What Happened To The Fire & Scanner Yahoo Groups?

Following a couple of consecutive mild fire seasons in California in 2010 and 2011, the state has gotten back to the business of burning this Summer. A second tangent converges with this fact and that is the long-term decline of the once quite active and thoroughly enjoyable California wildfire Yahoo! Groups such as SoCalFire and CenCalFire and NorCalFire and Bayfire. The same thing has happened over the same time period (second half of the 2000's into the early 2010's) to the California scanner-monitoring Yahoo Groups such as SCANnorCAL and SCANNINGCENCAL and SoCalScan and CaliforniaOnlineScanning and Bayscan ("Flamescan"). I have noted this trend throughout its run starting back at its inception fearing it would happen to my beloved labor of love, California Disasters. That fear has not really been realized although California Disasters has seen some slight slippage in both the number of postings as well as in the number of members. I believe the most significant factor for the slight decline in California Disasters has been the disaster quiescence of the past few years in California which is a good thing, of course. We can't talk about what is not happening so it follows that fewer exciting things going on will translate to fewer postings and less interest by the general public. Our hardcore disaster buffs and fire buffs and scanner-monitoring buffs are still with us but we have lost some of the anonymous general public types as well as have experienced the normal rate of attrition due to folks dying or getting disinterested in Yahoo! Groups, etc.

That last item segues in to what I believe is the primary cause of the decline of all those other groups over the past several years (and is the second-most significant factor for why California Disasters has seen some decline) and that is Yahoo's loss of market share in the social networking and groups category due to advances in technology and Yahoo's own sluggish attempt to adapt to a rapidly evolving marketplace. A significant number of folks who used to ply the waters of Yahoo! Groups for fire and scanner info no longer do so but have moved on to other arenas such as Twitter and the Hotlist and various blogs such as CAL FIRE NEWS.

My former girlfriend of a few years ago once posited privately to me that California Disasters was actually hurting some of these groups as they were already clearly in decline even as California Disasters was still expanding. Given that I now put as much effort into California Disasters as I ever have in the past and the group has a strong and broad loyal following and yet has still experienced a slight contraction in membership and a light contraction in postings I am more likely to be skeptical of that assessment as this indicates to me there is something negatively impacting all these Yahoo! Groups and not just one such group gobbling up all the vitality of the others. However, at the time I reluctantly agreed with it but I felt bad my brain-child was perhaps thriving at the expense of other groups which was never my intent. I suppose it is possible that at that time California Disasters was modestly growing at the expense of some or all of the aforementioned Yahoo! Groups although I can't say for sure and if so to what extent. The reason for this would have been the disparity between my own efforts in growing and improving California Disasters and my wonderful team of moderator's efforts in assisting me in that regard as well as the broad, flexible, hybrid nature of the group which allowed it to be different things to different people all the time unlike the aforementioned groups whose declared foci were much narrower and more specific.

The secondary cause for the decline of these other Yahoo! Groups as I see it is the lack of interest by the various aforementioned Yahoo! Groups' owners and moderators (excepting California Disasters, of course) in keeping their groups relevant and vibrant. In the case of some of these groups it is as if they simply turned the lights out and walked away. In some cases I don't get any response from the group owners or moderators regarding concerns or questions I have. In some cases other people contact me under the erroneous assumption I have pull with some of these group owners or their moderators because these people can't seem to get any response from the group owners or moderators. Customer service is important even in Yahoo! Groups! For a Yahoo! Group to survive and thrive the owner must invest time and effort into making the group into something worthwhile and maintaining whatever level of quality and vitality they desire. In all fairness groups like SoCalScan and Bayscan have succeeded in maintaining relevance and vibrance but are nonetheless shells of their former selves. Their posting rates are way down and although they seem to have very large memberships many of those members are "bouncing" as their accounts have lapsed for various reasons and they are no longer valid and active members of Yahoo! Groups. Many/most Yahoo! Groups do not regularly attempt to unbounce their bouncing member's accounts and if unsuccessful then delete those members from the membership roles. This allows said groups to appear larger than they actually and effectively are. Note: at California Disasters we periodically tend our crop of "bouncing" members and delete those whom we cannot reactivate.

Nonetheless, I remain a member of each of these groups and a member of as many other such groups that I did not mention as they are too small and marginal to be worth mentioning here. I remain thus in the hopes of seeing one or more of these groups make some sort of come-back despite my skepticism that any of them will do so. I believe California Disasters will endure as long as Yahoo! Groups stays in business and I am alive and able to do my thing and have at least some of my current crop of moderators to assist me.