Avoid Yahoo Geocities (avoidgeoc.html)

Direct: http://geocities.datacellar.net/jalarson3/avoidgeoc.html
Updated 11/17/06
Corrections, additions, suggestions? email Jim L at jalars (atsign) compuserve dot com

Why You Should Avoid Building A Page at Geocities - Summary

[F] Some Geocities - related forums, message boards, mailing lists Click Here

[G] Contacting Yahoo Geocities For Real Click Here


Why You Should Avoid Building A Page at Geocities - Details


 

[A] Suspension of my website without warning or even notification afterwards for accidentally isolating some of my web pages (October 2001)

It also took weeks of back and forth with Geocities email support. I finally had our Attorney General Office get involved. I also found Yahoo's phone number (408) 349-3300 (830a - 500p) Pacific Time (she restored it right then and there). (October 2001)

I have poured at least 200 hours of my time building this web site and providing information about it to various web directories and search engines. It is a non-profit quit-smoking website that also has the Twin Cities Nicotine Anonymous web page and links to other helpful resources in Minnesota and globally.

I am enormously frustrated that that they suspended me without warning or notification for a minor unintentional violation of one rule out of many pages of rules. And then they indicate that they are un-suspending me, but they have not done so for more than 3 weeks now. And they are ignoring my inquiries, or responding with unhelpful boilerplate email.

AFTERMATH

After 3 weeks of sending feedback and email, I finally decided that the email that I was getting back was auto-response email with no human in the loop. (It wasn't obvious for awhile, because it takes about 3 - 4 days for a response to come back, and then I did get 2 different kinds of letters. So I thought maybe a human was at least making the decision of which standard letter to send). As for it taking 3 - 4 days, I think it is deliberate to make it look like a human is involved. And to "slow things down" for those kind of problems that take hours or days to fix, like a server being down.

After some searching, I found a Yahoo phone number. See Yahoo contact information below. Even though the page with the phone number indicated it was just for media contacts, and even when I called the number and a recording told me that phone support was not available for free services (like Geocities), I held on until a human answered. (It took less than 2 minutes from first dialing the phone until this occurred). I described my problem, and she said wait and let me look into that, and less than a minute later she said access to my web site is restored. And indeed it was. So go ahead and try the phone if email / feedback forms aren't working.

I'm still very upset with Yahoo for suspending my site without warning or even notification, particularly for an unintentional error that is easy to make -- having isolated page(s). And I am upset with the lack of responsiveness to feedback forms and email. But I'm gratified that once I got a human in the loop, the problem was solved.

The Symptoms Of The Problem - What Your Web Site "Looks" Like When You Are Suspended

When I click a link to any page on my website (or type the URL for in the browser's address box) I get the following:


"The page is not available"

"We're sorry, but this page is currently unavailable for viewing.
If this site belongs to you, please read this help page for more information and assistance."

(Then the help page indicates either I don't have an index.html page or I may have been suspended for violating a term of agreement).

And when I go into Geocities file manager, I get a message

WARNING: You do not currently have an "index.html" or "index.htm" file".

And when I upload index.html, I get a message:

Upload results:
Index.html
- []

and it isn't uploaded.

10/05/2001 Email from Geocities Which Indicates My Site Is Being Restored

(In the below email, the underlining is mine. What is underlined indicates that they are restoring my web site so that I can bring my web site into compliance -- since I cannot carry out their instructions until they give me access to my web site).

Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2001 12:04:32 -0700
From: Yahoo! GeoCities
To: James Larson
Subject: Re: Feedback - Page Not Available (KMM50706880V6484L0KM)

Hello, and thank you for writing to Yahoo! Customer Care.

Thank you for your inquiry.

Your account was suspended for remote loading and storage violations of the Yahoo! GeoCities Terms of Service. Using a GeoCities account as a storage device to remote load files is directly in violation of the Yahoo! GeoCities Terms of Service.

Remote loading is the act of pulling files from your GeoCities account from a location other than your GeoCities site -- for example: setting up a home page with another service and then loading files to that site from your GeoCities account.

Please remove any files that are not in use on your home page or incorporate those files into your home page.

Further use of your Yahoo! GeoCities account for remote loading and storage purposes may result in removal or further suspension.

