Yahoo! Messenger Blog » Chat rooms follow-up

Chat rooms follow-up

August 21, 2007 on 12:46 pm | In News |

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the new issues that have arisen in the chat rooms since last week’s server maintenance. While the update did improve the speed and performance of chat, it unleashed some other bugs that we’re working hard to fix in a timely manner. Here’s what we’re working on:

Room entry: This new method of automatically moving you into the next room within a topic if the first is full without warning was an unexpected result of the server changes. We know the majority of you like to meet up with regular friends in the chat rooms, so we understand your frustration with this inadvertent change. We’re working on reverting back to the old method of room residency that will let you either go into the top level lobby and be placed in the next available room, or if you try to go into a specific numbered room and it’s full, we’ll let you know and you can try to enter a different one of your choosing.

Please note that due to changes in the system, you may or may not find the exact same lobby you were used to visiting. For example, “Chicago” rooms are open, but “Chicago 78” specifically may not be available.

Profile information display: This is a bug that reared its ugly head with the work done last week. We’ll have this fixed as soon as possible so you can be who you want to be in the chat rooms and not be forced to reveal all the nitty gritty details hiding in your Yahoo! registration profile.

Bots, bots and more bots: We did not implement changes designed to reduce the bots during the August 13 maintenance, but it is still in the plans. So stay tuned – we know this is a critical piece, if not the most important.

While we know the above list is not exhaustive and doesn’t address all the complaints you have about the chat rooms, we greatly appreciate your patience as we work out the kinks from these initial changes. We’ll keep you posted here on the blog when we have news.

A quick note on comments being removed… They’re being removed because they’re off-topic to the post or they’re offensive. Please keep any chat room comments in the chat-related posts.

Thanks,

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

997 Comments »

RSS Feed | TrackBack URI

Thank you.

Comment by Venom — August 21, 2007 #
what do you mean sarah you cant get in any room! they are full of bots . and this has been going on for some time your not addressing the problems . you had some bugs u are working on them well how many people are u losing to other chat rooms ? because u cant find anyone alive on yahoo? why dont u read the comments and address whats really going on . u are getting rid of the real people and keeping the bots. find anyone thats a joke ….why didnt u just leave yahoo alone it was fine the way it was and the way its going u wont ever get it right .how long do we need to wait u never answered that is this a week problem a month a year how long ? cuz so far its been to long .. maybe u need some new people who know about servers and stuff that can fix whatever is going on.cuz whatever ur doing ur not doing right .and the customers are always right so get yahoo up and running this has gone on long enough

Comment by tiredchatter — August 21, 2007 #
although at the present time chat is totally unusable, it is nice to know that you are working on it. please keep us updated.

Comment by bill — August 21, 2007 #
[…] any chat room comments in the chat-related posts. Thanks, Sarah Bacon Product Manager Source: Yahoo! Messenger Blog � Chat rooms follow-up Helpful Links: BigBlueBall’s Forum Policies | BigBlueBall’s Yahoo! Section | Latest Yahoo! […]

Pingback by [Yahoo Chat News] Chat Rooms Follow-Up - BigBlueBall Forums — August 21, 2007 #
tiredchatter is a ramblimg madman. anyway, tendz:x, u:x, soon you vile women will be reunited in chat once again, and everyone will go back to suffering.

Comment by darkstar — August 21, 2007 #
Thanks for the update.

Comment by Infinite Luta — August 21, 2007 #
hey sarah is this how you fix chat u cant get in any room lmao what a joke and no if u fix something doesnt mean something else goes wrong that means u need to fire whoever did the screwup and hire someone who can fix it with no screw ups below is trying any room to get in and this is what happens no matter where u try and if u get lucky and get in a room its all bots!!!! yahoo is for them and not us come on u can see that now ……where are the real people in chatrooms???????????????

*** Room entry to ‘Married But Looking:30::1600827988′ failed because of some unknown reason. (err: -3)
*** sent request to join room Married But Looking:30
*** Room entry to ‘Married But Looking:30::1600827988′ failed because of some unknown reason. (err: -3)
*** sent request to join room Married But Looking:33
*** Room entry to ‘Married But Looking:33::1600827988′ failed because of some unknown reason. (err: -3)
*** sent request to join room Married But Looking:33
*** Room entry to ‘Married But Looking:33::1600827988′ failed because of some unknown reason. (err: -3)
*** sent request to join room Married But Looking:36
*** Room entry to ‘Married But Looking:36::1600827988′ failed because of some unknown reason. (err: -3)
*** sent request to join room Married But Looking:36
*** Room entry to ‘Married But Looking:36::1600827988′ failed because of some unknown reason. (err: -3)
*** sent request to join room Married But Looking:36
*** Room entry to ‘Married But Looking:36::1600827988′ failed because of some unknown reason. (err: -3)
*** sent request to join room Married But Looking:37
*** Room entry to ‘Married But Looking:37::1600827988′ failed because of some unknown reason. (err: -3)
*** sent request to join room Married But Looking:37
*** Room entry to ‘Married But Looking:37::1600827988′ failed because of some unknown reason. (err: -3)
*** sent request to join room Married But Looking:37
*** Room entry to ‘Married But Looking:37::1600827988′ failed because of some unknown reason. (err: -3)
*** sent request to join room Married But Looking:37
*** Room entry to ‘Married But Looking:37::1600827988′ failed because of some unknown reason. (err: -3)
*** sent request to join room Married But Looking:37
*** Room entry to ‘Married But Looking:37::1600827988′ failed because of some unknown reason. (err: -3)
*** sent request to join room Married But Looking:37
*** Room entry to ‘Married But Looking:37::1600827988′ failed because of some unknown reason. (err: -3)
*** sent request to join room Married But Looking:33
*** Room entry to ‘Married But Looking:33::1600827988′ failed because of some unknown reason. (err: -3)
*** sent request to join room Married But Looking:33
*** Room entry to ‘Married But Looking:33::1600827988′ failed because of some unknown reason. (err: -3)
*** sent request to join room Married But Looking:33
*** Room entry to ‘Married But Looking:33::1600827988′ failed because of some unknown reason. (err: -3)

Comment by yahoostinks — August 21, 2007 #
Sarah, what about the “Chat Error” bug that happens at times when typing in chats, and the seeing text from several rooms issue, and the getting stuck in rooms issue… are included in your bug lists?

Comment by Venom — August 21, 2007 #
darkstar no ur just someone with no life and cant myob yahoo hasnt been up and if u will go back to suffering maybe u shouldnt be in a chat room no one asked u to be here u choose that if u dont like what people say oh get over over it and get a life ..this is one reason im leaving yahooa nd moving on to better chats cya yahoo bye Sarah Bacon you stink as a manager and should be fired i bet me and many others have moved on we waited to long paltalk is up and running bye bye

Comment by goingtopaltalk — August 21, 2007 #
yahoo set out to fix a problem and the result is that you can not get into a room,or if you do the room is full of bots.Forget about not being able to get into a specific room,hell i would settle for that.Taking away the user rooms because of pedophiles makes no sense either,who did it hurt?. i’m sure there are still creeps around whether we name the rooms or yahoo does.Lots of double talk and still nothing is done.

Comment by bill — August 21, 2007 #
goingtopaltalk nice rambling sentence. you need to go to paltalk, and school.

damn yahoostinks, married but looking? you might want to look into the divorce rooms instead.

Comment by darkstar — August 21, 2007 #
Umm.. Did Sarah not just get done saying these problems were unexpected? I’m sure they’re on it.

Also, that log looks like it’s from YahELite, which is third party. Yahoo has no reason to support third party clients. It’s best to keep talk on the blog free from (third party) client specific things.

Comment by Infinite Luta — August 21, 2007 #
i have tried messenger even updated to the new messenger still nothing so whats ur point i dont care what client i use if messenger was any good no one would need a client now would they . this has been going on for months …and dark we r a cpl we go in the rooms together maybe like they said u need a life…….and sarah did say they were unexpected well thats fine if this hasnt been going on for months . since may in fact so how long does something unexpected take to fix…….

Comment by yahoostinks — August 21, 2007 #
But, they have stated over and over that they are working on it. Did you just ignore what Sarah said? Looks like it to me with your assumptions.

When chat rooms are fixed and we’re in our favorite chats again, you can be left out if you want. We just want the chats back, because they’re enjoyable to us.

I like to thank Sarah for this update, which is very positive in my opinion and is in a step in the right direction.

I’d like to say to anyone who thinks about posting to complain, actually read what Sarah said, and think before you speak. I think it’d easily cut down on the hostility here, and allow them to get things fixed.

Again, thank you Sarah and Yahoo for the updates, and thanks for showing you guys care.

Comment by Venom — August 21, 2007 #
The reason third party clients are being used is because of the troubles of logging in using Yahoo. Plus, the third party clients are Ad-free and come with additional tools that Yahoo doesn’t provide. The point of the log is that the chatter couldn’t get into the chat room. Would it really matter if they were actually using Yahoo instead of a third party client?

