Google Groups Changes

[Cactus]

Google have just announced that they are dropping two features of
Google Groups - Pages and Files - that we make some use of.

Their announcement, which gives more details, is here:

http://groups-announcements.blogspot.com/2010/09/notice-about-pages-and-files.html?hl=en

Anyone who wishes to retain information that is on our Pages or in our
Files section should hence download it as it will no longer be
available from February next year. New uploads won't be allowed after
the end of October.

Google Groups will continue to support discussion groups and the
associated mailing lists so this will not prevent us continuing our
discussions of Sunday Times Teasers here. But we won't be able to
upload files or use Pages. Google are encouraging users such as
ourselves to set up web sites on Google Sites where we can continue to
upload files and pages.

I would be grateful for input from you all on what we should now do
since there are several options: (a) do nothing and accept that we
cannot upload files or pages; (b) continue here but also create an
associated web site; (c) move to a web site and drop this discussion
group entirely; (d) other options.

I have views on these options in terms of both support cost and
benefit but I would like to hear how other people feel about the way
ahead.

with my best regards,

Brian (Cactus - group manager)

[Teasemaster]

We should remember that this all started because I used to run such a
website, and it got onerous.
Brian offered to establish this group because it was an easier way to
manage what we wanted to achieve.
This might be a retrograde step

However, if such a website were only a repository for files etc. with
links from these pages, would that be suitable? Would it work?

TM

[Garry]

Hello all

Does Google permit attachments to messages? If so, future files could
be stored in that form. If not, most of the files are textual, and
could simply be part of a message - they relate to particular teasers
for the most part, and otherwise could just be given an appropriate
subject heading. Re. the existing files, hasn't their time now gone
anyway?

I'd be quite happy to continue with a reduced-facility group, myself
downloading useful general material or bookmarking links to it. So
that's one vote for staying as we are, accepting lost features as they
occur, i.e. Brian's option (a). If an associated website would be an
extra, and not necessarily impinge on how we discuss our own and each
other's approaches to the teasers, that would be OK, i.e. option (b)
would be fine too on that basis.

Garry