SmartGroups

A new MYOB user support group, MYOB-Users@yahoogroups.com, has been started.. To join the list, one can send an email to MYOB-Users-subscribe@yahoogroups.com, or can follow this link:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MYOB-Users/join

Smartgroups shut down after this page was originally written. Apparently, the SG MYOB moderator moved the old subscription list to a googlegroup, you can find it from http://groups.google.com — search for "MYOB."

The major independent MYOB users support list began on yahoogroups, but was moved in 2002 to Smartgroups.com, a mailing list host run by Wanadoo. Smargroups has had periodic problems with huge outgoing mail queues, a sign that SG doesn't have the server power and technical resources to serve the large number of groups it hosts. The problems became severe, again, in early 2006.

There is a group manager support forum on Smartgroups, showing the extremely high level of manager complaint about the situation, as well as comments from managers who have already moved their lists elsewhere.
http://www.smartgroups.com/message/listbydiscussion.cfm?GID=336130

Some subscribers to the MYOB list are missing most posts. Some of these posts show up many days later, some appear to disappear permanently, probably due to mail system timeouts.

Compounding the problem, the SG MYOB list is moderated, with each post (?) requiring approval by an anonymous moderator, identified only as M H Spack in an early post, resulting in additional posting delay, without any notice to the submitting member that the post requires moderator approval. The message one posting on-line gets, "There may be a few minutes delay before your post appears," is deceptive. It can take a day or more.

The SG MYOB moderator has taken controversial action, such as banning a member whose offense was to complain about MYOB software, and has ignored complaints regarding this action from other users. In response to the current situation, which has made the list almost unusable for some, the moderator said nothing for months, then posted a copy of an official SG report acknowledging problems, which gives very little information. The moderator has also edited member submissions, adding comments to them, which is generally considered a moderator no-no. (If a member of a list posts something inappropriate, the moderator can reject the post or can respond to it, and can even respond before approving the post, if it is considered important to head off a problem.)

In addition, the moderator has rejected posts attempting to deal with the Smartgroups mail problem, and has even deleted from the archive posts which mentioned the yahoogroups list, and which had been accepted.

User support lists are frequently unmoderated, and for good reason. Software support, when it is needed, is often needed immediately. Waiting a day for a moderator to get around to approving a post can be very expensive. Modern mailing lists have tools that enable moderators to prevent nearly all spam without having to moderate every post, and modern email list providers also may prefilter incoming mail for spam using IP blacklists, eliminating most of it. Further, providers exist with very rapid mail turnaround. Yahoogroups lists, for this writer (Abd), often echoes messages within a minute, and one sees mention of this on the Smartgroups managers forum.

If it were determined that a support list should be moderated, it is possible to have multiple moderators in multiple time zones, so that approval latency is shorter; but experience with unmoderated yahoogroups list has shown that normally spam mail is very rare, on the order of several messages per year. The simple procedure of requiring email address validation for registration, which normally takes a few minutes, and only permitting posts from registered members eliminates nearly all spam, leaving only rare and mostly noncommercial spam from those willing to jump through the registration anti-robot hoop. It would seem penny-wise and pound-foolish to hold up support for hundreds of users in order to block a rare inappropriate message.