Comment by eparico1972 — August 21, 2007 #
Keep up the good work! Delete posts all you want. If people want to vent they can create their own blog.

I’m sure meeting with online friends is very important but ya know there’s always other chat servers and email. Remember life before chat? Maybe I’m showing my age here, but seriously, if chat going down has such an impact on your life, maybe it’s time to develop an alternative hobby. Watch some TV, go out on a date with a friend, watch a movie. If you’re tied down to the internet, check out youtube or kontraband. If you need chat so badly, sign up with paltalk or download mIRC.

…and if you still feel a need to vent about Yahoo! why not demand a refund

Comment by interested user — August 21, 2007 #
infinite luta is right, but that is the reason that you got bots in the first place and booting, etc. in the chat rooms, because non messenger type rogue programs can connect to the chat, and that’s how all of this mess got started. they should not support 3rd party programs or connections by them to their chat and messenger servers, it makes no sense (?). i fear that if these 3rd party programs and how they connect to yahoo is not dealt with as well, then all the fixes may be all for not. but i knew they had multi stage plan to address the issues and its good they are continuing to work on it and thanks for updating about it.

Comment by ban_yaheliete — August 21, 2007 #
The reason third party clients are being used is because of the troubles of logging in using Yahoo. Plus, the third party clients are Ad-free and come with additional tools that Yahoo doesn’t provide. The point of the log is that the chatter couldn’t get into the chat room. Would it really matter if they were actually using Yahoo instead of a third party client?

YES it does matter. that is how you got bots and booting in the first place. non messenger programs are allowed to connect and cause problems. and you just said the most important reason, they have no interest in support them because there is no ads at all. And yahoo can easily add those same features into msgr or allow it to be customized with the new plugsins.

Comment by ban_yaheliete — August 21, 2007 #
Well, third party clients from connecting can actually be done away with.

Booters can be addressed by setting up the server to disconnect the sender, not the receiver of packet floods/PM floods/invite floods/etc, and that would basically fix booting forever.

Bots can be dealt with my dropping the YMSG protocols below YMSG14 or YMSG15, and changing how users log in (authenticated).

Voice laggers can be addressed if fixes are implemented into yacscom.dll (which is the source of voice lagging).

But yea, one step at a time.

Comment by Venom — August 21, 2007 #
OK thanks for the news, but how long do you think this is gonna take to sort out the kinks days week.

Comment by Mark — August 21, 2007 #
Thanks for the update, please try to keep us updated more often

Comment by candy — August 21, 2007 #
I know it not your fault sarah you are just passing on the information but how long before we can expect things to imporve days weeks.
Lets get back to making chat great and fun and laugh like it used to be
PLEASSSSSSSSSSSE

Comment by Mark — August 21, 2007 #
All the kinks will be worked out in 15 hours starting from the last time you read this post.

Comment by interested user — August 21, 2007 #
I’ve been doing this a while like most people. What I have difficulty understanding is why when something is supposedly being “fixed” it comes out worse than it was. If home builders did this…we’d be back living in caves. Please keep at it…a lot of us who are not so technical savy enjoy this service.

Comment by pierfisher01 — August 21, 2007 #
all i gotta say is “3rd party chat clients” are crap! they don’t allow you to be able to get into chat rooms any better then regular messenger…in fact the chat services like “yazak” are useless ..they just temp. chat bann because they keep on trying to log you into a room not stop! ..Messenger works fine..so people use it..you may not be able to get into the room you want right NOW..but they are working on it..and in the mean time you can meet new people along the way.

Comment by justin — August 21, 2007 #
Here is an positive note from someone who appreciates your efforts.

You folks HAVE been working.

The behaviour of the alphacs servers is encouraging.

Personally i hope you enable in-stream CAPCHA
when changing roomspaces.

Best Wishes, we want our Yahoo back!

Comment by DeepThawt — August 21, 2007 #
you say read what sarah wrote?…….please do tell? what exactly did she say?…….”they are working on it”…..we are having unexpected problems,we have improved the speed and performance of chat……………..”what chat” you cant get in a room……..so what sarah is saying,correct me if i am wrong is they have improved the speed of not being able to get into a room? sarah claim’s this has unleashed “other bugs”……lmao…..i guess instead of typing in a chat room i’ll come here and be entertained bye this ridiculous tete e tete.

Comment by bill — August 21, 2007 #
well ty for the update but u still gave no info like the other updates lmao u say u are working on it but u never say how long it will take this has been going on for sometime now so seems ur just pacifying us .also Infinite Luta why when u click ur name does ytunnel pro come up lmao u talk about people using clients and u send that with ur name lmao thats like calling the kettle black ytunnel pro isnt from yahoo lmao so why u using it its like a 3rd party client? just to refresh her comments “Also, that log looks like it’s from YahELite, which is third party. Yahoo has no reason to support third party clients. It’s best to keep talk on the blog free from (third party) client specific things.

Comment by Infinite Luta — August 21, 2007 #”"”

Comment by mychattingtimeisnt — August 21, 2007 #
Thank you for the update, Sarah.

Comment by Missy — August 21, 2007 #
mychattingtimeisnt, Y!Tunnel isn’t a client. It’s an application layer gateway that goes with Yahoo! Messenger itself.

Comment by Venom — August 21, 2007 #
its not by yahoo venom u pay for it lmao so again its like a chat client and not yahoo

Comment by mychattingtimeisnt — August 21, 2007 #
Why not (temporarely) block the ip addresses used by spam bots similar to the way a ban on IRC servers work? Even when the IP is used by a victim of a spambot, so what? Maybe it will make them think and take his responsability over his machine to remove the trojans or whatsoever they are infected with. It’s shamefull to see that spam bots take over more and more.

Comment by Mike — August 21, 2007 #
mychattingtimeisnt, wrong. Y!Tunnel and YTK are NOT considered clients, because they DEPEND on Yahoo! Messenger itself.

They’re chat companions, not chat clients.

Comment by Venom — August 21, 2007 #
venom its still not yahoo get over it its not supported by yahoo lmao
u seem to want to be right and ur not

Comment by mychattingtimeisnt — August 21, 2007 #
Umm, it adds upon/improves Yahoo! Messenger’s features. Gee, thanks to your trolling, you just went off topic and ruined the mood. Gee, thanks.

Moving on, I’m glad these issues will be fixed. Again, thank you Yahoo for this good news. =)

Comment by Venom — August 21, 2007 #
Once again…two idiots with nothing to do arguing over clients..tsk tsk…

Comment by candy — August 21, 2007 #
hell i dont need yahoo chat back this is more entertaining

Comment by bill — August 21, 2007 #
Y!TunnelPro is not a chat client; It’s a companion program for Yahoo! Messenger. I link to it because I am part of their support staff. It may be a third party, but it’s only an unofficial add-on to Yahoo’s official client, not a client on it’s own. I won’t be going in the topic anymore as I don’t wish to start an argument over it.

At this point I honestly think we should be encouraging Yahoo! rather than bashing them. They know the problems are there. They want them fixed as much as we do. Complaining even more won’t do anything but make the situation even more negative.

Comment by Infinite Luta — August 21, 2007 #
I agree with Luta 100%.

Go Yahoo Go!

Comment by Venom — August 21, 2007 #
yahoo needs to be virtually beat upon the head and shoulders for all the pain it has caused those that have no life and live vicariously thru them.

Comment by bill — August 21, 2007 #
Bill, that’s no way to solve problems. Violence and war doesn’t solve anything. I think that Sarah took the time to post to us about the issues and give us an update is a very good thing, and I congratulate her and Yahoo for giving up some hope (when we needed it most).

Comment by Venom — August 21, 2007 #
Unexpectedly release bugs? What kind of programmers do you have working for you that u don’t place fixes and new programs in a test environment this is total crap too bad too you are upsetting people and they are leaving yahoo….not good… sales go down this way…. your programming team should be fired in my book…..this is 101 programming for gods sakes…..but it looks like yahoo has taught their programmers PRGRAMMING FOR DUMMIES…,oh yea and has yahoo heard of Backup tapes

Comment by ibgrinchiest — August 21, 2007 #
Sarah, first of all..I feel sorry for you being the one the whimps at Yahoo! toss out here for us to devour

My input:

1: just shut it down until it is fixed right.. quit trying to fix it with hundreds (if not thousands) of users still trying to log on.. better to just announce it is closed than to continue making people more and more irritated. Do you hear laughter? I think it’s Google.. I applauded you for standing up to them (unlike the msn people), but at this rate you will win the battle for them yourself by people switching their loyalty to other sites. No users, no revenue. .

2: The bots? I find it unlikely you will ever do anything about that..it has been a problem growing and growing for years to where now there is more bots than real humans.

Which reminds me, it was sad Yahoo! took the profile pics away from normal people,,when I noticed a bot blatantly posting genitalia in a profile without even requiring the adult log in feature.

Yahoo! has been around a long, long time, a true web pioneer. Don’t let it turn into some typical sleaze porn site.

