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Yahoo Groups GMD stats
Nov. 8th, 2020 11:27 pmBetween the ArchiveTeam volunteers and the Yahoo Groups Fandom Rescue Project, we saved 960,233 unique groups through Yahoo's GetMyData method (not counting what was saved through the Python script and PGOffline). Wow! And hopefully some more is yet to come as there are a few people who have promised to send us their GMDs but haven't yet. We will always accept it, even if it's just as a "please don't share this but hold onto it for safekeeping" measure, so if you know anyone who never got around to sending data to us (no matter what method they saved with), we'll still be happy to get a copy!
How much of that is fandom? At this point, all I can estimate is "somewhere around 300,000?" It is really impossible to know yet. I finished working on the metadata and will be uploading it soon, and sometime next spring (I hope!) we might begin on the more finely-detailed analysis that would let us identify individual fandoms and all of that.
Also, there's a really awesome script that will convert pg4 files (which can be exported from PGOffline) to mbox files like all of the GMD ones, and those can be imported into any email client to read, including Sylpheed as shown in the visual tutorial I put together. So if anyone can't run a Python script but would like that, I will be happy to do it; I already did for any group I saved with PGOffline which had attachments, as Yahoo often did not save or include those with the GMDs. PG4 is definitely the best export method for PGOffline as it lets one convert to multiple other formats. HTML is better than nothing, but it's awfully limited in what you can do with it easily. And when I have the chance, I'm going to experiment with Hypermail and see if I can't figure out how to convert any mbox to html files easily enough that way, as I know some owners of (mostly non-fandom) groups are interested in uploading the HTML files to a website for viewing.
How much of that is fandom? At this point, all I can estimate is "somewhere around 300,000?" It is really impossible to know yet. I finished working on the metadata and will be uploading it soon, and sometime next spring (I hope!) we might begin on the more finely-detailed analysis that would let us identify individual fandoms and all of that.
Also, there's a really awesome script that will convert pg4 files (which can be exported from PGOffline) to mbox files like all of the GMD ones, and those can be imported into any email client to read, including Sylpheed as shown in the visual tutorial I put together. So if anyone can't run a Python script but would like that, I will be happy to do it; I already did for any group I saved with PGOffline which had attachments, as Yahoo often did not save or include those with the GMDs. PG4 is definitely the best export method for PGOffline as it lets one convert to multiple other formats. HTML is better than nothing, but it's awfully limited in what you can do with it easily. And when I have the chance, I'm going to experiment with Hypermail and see if I can't figure out how to convert any mbox to html files easily enough that way, as I know some owners of (mostly non-fandom) groups are interested in uploading the HTML files to a website for viewing.