** Before replying to this message, please double-check your Yahoo! GeoCities site to see if you have regained access. **

We urge you to review the terms carefully:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/geoterms.html

Thank you,
Yahoo! GeoCities Team
http://geocities.yahoo.com



 

[B] Suspension of my website without warning or prior notification simply for being popular -- i.e. exceeding the 3 GB / month bandwidth. (August 2002)

At least they do notify after it happens. But why couldn't they notify BEFORE the first time? My website never recovered its former popularity -- apparently some websites that linked to it removed their links during this suspension period. (August 2002)

Yes, I know it doesn't make sense -- after all, the more often pages are viewed, the more often the ads that Geocities places there are viewed. So one would think that Geocities would be ecstatic when a large number of ad views is occuring. But no. They see an opportunity to extract more money out of the deal by trying to force you to buy one of the paid premium services. (And the last time I looked, $120/year buys you 5 GB / month insteaed of 3 GB / month bandwidth -- whoopee.)

Email from Geocities To Those Whose Bandwidth exceeds 3 GB/month

First, My commentary on the email

Note that the bandwidth limitation is measured on an hourly basis. For a 30-day month (720 hours), that comes to a 3 GB * ( 1 / (1024*1024*720) ) = 4,369 K per hour. That is, in any hour that downloads exceed 4,369 K, your site will be temporarily suspended ).

For a background article about Geocities new bandwidth policy, see http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-7122774.html?tag=owv

This 10/29/01 posting by a Geocities "Expert" GeoSheaks at Geocities.Yahoo.com indicates that the 3 GB/month limit really is a 3 GB/month limit rather than a 4,369 K/hour hourly limit:

A free GeoCities site is allocated 3GB data transfer per month. This transfer is monitored on an hourly basis and when, if the data transfer were to continue at that rate and the projection would exceed the 3GB per month, you get the warning notice. When that occurs your site is shut down for an hour, and then the transfer meter starts again since there was zero transfer during the previous hour.

The URL (which probably won't be good for more than a month) is at http://post1.experts.yahoo.com/expertcenter/showqa?b_id=383000187&t_id=geosheaks&m_id=923 . I suppose if I dug into the Geocities Help pages, I might find which is correct.

And Now The Geocities Email

Dear GeoCities Member:

Congratulations, http://geocities.datacellar.net/greg1964_1999 is very popular and has been receiving a large amount of traffic. Your site has become so popular, in fact, that our records indicate that you're using more than the allotted amount of data transfer we provide for a free web site, which is 3GB/month (measured on an hourly basis). That means at some time during the past few days we had to turn your site off until the usage fell within the prescribed limit.

If you'd like to prevent this from happening to your site, you may join one of our new premium services, GeoCities Pro or GeoCities Webmaster. These packages allow for 10 GB and 20 GB of data transfer respectively, and also give you the option of purchasing unlimited data transfer so your site will never be disabled. These packages also enable you to run an ad-free site at your own domain name (for example, www.your-dot-com.com) AND get matching email accounts at that domain (like you@your-dot-com.com).

For more information about our new packages, please visit http://geocities.yahoo.com/ps/info?.refer=bwn. Upgrading your current GeoCities site to one of our new premium packages is easy - just a few clicks away - and you don't have to move any of your files.

If you'd prefer not to receive notification when your site is shut down for going over the transfer limit, you may visit http://geocities.yahoo.com/opt/bwemail?.refer=bwn to take your name off of our list. Of course, we will continue to monitor your site's data usage and turn it off if it exceeds the limits.

Thank you,
Yahoo! GeoCities
http://geocities.yahoo.com/



 

[C] They suspended a website for inactivity WITHOUT WARNING simply because I had not changed it for more than a year (April 2004)

What more can I say? Why do they always suspend web-sites without warning for something so minor? And its not only a serious inconvenience to me, it is also a serious convenience to users who are looking for quit-smoking information. They find the page suspended (I believe Geocities tells them why - one decent thing Geocities does) and they wonder if they should bother trying the website again or how long to wait before trying again etc.

I don't recall the exact time-frame -- I think it was a year that I had not changed anything. The email I got said all I had to do was change 1 page on my website -- any change, even just a character like putting in a space and then taking it right back out will do.



 

[D] Some pages do not display, or display only partially, because of an error with their software that places ads on the pages (October 2005).

[D.1] The problem as best I can figure it out: in comments there needs to be a space after the opening comment delimiter "<!--", and another space before the closing comment delimiter "-->".

Their ad-placing software seems to be messed up by a perfectly legal HTML comment such as this:

<!--this is a comment-->

and when I changed it to the same thing but with spaces before and after the double dash:

<!-- this is a comment -->

then it works fine.

Putting this space in after the opening comment delimiter and another one before the closing comment delimiter solved the page display problem in 3 out of 3 pages fixed so far. But I have to say that some pages don't have the space either before or after the appropriate delimiters and yet they display fine. So it appears that the problem is PARTLY but NOT ENTIRELY caused by the missing spaces.