Comment by radstorm — August 21, 2007 #
well whatever anyone here says yahell screwed up and they are working on it but again how long does it take to fix this has been going on and on for months .. why should we encourage them to fix what they messed up in the first place ……… venom u seem to also need a life sarah hasnt givne u any hope she is doing her job … she has given no more info that we already know yahoo doesnt work what hope did u get from that they are working on it well havent they been working on it??????????? so what hope did u get out of it

Comment by tiredchatter — August 21, 2007 #
sarah doesnt even exists…lmao……..she is a Yahoo bot.And this is not violence this is me venting thru the only available chat that works………..seems yahoo has developed “Fast bugs”

Comment by bill — August 21, 2007 #
Keep up the good work, and thanks for the update!

The new server software is definitely faster, and the test servers (when available) show good progress.

Go Yahoo!

Comment by DeepThawt — August 21, 2007 #
Have any of the Chat Developers Considered Implementing Similar Code to what the Third Party Chat Clients Use? Since Yahoo own Messenger and Chat it Shouldn’t be hard to use similar code to what yazaak, ymlite or whatever use for combatting bootcode, bots and other issues.

I understand intellectual property rights stuff, but Chat and Messenger are Free to Public use so Technically although paid for through advertisers has a level of Opensource to it.

With all the fancy chat clients out there I personally Still prefer Messenger and Just Beef up my Firewall and Proxies.

Comment by Pants — August 21, 2007 #
I agree radstorm, Yahoo should just shut down til it’s fixed!

Comment by candy — August 21, 2007 #
i agree rad long time yahoo user here and the profile pics stink why did they need to take them away . ever try paltalk all it is on there is a bunch of horny people no one chats u click on a cam all u get is some guy with his thing hanging out or a woman with her boobs showing . i hope yahoo doesnt go that way . yahoo needs to go back to the days of user rooms yahoo was fun way back when…..

Comment by tiredchatter — August 21, 2007 #
tiredchatter, yes, there is hope being she posted an entry keeping us updated on the current issues, and confirming a couple things like room joining problems were actual bugs, and not intended features.

Just by posting they are having problems, and are working on fixing them in a timely manner shows to me that they do care, and that it will take time.

Comment by Venom — August 21, 2007 #
Yahoo is free, Quit crying people. let them fix the problem!

Comment by LMFAO — August 21, 2007 #
hell i would rather pay then have a “free” chat that is no good

Comment by bill — August 21, 2007 #
lucky thing yahoo is free who would pay for this????? i dont want to talk to bots i want to chat with people ..if this was a paid chat yahoo would be broke ……

Comment by tiredchatter — August 21, 2007 #
Yahoo! Messenger is ad supported. Sure, it’s free, but they do get revenue for chats (and Y!M in general) via advertising.

Comment by Venom — August 21, 2007 #
you just got iggied venom u are annoying

Comment by tiredchatter — August 21, 2007 #
I found a solution to all of the Yahoo chat rooms.
Paltalk and forums.

I will wait 6 months and then re-install Yahoo Messenger and check out the chat rooms see what condition they will in by them.
I have little faith so I’m expecting in 6 months to permanently uninstall messenger and delete my id, but we will see.

Comment by KBSoftware — August 21, 2007 #
Just telling you how it is. You’re entitled to have your own opinions, as am I.

Comment by Venom — August 21, 2007 #
I don’t leave my house much. For the past 10 years I have spent my whole life chatting online so I reckon I’m the most unhappy chatter at the moment!

Comment by Zarabyte — August 21, 2007 #
thank you sara for the update, i am a terminal chat junkie and in dire need of a fix *grin*

Comment by tesserak — August 21, 2007 #
zarabyte sorry well if u find another chat place let me know please cuz i agree with kbs yahoo wont be up anytime soon if at all … they took away the user rooms and yahoo went downhill ever since . this must be the end of yahoo chat …….

Comment by tiredchatter — August 21, 2007 #
of course they care,,well most I assume…it would not be in their best financial interests to not care. I really had a lot of high hope when one of the original founders (Jerry Yang) came back and took the ceo helm again, wow am I disappointed now

When I first opened a browser back in the early 90s, I saw 2 that stood out, Yahoo!, and Excite.. back then they were the 2 big guys in search engines.Tthat’s when I became loyal to Yahoo! and I still will in the category, and their news site.. but with chat now..hmm.. I just don’t know

Comment by radstorm — August 21, 2007 #
opinions………you know what they are like dont you? i guess all and all we here are a sad lot whose lives are so uneventful we need to complain about a chat service that isnt working.GOD……….what have i become a slave to ? As I open another beer i reflect on just how sad this all is.

Comment by bill — August 21, 2007 #
is there anyway i can play music in here?……if so i’m cool with this being my new room.

Comment by bill — August 21, 2007 #
well cheers, bill.. clink!.. hey maybe we should just use this blog to chat..it seems to work great

Comment by radstorm — August 21, 2007 #
Venom, you are a island of sanity in a ocean of misconceptions. I thank Sarah for her update although I wish I heard this last Friday or Saturday. They know that the chat room community is not happy, they are working on solving it and that’s all we can ask for the vast sum of money that we all pay for Yahoo chat room access.

Comment by ReeBop — August 21, 2007 #
\:D/

Comment by radstorm — August 21, 2007 #
Sarah - asl ?

Comment by leigh — August 21, 2007 #
:)) bill. by the way I vote for Susan Decker as next CEO..she’s a cu tie

Comment by radstorm — August 21, 2007 #
If Yahoo didn’t care, why would Sarah waste her time typing up a blog entry here telling us what’s happening? Explain that.

They care, and trying to fix issues like that isn’t easy at all. Me, I still have faith that Yahoo will come through for us in the end.

Comment by Venom — August 21, 2007 #
All I can say is thank you. Everything in life has unexpected problems, but when you at least let people know you’re working on it, it makes the waiting so much eaiser.

I for one appreciate your updates more then anything else. And once again I’m impressed at the way this blog has updated us as to what’s going on.

Comment by Netti — August 21, 2007 #
Bet Sarah is having a chuckle right now at our behavior..hehe

Comment by radstorm — August 21, 2007 #
Being an IT pro, I think they do care or this blog would not even exist. I remember times when Yahoo chat rooms first started (the old iChat software/server system years ago anyone?) had trouble and users had nothing to go on but speculation. Keep in mind, the p0rn bot war will really never end as bot software creators will always find a way to get around most any blocks that the White Hats put up. The trick will be to keep plugging away until they get tired and target something like MySpace’s new IM service or Twitter. It will get better tiredchatter, it is just a matter of patience. This is really nothing compared to the DOS EFNet wars of years ago and I’m sure everything will work out for the most part.

Comment by ReeBop — August 21, 2007 #
Hey better for us to laugh about it, than bitch and complain. We already know that is a waste of time

Comment by radstorm — August 21, 2007 #
I’m not a bot! I’m a hu-man bee-ing!

BTW I object to this post for being off topic and demand that it be deleted immediately!

Comment by interested user — August 21, 2007 #
Thank you Sarah.. That’s all that we aks is a current update. Hopefully the other bugs will work itself out. I’m sure it’s been no picnic for you either.

Comment by LaLa — August 21, 2007 #
Sorry, ReeBop, Yahoo! isn’t hiring right now

Comment by radstorm — August 21, 2007 #
ok, I’m gone before the booters get here

Comment by radstorm — August 21, 2007 #
:))A lot of chatters can’t enter into a chat room…their lives is all for chatting, chatting, chatting & just chatting all the time. They can’t sleep if they can’t chat…. what a stupid chatters.

Comment by WhoCares — August 21, 2007 #
Sarah, may I sugest a way to improve the bots, and all the flame wars in the chat rooms? have mods. now these can eirther be yahoo people, or better yet, by us. Ditch the yahoo rooms,and have user rooms. and open up cattagorys. inside each catagory people can join a room or even create their own. with a control pannel. if someone is causing trouble they can bouce them out of the room. bouncing is like suspending them, the suspenstion can last any where from 24-72 hours. or ban them complelty. they can easy remove them from the ban list, and everything. they can have a choice of voice and/or webcam options in the room. if they the admin disables voice, then everyone will be forced to type. same with webcam. no webcam requests/views. Once the admin logs out. the chat windows of all will go off saying admin has closed this chat. the room will only be open if the admin is loged in and has opend their room. If we have admins who are abusing their power, we can easy report the problem to yahoo and then you guys can deal with it, such as disabling their yahoo account or prevent them to log in to yahoo chat.

this will hopefully make the chat room experance more wonderfull. If you have any questions, fell free to e-mail me. Also anyone reading this blog if you got questions and/or comements fell free to ask here in the blog.This idea may just as well be a completly new peace of software that may have to be bulit from the ground up, but I say its worth it. Who knows? May be by yahoo messenger 10 (the one after the new vista one) you might be able to add a yahoo chat client right in to messenger, and have all the features I stated above in there.

