Dear tfletch's Daily Y2k Report Readers,

I imagine you have been wondering if I disappeared off the face of the earth. Well, here is what happened.

Yahoo cancelled my web page. Why? I don't know. They won't tell me. They say I violated their terms of use. No more details.

As it happens, my wife and I are on an RV trip, which was to end with me spending 3 months in New Jersey to undergo hardcore Microsoft Certification Training. We went to great lengths before leaving L.A. to be able to update the Report as we travelled and after I arrived in New Jersey. We had planned on spending a couple hours per day, attached to a pay phone, updating the page and mailing out the list. In fact, I am downloading this message from my laptop, with an acoustic coupler (attaches to phone handset), over a pay phone in the middle of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.

The day before we left (Saturday), I found that Yahoo had cancelled my account. I have spent the last 5 days, driving and trying to contact Yahoo. So far, I have only got back standard form letters.

Unfortunately, I do not have time to travel, study, rebuild the web page on another server, and promote the page. That was alot of hard work, getting links from other Y2k pages, getting noticed in the major search engines, etc. Down the drain for no apparent reason.

I apologize to those who found the page useful, but the report and preparedness page are now officially over.

If you have a mind to, you might contact Yahoo! and urge them to reinstate the page. I will continue the page if they give me back my old (widely referenced) URL "http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/7404"

Again I apologize.

Tracy Fletcher tfletch@primenet.com

-- Tracy Fletcher (tfletch@primenet.com), August 04, 1999

Answers

Tracy--

I want to thank you for all your hard work. I know that there are thousands of people out there who have followed the Y2K news through your exhaustively comprehensive review of the news. Personally, I hope you will find another space to continue your important work. I hate to think that all that information will be lost to the rest of us.

Again, thanks--and good luck to you!

-- William in Dallas (bcheek@onramp.net), August 04, 1999.

I do not claim to be on the same level of Y2K-awareness raising as Tracy, but I have experienced problems with my site host as well. These started soon after I stuck a finger in Koskinen's eye at the Y2K Community Meeting in St. Paul, MN a few weeks ago. Paranoia seems increasingly sane these days.

my site: www.y2ksafeminnesota.com

-- MinnesotaSmith (y2ksafeminnesota@hotmail.com), August 04, 1999.

tfletch,

I'm sorry to hear this! I checked your site every day, to sort of look to see if I was on the right track or if I had missed anything. Hope you get it back soon.

Damn internet...

-- pshannon (pshannon@sangersreview.com), August 04, 1999.

This is a bummer. Hey pshannon, maybe you guys can get together. You would make a hell of a team! <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), August 05, 1999.

This is highly suspicious. I wonder if "certain persons" complained to Yahoo that Tracy's page was a violation of terms of service? And, if those same "certain persons" might have complained to Minnesota Smith's provider, too? Hmmm...seems to me that someone was complaining vociferously to MIT and Phil Greenspun trying to get this site taken down as a violation of terms of service.

I hope the regulars here will take this seriously enough to write to Yahoo on Tracy's behalf. His page was/is a goldmine of information, resources, and meticulous detail. The site had no agenda, sold no products, and didn't really even prognosticate about the outcome of Y2K. Just in case there have been voices raised in protest of such a valuable effort, perhaps it would help if Yahoo heard from other voices. Please write to them.

-- I wonder (could@it.be), August 05, 1999.

tfletch's Daily Y2K report was a regular read for me. This is outrageous! Does anyone have an e-mail contact for Yahoo's Geocities Homesteader service? Can't find it on their website, and I'd be happy to write them about this.

-- RUOK (RUOK@yesiam.com), August 05, 1999.

First, Tracy, I'm so sorry to hear this. I really appreciate your site and the work you did on it.

As to an e-mail for geocities/yahoo-- I couldn't find one either. But if you go out to geocities and click through to 'help' there is a link you can click on to 'send a specific question to the help desk'. It is not an e-mail, but rather an electronic form. And they do have the following notice at the bottom of the form (as well as other places throughout their pages) that says: NOTICE: We collect personal information on this site. To learn more about how we use your information, see our Privacy Policy. (Ironically, if you go to the Terms of Service, they technically are violating their own terms: "You agree not to use the Service to: m. collect or store personal date about other users.")

They have a very 'handy' "content violation reporting form" at:

http://geocities.yahoo.com/main/contact/alert_form.html

It's handy because you can just click on the "violation" and it already fills in your name and e-mail address: concerned individual, concerned@geocities.com.

The short list on this 'violation reporting form' is:

Use this form to report violations of GeoCities Content Guidelines and Terms of Service. Please choose the button next to the violation that you are reporting.

Nudity/Pornography

EnchantedForest violations

Illegal activities

Software piracy

Hacking

Racist/Hatred pages

Promoting physical harm

Multiple accounts

Excessive profanity

Offensive content

Signpost to another server

Remote loading to another server

Displaying sponsorship banners

Unregistered commercial page

Material that exploits children

Other violations

You would think that Yahoo could have at least provided you with a specific reason for cancelling your pages rather than just "violating terms of service."

This does not bode well.

-- winter wondering (winterwondering@yahoo.com), August 05, 1999.

What the heck is an EnchantedForest violation?

-- Dog Gone (layinglow@rollover.now), August 05, 1999.

Dog gone,

I had no clue about the enchanted forest thing, either. But apparently it is one of geocities neighborhoods that is specifically for kids. "There are no dragons in this forest for and by kids. This is where our yountest geocitizens can shine."

-- winter wondering (winterwondering@yahoo.com), August 05, 1999.

Tracy, Yahoo! isn't the only game in town!!

Post the site with another server! If you need financing, we'll take up a collection.

This is OUTRAGEOUS!!

-- Nancy (hummers55@yahoo.com), August 06, 1999.

I've been experiencing problems in updating certain pages on my Yahoo Geocities website. And these problems have started only after the merger. When it was just a Geocities website I hardly ever had any problems updating as many pages as I could in one session. Now I have to find out by trial and error which pages I can update.

One of the pages I can't update is my Y2K page! So, Tracy, you're not alone - but at least my site is still on-line. I'd better not post the URL here. E-mail me and I'll give you the URL.

-- Soo Ching Pin (chingpin@hotmail.com), August 07, 1999.

I have just sent a mail to YahooGeocities, but I am not sure about the address. I took it from the YG World Report. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Dear Sirs:

I am a member of Geocities. I want to know the reason for excluding tfletch's Daily Y2k Report http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/7404 from our site.

Thanks. Eduardo Varela Argentina >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

-- Eduardo Varela (evarela@infovia.com.ar), August 07, 1999.

Hi Tracy,

Just wondering if you have an update for us on the status of your site. <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), August 10, 1999.