[D.2] My email communications with Geocities about the problem (OUTRAGEOUS! ENDING IN WHAT AMOUNTS TO EXTORTION)

10/3/05 - I send a webform message explaining that some pages don't view properly while others do (and listing the names of some of the pages in each category). And that they all view fine in File Manager's Preview mode. The webform is at http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/geo/cgi_feedback

10/3/05 - A response from geo-support@yahoo-inc.com acknowledging the problem and asking permission to enter my account and conduct some tests to pinpoint the cause of this problem and explore some solutions. And asking me to send some verification information like my Yahoo ID and zip code and date of birth.

10/3/05 - I write back giving permission and the verification information and some more information about the problem -- showing what a page that displays blank looks like when I right click on it and do View Source -- it shows the ad script they insert in 3 places and how there is nothing after the last ad script (and that the rest of my page is missing).

10/7/05 - I tell them it appears that their ad-placing program is being messed up by comments like:

<!--this is a comment-->

and that when I changed it to the same thing but with spaces before and after the double dash:

<!-- this is a comment -->

then it worked fine.

And similarly for another page. That their ad-placement software seems to be thrown off track by comments that are missing the space after the opening comment delimiter "<!--" and before the closing comment delimiter "-->". I urge them to fix their ad-placing software because it is a subtle problem that I'm sure is tripping up many other Geocities web sites.

10/7/05 - Geocities writes back:

"I understand that your problem has been resolved. We're glad to hear that your problem has been resolved. If there is anything else that we can help you with, please let us know."

10/7/05 - I write back: "How can you write that you think the problem is resolved!!! Look at my last email again (below) where it says:

"It is a problem I think you need to fix because its a common mistake and it views fine in Preview mode, and the raw page views fine in Internet Explorer 6. The problem is those comments-without-spaces screws up your program that put the ads in. So its really a subtle problem for most users. It was the last thing I would have guessed was causing the problem (I deconstructed my page by stages down to nothing in incremental steps and then when it displayed OK, built it up in steps. Sheesh). "

Does this look like the problem is resolved? How about all the other users with comment without the spaces, and who haven't yet discovered that some of their pages aren't displaying, or displaying only in part? I wonder how long this has been the situation -- at least a year probably! At least a year when several of my pages were not displaying properly or not at all.

Do you honestly think I'm the only person who has comments without a space after the opening "<!--" ?

I am an engineer and a software developer and well versed in HTML and yet it took me a total of at least 12 hours to trouble-shoot this problem. (And I'm not even sure its the problem -- I find some other pages that don't have the spaces in the comments, e.g. "<!--BODY-->" but display fine.

It makes me mad that I have to go through all of my pages and stick the spaces in the comments and then try them out. This will take me several hours. It makes me mad that you people don't seem to give a rats ass about the other users who no doubt have this problem and haven't discovered it yet or have no idea why.

No, the problem is not resolved. You people need to fix your damn program that sticks the ads in so that it isn't tripped up by comments that don't have spaces in the right place from the standpoint of your erroneous ad-placing program.

10/8/05 - Geocities write back a message saying they don't provide help with advanced scripts or software:

I understand from your email that you have problems with your Website.

At this time, we do not provide assistance to users building home pages using advanced scripts or software. This includes, but is not limited to: JavaScript, Java, Perl, VBScript, Cascading Style Sheets, Flash, Shockwave, DHTML, SSI, etc.

However, we encourage you to explore these technologies and implement what you are comfortable with, but you must troubleshoot any problems caused by these yourself.

To learn more about these, we recommend that you check out our directory:

(and then they give some URLs to programming languages directory and an HTML tutorial and so on).

On 10/8/05 I write -- MY PROBLEM HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ADVANCED SCRIPTS. THE PROBLEM IS YOUR PROGRAM THAT PUTS ADS IN -- IT IS MESSED UP BY PERFECTLY LEGAL COMMENT SYNTAX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I found the HTML 4.01 spec on comments (below in its entirety). It says nothing about requiring a space after the opening "<!--" and one before the closing "-->". The XHTML 1.0 spec says nothing about comments. So you REALLY need to fix your program that puts the ads in.

/=======HTML 4.01 Spec on Comments ================
3.2.4 Comments
HTML comments have the following syntax:

<!-- this is a comment -->
<!-- and so is this one,
     which occupies more than one line -->

White space is not permitted between the markup declaration open delimiter ("<!") and the comment open delimiter ("--"), but is permitted between the comment close delimiter ("--") and the markup declaration close delimiter (">"). A common error is to include a string of hyphens ("---") within a comment. Authors should avoid putting two or more adjacent hyphens inside comments.