Comment by Chris — August 21, 2007 #
I’m not hiring either

Comment by ReeBop — August 21, 2007 #
Sarah…we just want to be able to go to the specific chat room that we choose. (nothing random) We want to be able to have friendly conversations whether they are directly related to the specific lobby or not. (like friends do in the course of normal conversation…we stray.) We want less intrusive bots and pms. Period. We want ease of access. Ease of usage. This new ‘thing’ of being placed in the first available chat room is NOT a good idea. And we don’t like having our conversations CENSORED because we are not staying ‘on subject’. (thats for gradeschoolers and most of us are ADULTS. Please, please….if its not broken–don’t fix it! Most of us feel that the decisions regarding these changes are being made by a few elite and unknown people and do NOT address the real problems that have being going on with the chat rooms.

Comment by Kat — August 21, 2007 #
SERIOUSLY!!! You all need to quit complaining. We ask for updates on the status of Yahoo! Messenger, and that’s what we GOT. They are still in the process of FIXING things! Settle down and fund something else to do for a while!

Thanks Sarah, for the update.

Comment by Parry Hotter — August 21, 2007 #
Interesting conversation with a Market Analyst today. They have discoverd yahoo chat issues and how they impact on Yahoo as a Name Brand.

In my case I noticed a while back that when chat had brain farts, the main yahoo site was offline as well. Yahoo has issues deeper than chat but chat with all the noise is starting to cause many mainstream folks to take a long hard look at Yahoo.

Comment by Harvey — August 21, 2007 #
havent seen any more posts from hot shot adam. did yahoo have him arrested for his out of mind threat. below is the portion of his post i enjoyed the most lmfao.

It wasn’t wise to delete some of our posts you know. My JOB is to rip your protocols apart like beef through a grinder, programming around your chat services. Right now I possess SEVERAL resource exhaustion denial-of-service attacks that can and will cripple your Yahoo! Messenger chat client instantly. Now, before you delete this post too, I’m offering to HELP here. You can listen to me for a second (as painful as it is). I am willing to forward ALL of my information pertaining to these attacks and even some spam filtering rules to you at Yahoo! Inc. to much IMPROVE your now dying chat service.

Comment by hmmm — August 21, 2007 #
lol adam needs hel[

Comment by lol — August 21, 2007 #
Unlike you who are dwelling on something taken out of context, he was actually offering his help.

I’d like to see you offer your help and time to help fix issues. Yea, I thought not.

Seriously guys, we really should encourage Yahoo and the engineers who work on Yahoo! Messenger and chat. They really need it, and it make help get things done faster.

I’m rooting for you guys.

Comment by Venom — August 21, 2007 #
Sarah, thanks for update

Comment by jay — August 21, 2007 #
mods in yahoo would me opression man forget it — ppls like me who like to voice their opinion get shafted!!!! that idea is not a good one chris… i was on talkcity awhile back and everyroom has an owner and they even read ya pms so for saying what ya want in there …. hmmm they bounce ya even if they dont like ya name power tripping on the net

Comment by Yahoon — August 21, 2007 #
Infinite Luta is a old Ymlite hag so dont take any notice of her, shes trying to suck up to craig

Comment by Honest Man — August 21, 2007 #
Honest Man, I think you have ALL of your information wrong there.

Comment by Venom — August 21, 2007 #
Is anybody else getting the error message “Communication Problem” when trying to log into chat rooms?

Comment by Ron — August 21, 2007 #
Regarding Pal talk two things

1.) Its like being in school raising your hand to speak red dotted by the nazi’s who controlled the rooms.

And 2.) Pal talk has virus/worms init that will funk up your harddrive over time. Somepeople catch it right away other puters it lays dormant for months nay years until it attacks then bamm noharddrive

Comment by felix — August 21, 2007 #
Ron, this is a known Yahoo! Messenger issue. Hopefully iy gets addressed soon.

Comment by Venom — August 21, 2007 #
Venom, you need to keep tighter reigns on your pet, “Adam.”

He not only hinted at a threat of messenger user denial of service (taken out of context or not) but reminded us all of his threat to make Yahoo! chat protocol exploits public unless they met his deadline. And, all this on a Sudoku message thread…

Offering help is one thing. Being Adam is something else entirely. He is probably a great guy in-person and I’m sure we’d get along fabulously…

However, as was pointed out a number of times in various ways, textbooks are full of all the information that Yahoo! needs to make chat work, and make it work as everyone wants and expects. I’m more than certain that if they wanted anyone in-particular’s help they would know how to contact them and make the request. I’m just as sure that they know there’s plenty of talent on the net they could tap into and all they’d have to do is open an official “Yahoo! Chat Technical” forum, make certain parts of their code opensource-type, and let the public critique it and suggest modifications.

The fact that they don’t do these things suggests that they have no interest in acquiring “help” from outside their ranks for whatever reason. I may be a rocket scientist, but I think my conclusion should be obvious to anyone with a rational mind.

Comment by interested user — August 21, 2007 #
“Infinite Luta is a old Ymlite hag so dont take any notice of her, shes trying to suck up to craig”

Not quite. I’m an 18 year old male, and unless you could me posting a total of 2 times on the Y!mLite forum, I’m in no way connected to it.

If you’re wanting to insult me, here isn’t the place. If you have that much of a need to insult me, you can find somewhere else to do so. This blog doesn’t need to be filled full of trolls insulting both Yahoo and other users.

Once again, thanks for the update Sarah. It’s highly appreciated and just what a lot of us needed to hear.

Comment by Infinite Luta — August 21, 2007 #
lol felix! how many years does it take for paltalk to “bam no hard drive?”

Comment by interested user — August 21, 2007 #
All I have to say is that I have been chatting now for almost 3 years. The last two has been near impossible to chat. There has been major lags, no voice available at times in the room and my conference never works for my mesenger. Typing sometimes is not available for people to see, so even if u had no mic, u still cant chat. I know Yahoo is a being company and some maintence work has been done to correct some things.. but DAMN how long does it take?? Will it ever be corrected completely?? Chat is a time, for me, to relax and forget about the”REAL WORLD” for a while, with friends. And the recent problem(not getting into the room YOU choose to go into) I think this is absolutely messed up!!!! IF I WANTED ROOM P23 , DONT YOU THINK I WOULD HAD CHOSE ROOM P23???

Comment by MASON — August 21, 2007 #
Wow, thanks Sarah for an update. Its good to see a list of things yahoo acknowledges and are working on. I think this is our biggest frustration…not getting any type of answers or updates, or info from yahoo.

…now if you could give us a high level guesstimate of a timeline when these issues might be resloved??? Thx

Comment by dilbert36 — August 21, 2007 #
I really hope you all can fix the bot problem. And the people with the room flooding bots, that boot me from the server. I think it was a huge mistake to get rid of the java servers. They were pretty much boot proof.

Comment by AR — August 21, 2007 #
“…now if you could give us a high level guesstimate of a timeline when these issues might be resloved??? Thx”

How does anytime between tonight and next year at this time sound?

Comment by interested user — August 21, 2007 #
well Infinite Luta, practice what you preach, and stop mentioning 3rd party chat clients.

Comment by Honest Man — August 21, 2007 #
Thanks for message but when, WHEN is this gonna happen fed up talking to bots.

Comment by Mark — August 21, 2007 #
Umm.. Did Sarah not just get done saying these problems were unexpected? I’m sure they’re on it.

Also, that log looks like it’s from YahELite, which is third party. Yahoo has no reason to support third party clients. It’s best to keep talk on the blog free from (third party) client specific things.

Comment by Infinite Luta — August 21, 2007 #
That is Your post is it not^^^^^^^^^^^^ Seems your the one mentioning 3rd party clients..

Comment by Honest Man — August 21, 2007 #
All the rooms are botted out and if you do see a human you are lucky if you can get one line of text out and get it seen.
WHen you gonna improve today next week month year

Comment by Mark — August 21, 2007 #
ALL THE CHATROOMS IN FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY AND OTHER EUROPEAN COUTRIES HAVE DISAPPEARED… WILL BE EVER RESTORED??
MANY PEOPLE ARE WORRIED!!! Please tell us… thanks

Comment by ItalyBoy — August 21, 2007 #
Good thing this is a free chat service or I could have something to complain about.
It is stunning that these major issues were not caught during beta testing. Reverse DNS in given IP ranges reveal many more chat servers than just the publicly available ones. The names of some even imply testing servers. So it’s apparent yahoo has plenty of servers available for testing. At my workplace people have been fired for such oversights. I wonder what the companies who pay to have their advertisements in yahoo messenger have to say about it.

Comment by Zeus — August 21, 2007 #
At least we know it’s coming. Knowing something is better than nothing.

Why are you guys hostile to each other and at Yahoo here? Sarah graced us with some much needed news, and you guys turn it into a flame war with each other, snipping at every little comment another person makes (sure, some of the snipping is valid, since some comments here are purely outrageous).

Come on guys, stop acting childish and try to support Yahoo over this hard time. Patience is a virtue.

