to build a web page from scratch, and I do bits of coding of one sort or another on a nearly daily basis.