Yahoo group owner is absent for 6+ years now?

Question

"Shyness" group has 1133 members, spam/trolls became a problem recently and the group owner/moderator is missing for 6+ years now (email address invalid). Moving all members to a new group with less catchy name is highly undesirable. What other options besides posting illegal/offensive material on the message board to force shutdown and reopen with a living, active moderator exist? We can't possibly be the only group with long lost moderator and there seems no procedure to fix that problem like: require moderator to respond in 2 month timeframe on request and otherwise remove ownership.

Answer 1

you're not the only group experiencing this, there is hundreds and there is no procedure to fix this from Yahoo although they are aware of the MIA owners and the suggestion of Adopt A Group. Yahoo will not transfer ownship or appoint moderators offically at this time. contacting Yahoo others have reported that the group ends up deleted, so I wouldn't attempt that route.

you're only hope is to locate the owner and hope their account still is active, or

start a new group. title it shyness_2

sorry

Answer 2

To add to the previous answer, one thing you might want to do before getting the group deleted by complaining to Yahoo about it, is to get the new one started.  Go ahead and start it and copy any files, photos, databases, etc. that are on the group and then re-upload them to the new group.  Once you've done that, post to the old group mentioning your new group to help get it started again.  And, get the old members to help you by all agreeing on a date when you will contact Yahoo and ask to have the old group deleted.

It worked for us....

Sorry about losing your name, but maybe you can use something very similar.

Answer 3

Have the same problem with a group I belong to.  I emailed Yahoo.  The only way to take the group over is to create a poll with a few members who want to be the new owner, and have everyone vote on it.  Leave it open for at least one full week, and then email the results back to Yahoo.  They will at that point promote a new group owner based on the 'election' results.