Comment by Venom — August 21, 2007 #
I wonder if we will be deleted here,,, simple the bots are the problem… I think yahell oops I mean yahoo..need to keep working on booting the bots thru what ever magic the create… but also like some say here,,,, have the members help,,,

by one,,,have room monitor ir liek some one said give back rooms were the creater has the right to boot the bots and ban them. I am sure you cn find many who would gladly give there time to help the rooms.

Two make it a paid service…yeah I said paid,,,, if it got rid of the bots I would pay for it…

plug away……..folks………………..

also what with the chat error, communication problems messages coming up now?…..

and please fix chat,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Comment by den — August 21, 2007 #
I am not going to complain like I have been and being sarcastic. At least Sarah was kind enough to at least give us an update about the issues with chat they are working on. This is better than not being told anything at all. Sure we can complain it too Sarah two weeks to give us an update but hey! better than no updates about what is going at all. As for you people who are bashing 3rd party chat clients like Yahelite and Yazak, well, the reason some of us are using them is because they have filters so it is easier to auto ignore bots and clones and people you really don’t want to talk to. Plus, like Yahelite, has more smilies than Yahoo has. I glad I don’t get the ads but that wasn’t the main reason I have been using 3rd party chat clients…been using them because they thought of the things that makes chat nice that Yahoo should have thought of. The other reason I use them is because of the knock feature which permits trying to enter a room until space becomes open. I would use Yahoo over them if Yahoo would have similar features on them, especially the auto ignore and wild card ignore. I was not crazy about having to ignore bots and that in Yahoo one at a time and next time you logged back into a room you had to ignore the same bots and that again. If Yahoo doesn’t want us using 3rd Party Chat Clients then Yahoo should be developing features like Yahelite and Yazak has so we would not be tempted to use 3rd party chat clients.

Comment by John — August 21, 2007 #
Yes, I do see progress being made..
and remember folks its rather like trying
to rebuild an airplane while in flight.

John

Comment by John — August 21, 2007 #
What do you expect from people who have had Yahoo 360 in ”beta” for 2 years now.
Make NO mistake, they are allowing bots, and extra ”new” rooms to be filled with them, so they can show advertisers they are populated.
Advertisers are their customers, not the chatters.
Follow the money

Comment by Platonic Hate — August 21, 2007 #
Sarah… REGRESSION TESTING .. ever heard of it? Go back to the last functional executable. Let Messenger users have some relief. Then thoroughly test before implementation of any new version. Come ON !!!

Comment by Charlie — August 21, 2007 #
I thank Sarah for finally giving us all an update on the current issues. But we will have to just sit tight and wait and see if the yahoo bods can finally sort this very annoying mess out.

Comment by what a crock — August 21, 2007 #
how about italian rooms?

Comment by ellyen2001 — August 21, 2007 #
Let them work, they have minimal staff and they’re doing a hard job! u try inserting new servers and reconfiguring lines of code to sort the probs! If ur all so smart sign up for a job at yahoo and apply for the chat rooms

Comment by xenon — August 21, 2007 #
WE WANT THE ITALIAN ROOMS AGAIN…..
AND FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Comment by francesco — August 21, 2007 #
Thanks for the straight talk. More of this type of information, please - it’s greatly appreciated.

Good luck with the fixes.

Comment by Long Time Chatter — August 21, 2007 #
francesco, spamming the same message over and over won’t get anything done.

Comment by Venom — August 21, 2007 #
I can’t believe the kind of crybabies we have become. So yahoo chat is not working the way we like it….IT IS NOT THE END OF THE WORLD!. Go and talk to your neighbor while it gets fixed; (there are people outside of the PC you know?) and if it doesn’t oh well, it was good while it lasted; get a life.
Oh and I forgot….the service we all complaining about,,,,, IT’S FREE!!! What right do we have to stomp our feet… we are not paying for the service…. The air we breathe is the only thing we get for free nowadays and it is all messed up too!
Sarah, thanks for your efforts and those of your team.

Comment by Mike — August 21, 2007 #
i would just like the ability, to join my old room again and have yahoo back the way it once was

Comment by an unhappy chatter — August 21, 2007 #
now that i cant chat in a decent chat room, it seems i have become a member of the chat blog lol

Comment by an unhappy chatter — August 21, 2007 #
Thank you for the update Sarah. I’m sure that things will be improving and settling down for us all very soon.

Comment by Rosie — August 21, 2007 #
WHEN WILL THE CHATTS BE UP AND RUNNING.AND WHATS BEING DONE ABOUT THE PORN BOTS AND THE BOOTER PROGRAMS.IM TIRED OF GETTING BOOTED.AND WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE CHATT ROOMS AND MESSENGER.IS IT STILL GOING TO BE FREE OR NOT AND WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE CHATT CLIENTS.

Comment by TIM — August 21, 2007 #
If Yahoo banned 3rd party sources, what are us, Mac users, supposed to do? I strongly feel Yahoo is against supporting mac users. First they took away java chat. That killed that mac compatible Yahoo online games. Then they banned 3rd party chat clients, completely disconnecting Mac users from Yahoo.

They are making it very apparent they don’t need us.

If they cant justify why they are not making a substantial profit from the chat rooms, maybe they should ask themselves, “Perhaps more exposure to yahoo chat rooms will increase our annual chat room income from ads if we made a Mac compatible Yahoo Chat room Client”

Woah! ROCKET SCIENCE aint it?

Comment by Dexter Morgan — August 21, 2007 #
I am still amazed as to why anyone would choose a Mac over a IBM type pc.

Comment by dont wanna say — August 21, 2007 #
lmao comments on clients from those that know nothing about them. Fear is bred by ignorance. Third party clients are not the problem with yahoo. Authors like Craig and Deep (sorry to put you together there) and even zac have written what they have in response the the inadequecy of yahoo messenger to protect chatters.

Yes Sarah, thank you for the update, we were beating each other up in the other blog turning it into a a quasi chat room.

BTW, Sarah? ASL?

Comment by pops — August 21, 2007 #
What you people are failing to understand is that Yahoo Chat is not a feature/program that is owed to any of us! This is just a free feature that Yahoo offers so we can meet & connect with friends but you people make it sound like it’s a paid product and the people at Yahoo should bow to your every commands.

Why not just sit back, shut up and post legit comments with issues rather than bitch & whine about them as if you are the gate keepers of Yahoo and this is all you have to live for. This is just chat kids and should NOT be made a life of and depended on for the day to go by. Try going outside for once and doing something productive rather than coming on here and bitching like it’s actually going to make Yahoo work faster. When they get it fixed then it will be fixed…..simple!

Comment by SatanSaves — August 21, 2007 #
Thanks for the update….but in all due respect to yur chatroom users it would probably be a good choice here to shut the rooms down completely until your team gets the bugs out of the new servers rather than frustrate them every day with the current issues. It would be a good move on Yahoo’s part and also show your chat users that you are sincere in sayin that these issues are a priority and will be fixed in the near future, otherwise we the chat-users will take this as another example of a false hope….c’mon team pull the cord until this issue is fixed show us that yes this is a priority…its the only way yur users will still have faith in yu

Comment by Ervie — August 21, 2007 #
lol satansaves…like you ..sitting OUTSIDE with your wireless wifi laptop, being PRODUTIVE, cleaning bird doo off your screen? and if WE do go outside , how much faster do you think they will actually get?

Comment by LMFAO — August 21, 2007 #
good lord people get a life

Comment by the real bill — August 21, 2007 #
Thanks for the Info.

Comment by Katt — August 21, 2007 #
i’m using yahoo mess 5.5..apart from the other obvious problems..i can no longer see what’s typed in the rooms, will that be fixed? also tried installing the latest version but it stalls at copying the whatsit.swf file and then pops an error ‘not enough space’ when i have more than 14gb of free space on that partition..tried other partitons but no go..after looking in the install path during installing..i found a tmp file _gbblah.tmp expanding to 2gb then stops and that’s when i get the error message..figured out because my file system is fat32 and naturally, the file can’t get bigger..why for the love of G-d do you need a tmp file to go more than 2gb?? i have dual os/ one of them is 98 and i’m not going to change my HD file system to install a messenger!! ..what’s going on with you people??

p.s. also tried 3rd party clients yahelite,yazak etc..but main chat window is always blank

Comment by betatester — August 21, 2007 #
hey… cahnge is good is good…but as a advid chat room user why do we have to wait until most break in to see whats going on? if it ainy broke dont fix it… yeah bots were overcomming chat,,and most used somthing to block it, people on yahoo chat make friend for life in rooms,, maybe no fix what was broke,, as my status says on meesenge.. last one out shut the lights out.. thats not yahoo,,but plz. keep filling us in on how as fix is..

Comment by kathy — August 21, 2007 #
FOR THOSE IN NEED OF A YAHOO CHAT “FIX” simply create a conference room. Post a status message to friends on your buddy list announcing you have a room. Send them an invite upon their request. Text is a bit hit and miss, but voice works using this method. I’m still using a somewhat outdated version of Messenger (6.1) and creating a conference room is working just fine for my chat buddies and I.

Thanks go to Sarah, Venom, Luta, Chet, Zak, Craig, et al for all their hard work on various Clients/Companions. I’m sure that they AND Yahaoo! will have solutions and workarounds very soon.

