Hello Dennis.

First of all,  Groups.io is requiring that the owner of the lists (Y! and GIO) have a premium one year subscription before groups.io will do the automatic copy.  Also please note that it is the GROUP that has to have the premium one year ($110) subscription so each and ever group that gets moved to groups.io has to pay that price so it is not the owner but the group.

Next,  the person that requests the move at groups.io must first create a new group (free at this point) and then GIO has to approve that group (name etc).  Once that is done the group owner can upgrade to premium (or not).  If the owner does get premium subscription for the group then that person has options of what they can request to be transferred.  Let us be perfectly clear though,  if the Yahoo group allowed attachments to messages (usually pictures) that attachments will NOT be copied over to groups.io.  GIO has a setting in the group to allow or not allow attachments.  Most set it to not allow.

Once the GIO group owner requests the copy from yahoo and assuming all available was selected (files, and past messages and member list) then the GIO owner must be an owner or moderator of the Yahoo group being copied or have that person then log into yahoo group and from within that group send a membership invite to transfer@groups.io and then wait.  Once GIO gets that invite and accepts it then the yahoo owner/moderator (must have membership admin rights) must make transfer@groups.io a moderator of the yahoo group.  They do not have to check any of the boxes for moderators so they are basically a moderator in name only with no specific privileges.   Then when Mark Fletcher (Groups.io owner and programmer) gets to your group he will start the transfer process.  It may take a while as yahoo may be finicky and not allow all members to be viewed at one time or may be having trouble with photos and files (like they were 2 days ago).  The owner can go to the groups.io group and see where it is in the process.  Once the transfer is completed groups.io will create accounts for all members of the yahoo group using the email address of their yahoo group membership and send them a message welcoming them to the group and telling them how to set their new password if they are not already groups.io members.

Yes,  Groups.io is charging to COPY those past emails that will be deleted by Yahoo shortly.

If the groups.io owner chooses not to pay for premium (or heaven forbid enterprise) subscription that person can copy files into the file section and copy photos but at this point there is no way for that person to copy any past emails.  Also those files and photos will then be listed as owned by the person that copied them into the files/photos section and not by the person that copied them into the yahoo files/photos section.  Does that matter?  Not to most people but some might object.  The premium membership does the transfer automatically (that is how it looks but it is not all automatic as Mark does have to do quite a bit). It also gives you 1gb storage space for the free group and 10gb for the premium group.  At the end of the year (and not before) the owner can fail to renew and the group reverts to the free group but if storage space (defined as files and photos but not messages) exceeds the 1gb space provided with free membership then anything over 1gb will be deleted and that is a fact that many may not be aware of.

What does premium subscription give you?  Besides the automatic copy of the group including past emails (if selected) it gives the owner the ability to add members manually otherwise the perspective member has to go through the join process or receive an invite and accept it.  Also the owner can add an unlimited number or invite an unlimited number but the free group is limited to so many invites per day (100 I think by the owner or moderator.

Each groups.io group can have multiple owners and it is a good idea to have it that way so that the group does not get orphaned like QRP-L appears to be or like the Kenwood-R5000 yahoo group I am in but can't post since the owner is mia and does not approve any of my posts.  The one problem with multiple owners is that any owner can remove any other owner so it needs to be someone trustworthy.

The default settings for a group are unrestricted membership and that is why some groups when you select the join button will tell you right then that you are now a member with no moderator approval needed.  None of my groups get set up that way!  Mine are restricted so I have to approve each member.  Also with restricted membership the default is first message moderate.  What that means to you is that even if you were a member of a yahoo group and join the same name or similar name groups.io group you will still have to yave your first message approved by the group moderator and after that you are not moderated (unless put on moderation for some reason).

Another subtle point is that there is an option for the owner to make the groups.io group private or public.  They are public by default.  That means that anyone (member not) can read any past message posted and can also search for the group name at groups.io and have it find it.  If the group is private then no one can find the group without being a member of the group and no one can read messages that are not members.  That is a double edged sword.  The problem is that if the owner sets the group to private for any reason then it can never be set back to public!  Ask me how I know.

Groups.io is not moving anything.  They merely copy but with Yahoo deleting everything starting shortly then I would think that people would be glad that old emails can be copied and kept.  There are some high volume groups where those emails are invaluable. 

I hope that answers your question.

Jim Pruitt
WA7DUY

On 10/19/2019 9:55 AM, Dennis Schaefer wrote:

Sorry for the off-topic post - I enjoy reading the posts but don’t take up much bandwidth here....   This would be for an administrator, I guess, and anyone with info can reply to me direct to keep it off the list.

Our administrator for two small groups I’m in tells us that he will have to upgrade to a premium membership in groups.io to migrate the files, pictures, and conversations from Yahoogroups.   These are small groups with very few pictures, no files, and maybe 1000 previous messages.  It seems that if Groups.io is really charging to migrate past messages, people would be yelping about it all over the place.  This is somewhat urgent to us because Yahoo seems to be shutting down fast. Can anyone enlighten me?  

Thanks, 73,
Dennis, W5RZ