[EM] Shutting down Yahoo Groups access; this group is not hosted at Yahoo

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi everyone,

After making repeated attempts to contact Yahoo, with no response, I'm 
shutting down the Yahoo Groups access to the election-methods-list.

A little background, as I remember it (I may have some of the details 
wrong).  Back in 1998, findmail.com started archiving this mailing list, 
and providing a nice web-based interface for those that wanted to view 
it.  It sometimes suffered performance problems, but all-in-all, it was 
a good thing.  They published accurate subscription information for the 
list.

Findmail.com was acquired by eGroups, who improved the performance 
issues.  Then eGroups was acquired by Yahoo.  At some point along the 
way, the subscription info was obscured, and it appeared that the group 
was actually hosted by Yahoo, which in fact it wasn't.
What's worse is that I nor anyone I know has admin access to the group.  
I've made repeated attempts to contact Yahoo about this to clear up the 
situation, with no response.

I've received too many confused inquiries from users who *think* they 
are subscribers to the proper list, only to figure out that they were 
fooled by Yahoo.  Thus, the Yahoo Groups thing has got to go.  I'm tired 
of supporting it.

For those that like using a web-based archive, I highly recommend 
GMane's archive here:
http://news.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/

The ads are only non-intrusive Google text ads, and the interface is 
quite good.

I apologize for the inconvenience this may cause for anyone.  However, I 
believe this is a necessary step to making this list easier to support 
and use.

Rob