Meanwhile, i’m starting a conference room for you all to grumble in and take it out of here. PM me for an invite…………ASL anyone?

Comment by Yeehaw_Boots — August 21, 2007 #
well i say about the posts being removed from chat RESTATE USER ROOMS! sorry people flood to other rooms because their is no user rooms sure lets have gay,lesbian,self pleasure,bsdm,masterbation rooms but we cant have user rooms seems like those rooms are worse at attracting pedophiles sorry you wont stop pedophiles they go to any room to find little kids to play with so i say reinstate user rooms under the 18+ catagory only and have ways for people to admin the rooms…..and as far as bots go do the same thing as when you make a yahoo screen name the validation words dont block it from more then 1ip connecting somepeople like having a name on a 3rd party client and on regular messenger….would make people who have a spouse very irritated….so just put user rooms back up and just block certian words/phrases being used as a room name simple really………….

Comment by eye heart bots — August 21, 2007 #
Yahoo would not want to shut down the chat rooms while working on these problems for a few reasons. Revenue from Advertisement. Using the people that can get into chat as guinee pigs. How many programmers have access to a few hundred thousand beta testers? As for the Macintosh Messenger 3.0b2, I am sure it would have been good enough back in January to release, at least enough to satisfy us in the meantime. Word on the street is that Yahoo lost some of the best Macintosh Messenger programmers due to this type of stagnation. For us Macintosh users, Zinc 1.1.3 or better is the only native way into chat.

http://www.geocities.com/bad_bad_sloar

Comment by Sloar — August 21, 2007 #
Thanks for the updates , vague as they were . sends ciggies and a soda to “dazed” …. hang in there girl … you can find another husband on yahoo chat when they up and running again … and as for the kids … just pretend they away at School … later they will come home … maybe … and if not ya can adopt an 18 or 20 year to take their place later , who knows there may be some benefits to chat going down for ya girl ! LOL

asl / old / not much lately ( LOL ) / here in this blog watching silly rantings and vents , waiting for chat !

Have a beautiful blessed day !!

Comment by shine — August 21, 2007 #
Ok, We have been dealing with issues ever since the user rooms went down, and for the most part we have been patient. But for the past few days, ALL of the rooms are full.. with bots. Is this a bug or is this just a group of booters and script kiddies trying to make a point? I can understand having to work around problems– but not being able to get into a room for days simply because they are full of bots is getting VERY tiresome. Any fix for this in sight?

Comment by cptn belly — August 21, 2007 #
I wished the bots would disappear after the update

Comment by summerbrooks47 — August 21, 2007 #
betatester, You’re going to need to update yahoo to a more recent build, at least 7.0 and you’ll be able to see all the lovely text from the bots. I wouldn’t count on being able to use 5.5 again, guess you’ll need to pay to use Ytunnel (get a client but I didn’t say that here)

Comment by pops — August 21, 2007 #
Is there anyway that users room can be made available again under room “title” moderation of yahoo?

What about giving a member the abilty to monitor a room they created by kicking or banning for a period of time?

Pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Comment by summerbrooks47 — August 21, 2007 #
pedophiles are going to be in all yahoo rooms ,know matter what the title of the room is…give us are users rooms back pretty please

Comment by summerbrooks47 — August 21, 2007 #
excellent idea brooke, you plan on being there 24/7 to weild the hammer? yahoo user rooms were taken down because pedaphiles found them a great place to look for children. Until Yahoo themselves moderate I wouldn’t count on it. and don’t expect that from a free chat

Comment by pops — August 21, 2007 #
Ive been coming to yahoo chat for 5 years and created a good room that stayed open 24-7 for 2 years until the user rooms when down and had many friends of mine help me keep it open since I have a full-time job and cant always be at the pc. Anything is possible….And for the pedophiles they go in all the rooms no matter what the title is…as far as cost ive paid to chat and would be willing to get rid of the bots and get moderation in the rooms.ty

Comment by summerbrooks47 — August 21, 2007 #
The sooner you get rid of authors who cause trouble! the beter for Yahoo

Comment by Ban Y!mlite — August 21, 2007 #
Sarah, thank you for posting this information. I felt it was safe to assume that the chat fixes would be a process when I saw the state of things. Kudos on the speed of the servers. I’m hoping that the blocking of bots is just as fast when that is finally integrated.

On a side note, is it possible to get optional authentication and for those who choose to enroll in that, can we get some nice features that others don’t have? I know I and a couple of others are pushing authentication, but I am of the opinion it would have been the primary route to a solution of many of Yahoo!s problems.

Please push for authentication, and not just CAPTCHA, which is like having no authentication compared to other methods available.

Please (again).

Comment by RegisteredTrademark — August 21, 2007 #
lol….thanx yahoo, for this unexpected problem. In the past couple weeks, I have managed to clean my entire house, my yard, my car AND caught up with friends and family. While I do miss my chat friends, I know it will only be a matter of time before we are chatting once again, (and probably complaining). Take this “time out” as an opportunity to contact an old friend, start an exersize program, or tackle that project you’ve been putting off for months….keep busy, be productive….and before ya know it, we’ll all be back in chat with our friends !! Good luck Yahoo, and ty for the update.

Comment by Juicyfruit — August 21, 2007 #
Well hello there again everyone,
After reading that most unenlightening blog note from Sarah Bacon, Product Manager, I was totally underwhelmed. On the last page that she had posted information back on the 9th of August, she also said nothing that was enlightening. This current posting from her looks just like the standard form letter reply I received from Yahoo Messenger Help, from a woman named Arleen, that said exactly the samething “We know we have problems, we are working on them as fast as we can, but we can’t tell you when it will be fixed”. Nine days and counting, and I’d already gone to and looked around in PalTalk, what I found was less than underwhelming, people that were migrating to it from Yahoo Chat were being treated as third world refugees or worse, and it appeared the room moderators were letting them get away with it, but as soon as someone stood up for themselves the moderators tossed them out. Sure sounds like a wonderful place to go to me (NOT).

Comment by Billishere — August 21, 2007 #
Hi all and thanks Sarah for explaining this jumbled situation with the chat rooms. For the last week or so I have gotten into rooms with peoples id’s i had never seen before (were probably bots). I also got an Error message too. Did anyone else? Anyhow I sincerely hope you will be able to resolve the problems in the chat rooms. I really appreciate yahoo chat. After Excite chat went off the air permanently, I lost a lot of good chat buddies and when I found Yahoo, I was really happy to once again start up chatting and making new friends. Sarah please keep us all posted even if we have negative comments. I hope we are back up and running soon.

Comment by Fancydance1 — August 21, 2007 #
Thanks for the update on Messenger. At least I know they are aware of the problems. Whether they fix it or not…can’t complain, after all it is free.

Comment by dances_in_the_willows — August 21, 2007 #
very upset i wish that ya’ll find a fix soon ,i miss my room my friends i don’t like the botsssssss i don’t like not able to connect to my room so get with it and fix it

Comment by trina — August 21, 2007 #
Well thanks for the update on the chat and I hope you guys do switch it back to were we can get into the rooms we want soon… Wish you would of gave us a time frame but just TO know at least your wrking on it and your going to switch it back is good enouf for me…

THANKS for letting us know…

Chatter

Comment by Chatter — August 21, 2007 #
Umm.. Did Sarah not just get done saying these problems were unexpected? I’m sure they’re on it.
Also, that log looks like it’s from YahELite, which is third party. Yahoo has no reason to support third party clients. It’s best to keep talk on the blog free from (third party) client specific things.
Comment by Infinite Luta — August 21, 2007 #
lets agree to disagree !317c|-| because if it was not for the 3rd party clients then we would have NO alternatives that are advertising free

Comment by richard ludwig — August 21, 2007 #
Thanks for the update. Now, let’s hope it’s followed through with.

Comment by Adam [Torseq Tech] — August 21, 2007 #
hi wats going on chat room . when this problem gona b fixed .caz we r fedup. when is gona go back 2 normal we r not enjoying . we r not having a fun now a days .i m bored caz off u its been more then a week zain and sana didnt enjoyed chat. hope u gona fix this problem assp .. plz fix thts yahoo for uss .. we really bored .. thxz

Comment by zain — August 21, 2007 #
hi we are really bored zain and sana is not enjoying the chat room nows a days we r loseing friends when u gona fix this problems . its been more then 2 weeks we r haveing a problem . please do some thing and fix this chat room problem . sana is very bored now a days she live in uk . she only enjoy yahoo chats rooms . so this is my resquet is fix this problem assp just for her caz i m missing her we talk properly now a days ..

Comment by zain — August 21, 2007 #
There’s been a lot of work going on in the world of chat lately, hasn’t there?

If the smooth operation of the alphacs servers is any indication of what we have to look forward to, I’d say there are plenty of good things on the way. Thanks for all the upgrades, and good luck sorting out the bugs that always accompany progress.

We appreciate the updates on the blog, Sarah. Best wishes to you guys.