Information that appears between comments has no special meaning (e.g., character references are not interpreted as such).

Note that comments are markup.
\====END HTML 4.01 Spec on Comments ================

WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO FIX THE PROGRAM THAT PUTS THE ADS IN?

IF YOU CAN'T FIX IT IN FAIRLY SHORT ORDER, WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO NOTIFY ALL GEOCITIES FREE WEB SITE OWNERS of this problem and to be sure to verify that their pages display properly. And a simple tool to find problematical instances of this problem?

AGAIN - THIS IS A PROBLEM WITH YOUR PROGRAM BEING TRIPPED UP BY PERFECTLY LEGAL HTML -- A SIMPLE COMMENT -- THAT AFFECTS COUNTLESS THOUSANDS OF YOUR GEOCITIES FREE WEBMASTERS.

START READING MY DAMN EMAIL AND STOP THE ROBOTIC RESPONSES.

10/8/05 - Geocities writes back in effect saying I can pay to remove the ads:

I understand from your email that you are facing problems with the ads on your Webpage.

If you want to remove all ads completely, please sign up for one of our new GeoCities premium packages. You can take advantage of several enhancements and features that are only available to GeoCities Plus and GeoCities Pro members including ad free pages.

For full details on everything that is included when you sign up for GeoCities Plus or GeoCities Pro, please see this page:

10/13/05 I write back saying that sounds like extortion. And what about all the other many Geocities web sites whose pages aren't displaying properly -- why don't you notify them? And it would be helpful, since I've proven its an issue with your ad-placing software to at least be somewhat apologetic and to sincerely promise to look into fixing it.





 

[E] Termination WITHOUT PRIOR WARNING OR NOTICE OR GIVING ANY REASON - And Refusing To Give Any Reason. Probably Because Someone Complained Of False Information Without Offering Any Evidence or Explanation Of What Is False (the material came from two mainstream publications that are still available on the web) (October 2006)

On or before October 6, 2006, Geocities terminated one of my web sites. They did not provide any prior warning or notification, nor did they provide any notice afterward. (I just discovered it had been terminated by finding the page not to be there during my twice-monthly tour of my web sites.) Furthermore, they did not provide any reason, other than some unspecified term or condition of service was violated. But despite numerous email requests, they refuse to say what Term or Condition I violated, sending me the same canned email response.

Finally, after numerous more email requests, they told me I would have to get a court order in order for them to tell me what term or condition I violated - claiming that federal and state laws prevent them from doing so!

Despite many more email requests, they have refused to answer any further inquiries where I requested either they:

1. Restore my web site
      -or-
2. Tell me what term or condition I violated
      -or-
3. Tell me what federal or state law prevents them from telling
     me what term or condition of theirs I violated.
But I got no further response other than the original canned email response.

I have just sent (Nov 17, 2006) a snail-mail letter to both Yahoo Inc! (701 First Avenue; Sunnyvale, California 94089) and to the Minnesota Attorney General's Office.

Most likely the real reason is someone complained of false information regarding a lawsuit she was involved in -- but that information is contained in a Fortune Magazine article (still available to anyone on the web) and in a Palm Beach Post article, available through Proquest (available at libraries among other places). The complainer has never told me what was false about this information, not even responding at all.

I am very angry at Geocities for terminating my web site without notification or asking me about the veracity of the information. And then refusing to tell me what the reason is (I am just guessing it is the result of that person's complaint).

As always, when they terminate a web site for a frivolous reason or no reason, it is a huge amount of work to put the web site at a new site and to rebuild traffic to the web site. And it causes a number of broken links all over the Internet that numerous other web-site hosts have to deal with. This is socio-pathological behavior that they repeat over and over as the other examples on this page demonstrate.



[F] Some Geocities - related forums




[G] Contacting Yahoo Geocities

The normal way to contact Geocities Help is to click on Help and then click on Feedback.

You can also email geo-support@yahoo-inc.com

If you are not getting anything except auto-response replies, then try the below. Supposedly they don't provide phone help for free services like regular free Geocities, but on 10/2001 I used the phone number and after negotiating a 4-level call directory tree I fairly quickly (within a minute or two) reached a live human who quickly (within 30 seconds) fixed the problem described in this document (that I couldn't access my web site for more than 3 weeks).
Street Address Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, California 94089
Phone (408) 349-3300
Fax (408) 349-3301
Office Hours 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. PST

The above was somewhat difficult to find. I found it by going to www.yahoo.com and clicking on the "Company Info" link at the bottom of the page. On that page, click on "Addresses". It will take you to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/address/.

(hits since Oct 27, 2001)
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