With the start of December, it has become more apparent that we need to look at our current problem, and tackle it more on the communication front. With a too-short deadline for saving your group’s content (and we say this even if Yahoo’s Get My Data function was actually working as it should), we have been updating our website, to let you know the latest developments.
From the latest response received from Verizon, we now must call for communication support. The objective is reaching out to external influences that may be able to turn Verizon’s stance around. Yes! We need people to start using our contact pages and reaching out. Verizon Executives, Board Members, Media and Advertisers…we got it all.
(Actually, we’re still trying to determine who the advertisers are. If you can help us figure that out, please let us know).
Let them know that Verizon/Yahoo’s indifference is not the proper way to handle this. Years ago, when Yahoo first became a problem for people wanting to save Groups’ content, we had a concise list of goals concerning what we wanted from Yahoo ( and now Verizon).
You can find all of our contacts on the sidebar, under “How can you protest changes?”. I expect you all to be civil, but firm, and you can be angry, just don’t go off on them. You are trying to convey how many of us there are, and if we can show that there’s more than just one annoying OWL contacting these people, we can show them the strength of our movement, and that there are tens of thousands of us.
If you need a bit of help, here are some form letters & tweets to get you started:
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(E-MAIL FOR VERIZON EXECUTIVES/EMPLOYEES)
(Just fill in the red bolded words and add anything else you feel like adding)
Dear Hans Vestberg:
I have used my Yahoo Group(s) about (describe topic(s)) for (#) years (decades, etc) and (it/they) are very important to me, because (insert reason you treasure it).
When Yahoo flipped Groups to the NEO interface, we were not allowed to rescue our archives. So I stayed to protect (it/them) despite the Yahoo Groups platform being very broken and unstable.
Now we’re told that you’ve decided to delete them by December 14th, and that doesn’t seem fair. We were not even given two months warning. It’s not enough time to carefully archive our groups and preserve the content.
I know that Verizon/Yahoo offers a download that I can request, but it comes in a strange format that we can’t use like we did the archive and some have come back with viruses. Plus, it doesn’t rescue our photos, which have to be downloaded manually one at a time.
So couldn’t we please have more time? These group(s) mean a lot to me, and I can’t bear to see (it/them) destroyed.
Sincerely,
(your name)
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(E-MAIL FOR VERIZON STOCKHOLDERS/BOARD MEMBERS)
To Vanguard:
Verizon is about to make a huge mistake that’s going to hurt it’s bottom line. It intends to delete all of our Yahoo Groups archives on 12/14/19. These are archives that we have maintained and protected for years, some for 2 decades. There are over 30,000 groups that we are trying to save with barely a week left and now they’ve blocked us from trying.
They said we could get our archives via a download from them via the group site. But what they sent was a jumbled, chaotic mess of all of our groups archives mixed together in one hard to understand zip file.
So the archivists of the Internet put a plan in motion to go rescue the groups for our users, and was rushing to save them before it was too late. Then, Verizon/Yahoo banned the 128 archivist accounts that had set up in the groups to rescue our archives. Now we are stuck with barely a week left to do this, and it can’t be done.
We are asking you to please use your influence to convince Verizon not to do this and to give us more time. If they go through with this, it will really damage their reputation and we will not be silent about what they’ve done to us.
We already have a story being planned about it in the Washington Post and have spoken with National Public Radio.
You can stop this. You can use your influence and explain to Verizon that we’re not worth this trouble. They’re planning to just dump our archives in the trash. Tell them to let us rescue our content in any manner we can and we will archive it and leave and never come back. Here is what we need to do this: https://modsandmembersblog.wordpress.com/what-we-want-from-verizon/
Thank you sincerely,
your name
Sample Tweet to direct towards Verizon Stockholders
Verizon plans to delete our #yahoogroups archives on 12/14. Even though they don’t think so, many thousands of us use them every day. If they do this, they will not look good in the public view. Go to our “Taking Action” page, for information on measures we can take: https://wp.me/P3ZMb6-IR
Note: Try not to post too many tweets in a short time. Just take your time, do maybe 5 tweets, and then take a break. We don’t want you all in Twitter Jail!
More form letter/communication examples will be posted here
Our Washington Post reporter is delaying her story to cover these new developments, and I also had an interview with a NPR person on Friday.
We are not done fighting, I promise.
Okay team, Ready, Set, GO!
Nightowl >8#