Comment by System_32__ — August 21, 2007 #
I’ve been a chatter for over 10 years and this is the worse example of how chat rooms are suppose to function I’ve ever seen. I think it might be time for Yahoo to hire a few new technical people.

Comment by Just Richie — August 21, 2007 #
Someone PM please, i need to know im not alone out here, a simple hello, or ASL…..anything i wont mind…..
Sarah, you really need to fix this now, not only am i dazed, im also confused too. I cant do this cold turkey,, and its not fair that your making me, Give me my life back, once i see my yahoo working, things will be normal again in the outside world, right now, im alone, afraid, and very very confused…………..
GIVE ME BACK MY YAHOO

Comment by dazed — August 21, 2007 #
I have been running a private conference since the bot explosion - and the changes in chat - it has all the people who I normally chat with in the rooms and I invite others who ask — with up to 50 in at times — Chatting can be done with a little work until this all gets resolved.. Thanks for the update and keeping us informed …Much appreciated.

Comment by Charged — August 21, 2007 #
I SET HERE WONDERING JUST HOW YOUNG THESE IDIOTS ARE THAT THEY DONT REMEMBER SLOGANS LIKE, “IF IT AINT BROKE ,DONT FIX IT…OR “LEAVE WELL ENUFF ALONE”..iF YA CANT GET WATER FROM THE NEW WELL, PUMP THE OLD ONE…….cLEAN OUT THE NEW PROGRAM OF YAHOO’S AND DOWNLOAD THE OLD PROGRAM THAT AT LEAST WORKED..READ MY LIPS..THE PORN BOTS ARE STILL THERE,AND YOU KEEP JERKIN US AROUND TO ROOMS WE DONT WANNA BE IN..JUST LAY OFF AND STOP TELLIN US HOW GREAT YOU THINK “YOUR” DOIN..BECAUSE WE THINK THE SERVICE SUKS.. HAL.

Comment by mandingo8112@yahoo.com — August 21, 2007 #
Sara pls give me my life back i mean yahoo caz of yahoo i m missing my other life sana i need my life both life back i am missing sana so much caz off yahoo . we cant talk now a days she is only my life i cant leve her alone .and i cant leve my chat room i m alone thxz Sara . i need my sana and my yahoo back pls Sara help us. me and sana meet thou yahoo we cant 4 get yahoo. yahoo gave me the life .yahoo gave me perty and sexy women in my life .Sara GIVE ME BACK MY SANA AND YAHOO

Comment by zain and sana — August 21, 2007 #
salam……sarah its good tht u keep on updating yahoo customers and its really appriciated.but what i suggest is yahoo was been working greatly frm last a few long time so better let the yahoo be in the same old fashion.thanx

Comment by ALI — August 21, 2007 #
Id like everyone to join me and thank Sarah and to give Yahoo 3 cheers. hip hip.

Comment by Ban Y!mlite — August 21, 2007 #
if you all have people you normaly talk to in chat why not open a confernce in time you may find that everyone you enjoyed talking to are in there with out the bots and idiots

Comment by courious — August 21, 2007 #
Just to calm youse down a bit, I’m betting on crime rates increasing due to people not spending all their free time in chat and using it instead to loot stores in the mass hysteria as a result of Yahoo! chat servers being down.

I think we can all learn a valuable lesson from Yahoo! chat’s absence: Yahoo! makes our streets safer at night. Heck, Yahoo! makes the streets safer 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Thank you, Yahoo!, for keeping us that much safer from ourselves. Your service to society is not going unnoticed in this man’s country!

Comment by interested user — August 21, 2007 #
While one must respect that Yahoo Chat “UNTIL TODAY”, - has been a free service generously and kindly offered to the general public by Yahoo, it has now become impossible to enter any Chat Room of one”s choice, and hold a reasonable conversation with our regular contacts due to the severe bot flooding, cranks, and especially in most cases kiddy booters, (with too much free time on their hands etc etc). Yahoo should appreciate that many of their Health Chat Support Room members and the Health Group users desperately need their respective Support Rooms - working 24/7. so really Yahoo should never have allowed things to stoop so low as things ahev now reached today- ie the severe deterioration of the Chat Services in general, obviously, without further comment it would be greatly appreciated by all users of the YAHOO Chat Room Services - if Yahoo can find ways to “URGENTLY” put their house back in order again - preferably as quickly as possible, as these support rooms mean so much to so many needy chatters - often seeking advice, etc etc. If that means taking Chat off the air for a short period then so be it, but PLEASE YAHOO WILL YOU KINDLY TRY TO IMPROVE THE SITUATION AS OVER THE LAST FEW WEEKS ESPECIALLY, YAHOO HAS BEEN A TOTAL DISASTER AND AS SUCH UNACCEPTABLE.

Comment by Andrew Dallison — August 21, 2007 #
interested_user is correct.
All I can do is loot stores, and rape lil old ladies since Yahoo! went down.
SOMEBODY STOP MEEEEEEEE!!

Comment by Judy — August 21, 2007 #
ummm …. this blog is beginning to look a lot like a chat room … hmmmm … guess we’ll always find a medium to chat in … and it’s yahoo for the win !

Comment by alexandra the fierce — August 21, 2007 #
wonder how long a wait untill this sarah person posts again and tell us how the fix is going, a day, a week , 2 weeks???

considering this is the ONLY info i can find from yahoo regarding chat rooms network not working

Comment by sanpper — August 21, 2007 #
Let’s be serious. Bots and sex site operators have been a problem in Yahoo Chat for what, five years? And now Yahoo is just discovering them?

Why did Yahoo wait until the system was (inevitably) completely shut down? The “report as spam” thing is a joke. Bots can come up with new names, but I don’t change mine, so they can always find me… but I can’t always block them.

Why does every “improvement” to Messenger lead to more bots and spam?

Comment by Longtime User — August 21, 2007 #
First off, I only bothered to read a few comments.
But from what I gathered from those few comments, is that you people need to get lives.
Yes…It sucks that chat has been screwy, these things happen, they are aware of it and are working on the problems. For you morons to come on here and whine like children when they don’t get their way, what do you really think that’s going to accomplish? NOTHING. Hell if I were employed with yahoo, I’d jot down all the IP addresses of these complainers and start charging them for chat service, since it’s quite apparent they are addicted to it! Seriously people, there are other things you could be doing with your time….maybe I dunno…hang out with your Real friends instead? Granted yes I also do chat, but it doesn’t consume me soo much that I’ll sit around and berate something that’s free in the first place. Instead I’ll just find other things to do when it’s slow at work

Anyhow, Yahoo workers, thanks for giving us a heads up and working on the issues!

Comment by oigoil — August 21, 2007 #
First off Sarah, THANK YOU very much for the update - if there’s been one problem through all this, it’s that speculation and lack of comment from Yahoo have fueled the rumor mill -

And it souds like you have the major issues identified -

THere is the Chat Error mesage box that keeps popping - for most, it’s merely a nusance - occasionally it boots the user -

The other major issue is the ad bots - obviously Yahoo is not going to eliminate them, it is their source of income - but as several users have mentioned, the rooms are loaded to absurdity with bots - frequently 40 or more which leaves no room for real people -

In FOBW for eample, there maybe 6 rooms but there’s only a dozen or so real people and 200 ad bots - the result is that a lot of rooms are full, when only one room is needed -

The Chat Help rooms are useless - you can’t find a real person to talk about problems with in spite of there being dozens of rooms -

And the qestion that runs through my mind, if there’s all these ad bots in the rooms and no real people, sooner or later the advertizers are’t going to want to pay for service that’s not generating any business for them -

Anyway, good luck - I hope you and the Yahoo team get the clitches straightened out soon -

Sincerey,

Larry Holbrook

Comment by Laurence Holbrook — August 21, 2007 #
The state of chat rooms, is total chaos. If you can get into one, its amazing. What ever server maintenance you guys did, you should roll it back and go back to the drawing board. Chat errors, communication errors, and you wonder why people are using third party clients.

You can delete the comments if you want, if they are offensive stop and put yourself in the consumers shoes. They are not off target. Some users out here pay for ISP services through Yahoo, how do you expect them to react.

How about some realistic goals, and dates when you will have this fixed. How about just backing out this last update, fix the real issues.

Comment by Rachel — August 21, 2007 #
Ms. Bacon,

Thank you for your recent update, much appreciated! You have instilled faith that Yahoo! shall prevail.

To the “@moderators” over at PalTalk (political rooms)…just a thought - perhaps by losing your authorative powers for a few minutes, your objectives of opening a forum for “debate” may be reached. How exciting it must be, to be surrounded by only those who share your opinions. Good times!

Yahoo! 5 PalTalk 0

Paul

Comment by Paul — August 21, 2007 #
As others have said,
The failure of the system since upgrade is catastrophic insofar as the system appears totally unusable.
The response should be to immediately back out the upgrade and reinstate the last functional version of the system while the problems are fixed … or run in parallel if you have the ability to do that - probably some of the community would be happy to assist by trialling what was at best a beta system.
To have a unexpected problems in an upgrade of such a well established system is undesirable but not a disaster.
The lack of prompt remedial action, by reinstating the last functional system says something about the professionalism of the software engineers involved. the company as a whole and the way they view customers and sponsors.
Disappointed.

Comment by Engineer — August 22, 2007 #
Let patience be thy virtue?!

Comment by Jaunty Mellifluous — August 22, 2007 #
wow ! i just got into yahoo chat help:1 on the first try ! ( i even wanted to go there …… )

Comment by jjjjjjjjjjjjj — August 22, 2007 #
Hey Sarah,
Sorry u have to deal with every one complaining about having a mistake in server maintenance I just finished reading comments and find that people really have no repect for anymore i think its sad anyways I repect you guys it was a mistake and it will be working soon everyone just relax for awhile their fixing their problem and many others such as the bots,hackers,disconnects,being booted and web cams and voice thank u sarah for the free service i hope u guys keep up the good work and help make yahoo better than ever

Comment by robert — August 22, 2007 #
This is not the bot you are looking for. I’ll be on my way now

Comment by Phillipa — August 22, 2007 #
Whats News About User Rooms??? please get Us More Info about This!!!

Comment by Petter JAne — August 22, 2007 #
Sarah, thank you very much for the update.
Will we be getting the Self Pleasure Rooms back?

Spotty

Comment by Spotty Mulldoone — August 22, 2007 #
Sarah,
Thank you for the update.I knew Yahoo would get there in the end.Thanks

Comment by roger.dodger — August 22, 2007 #
While the comments made by yahoo at the top of this blog are late in coming at least it’s something to let people know what is going on. let good intent be recognized.

Of a far more troubling nature is the comment made by darkstar — August 21, 2007

tiredchatter is a ramblimg madman. anyway, tendz:x, u:x, soon you vile women will be reunited in chat once again, and everyone will go back to suffering.

Comment by darkstar — August 21, 2007 #

There are those of us who know who this twisted individual is. The name darkstar and the bots dark_star153 thru dark_star980 as well as dark_star_eg and thousands of other bots namely alex_cd and dj_alex are names used to flood rooms with bots.

The individual is waging what he considers a war against the vile women who use yahoo chat and makes no bones about his religious zealotry. He claims to be from Egypt and feels in some insane way it is his duty to block rooms. He calls blocking rooms ” making people suffer ”

Make no bones about it. These kinds of bots and activity needs to be stopped in it’s tracks. When complaints are sent into yahoo complaining about this kind of abusive use of the yahoo chat system the complaints need to be addressed.

I cannot imagine it is all that difficult to incorporate filtering on yahoo to ban the ip’s of both known proxies and multiple logins from the same ip. Whithoug going into detail I am sure yahoo engineers know exactly how to accomplish this.

Comment by the_snake_eats_itself — August 22, 2007 #
What bothers me is this: Are those ‘working’ on the problem actually aware of how serious it is? Do they actually go to chatrooms and ‘look’ at the problem as WE see it.

In the Romance Catergory and all Sub Cats, there are a total of 380,000 bots in residence. In the US State chatrooms … 50 States x 5000 bots in each = A half a million bots. In all, there are approx 2 million bots infesting the chatrooms.

Most come from http://www.anythingcute.com, or funnyteens.info/. Now how difficult is it to eliminate these links and reduce the total infestation by at least half?

I’m not an expert, but it seems to me that the Yahoo ’specialists’ cant see the wood for the trees.

Comment by Phillipa — August 22, 2007 #
Opps, my math is crap this early in the morning. …i meant a quarter of a million in the States Rooms….250,000.

Comment by Phillipa — August 22, 2007 #
Thank you Sarah for the update and I appreciate you taking time to keep this Yahoo user up to date. I have learned that complaining doesn’t solve nothing but only complicates the matter-I ll be patient like I am accustomed to change-I just wish someone could keep us more informed whether its good news or bad news-but really to be honest with you all-I am just a nosey person-lol.

Comment by Mark — August 22, 2007 #
wow, talk about being patronised - HOW DARE YOU. I almost fell off my chair laughing at the comments made by sarah, this ‘person’ writes as if they have no clue.
You cannot get access to yahoo chat rooms in an esay way, yahoo sometimes will and sometimes will not let you login - and I am not talking about just from one computer.
As to bots / spammers / malicious users.
It is plainly obvious (using darkstar as an example) that there are those who want to ruin it for the regulars, the normal people who may have money to spend but dont get the oppotunity because idiots like him ruin the rooms.
I actually have seen darkstar (and his band of little followers) and they have openly said they want to ‘control the rooms’ and they use religion as their mainstay in saying that bad behaviour is acceptable. I KNOW that many compleaints have been made to yaho about this and several other people and little to nothing is done so, what is the point yahoo pay no attention and never have therefore, this leads me to believe that Yahoo is getting rid of the chat service and going to a web based IM only. Yahoo will be one of many people who have web based cleints therefoire what is the point of having yahoo any more.
Wake up yahoo. Stop treating us if we are really that stupid and learn to be a leader again instead of yet another baa baa sheep.

Comment by sdbinndl — August 22, 2007 #
Well so much for your upgrade, more of a down grade, the bots are still comeing in, for god same make it so they cant make bots. i am and im shure lots of other people are sick of ignoreing bots

Comment by AussieV8 — August 22, 2007 #
Yahoo! Chat is run by weirdos. Honestly…
Shame…

Comment by Apollonian King — August 22, 2007 #
But on a serious note:

Being a persitant diehard fan of Yahoo! Chat for some years now has given me several advantages over the casual user. I do not find the use of Yahoo! Messenger to be preferable to the use of other, more protocol-friendly, chat clients. I do not pander to heresay about Chat changes and their course of implementation, but rather I watch them for myself and make logical deductions about system operations based on calculating responses from the server. I do not ever take into consideration that Yahoo!’s business administraion might be funneling more attention to it’s QOS for the common Chat user. To make Yahoo! better is to make it better for yourself by using good, solid logic and common sense at all times. By becoming a more educated and responsible chatter, you will make the experience better for everyone else and eventually for yourself. Also; carry these priciples with you into your real life as well.

From another blog

Comment by Apollonian King — August 22, 2007 #
Banning several logins from a single IP address would not work. I have 5 PC running through a router. Does that mean me and the other people living in this house would have to take turns using messegner? BAD IDEA!

Comment by Biker Trash — August 22, 2007 #
And I agree Yahoo is a freekin mess. I cant imagine being an IT professional working on the chat servers would not lose their jobs over this. I know where I work I would be history if I did something like this.

Comment by Biker Trash — August 22, 2007 #
@ Biker Trash…ummmm…your router assigns each of those 5 computers a different address.

Comment by Parry Hotter — August 22, 2007 #
In response to biker trash.

A fair question.

While you are using more than 1 PC on a lan and connect from each using different accounts you are not connecting 50 bots in a few seconds from each account. Filtering can be implemented in such a manner that usage like yours and even on a larger scale IE: corporate will not be affected.

Any system engineer worth his/her salt knows how to implement such a scheme as it’s fairly basic technology.

Comment by the_snake_eats_itself — August 22, 2007 #
one word GULLIBLE if you believe they are going to fix this lmfao

Comment by tammy — August 22, 2007 #
I just came up with a great game to play with your buddies. Open Yahoo Chat, click any room number…then bet with your buddies as to which room you will wind up in..and click ‘go to room’

With 100 rooms, this is better than roulette and will keep you busy for hours.

Comment by Phillipa — August 22, 2007 #
Bots, bots and more bots: We did not implement changes designed to reduce the bots during the August 13 maintenance, but it is still in the plans…….. Is This post for real Sarah?…….After 7 days this is your answer to loyal yahoo chatters? I think you might want to hire someone from Paltalk for the day to fix yahoo chat. Shame on yahoo for such a lame excuse and the “it is still in the plans” gives people no faith in your company. We’ve all moved to paltalk and are reading their ads. Its free at beginner level…..oh and google is free…….they seem to work fine…if Google gets an instant messenger service going, yahoo is done…. thanx for doing nothing in 7 days, and thanx for keeping people in the dark for a week before a posting information.

Comment by chattybaby — August 22, 2007 #
Yea.. all what they said.

Comment by Jaunty Mellifluous — August 22, 2007 #
You know where I work if a maintenance didn’t work you know what we do? We roll it back until the maintenance package is fixed. How about that for a concept Yahoo?

Comment by Joe — August 22, 2007 #
“ALL of the rooms are full.. with bots. Is this a bug or is this just a group of booters and script kiddies trying to make a point?” — cptn belly

This is a real possibily. Over the past few weeks I’ve seen people threaten to shut down Chat, and the current situation certainly seems as if they’ve succeeded — despite Sarah’s assurance that the problems are the result of update bugs.

I’d say make the elimination — or at least the reduction — of bots a priority. THEN work on getting Chat to function again. How hard can it be to only let IDs with verified email in rooms? That would kill two birds with one stone: getting rid of p0rnbots AND the room-flooders.