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Chat rooms update

August 24, 2007 on 5:01 pm | In Features |

Hi everyone,

We’ve pushed some fixes out to the chat rooms which will help with the issues around room entry and switching. And like before, your age, sex, location info shown in the chat rooms will reflect what is in your Yahoo! Profile (rather than your Yahoo! registration). Note that there may be short, periodic outages as we roll out the changes.

We are continuing to troubleshoot the bot problem and hope to have something soon. Until we do, we realize it will be difficult to find a room with availability. We’re aware of this and working as fast as we can to implement a solution. Thanks for your continued patience while we do.

Sarah Bacon
Product Manager

514 Comments

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  1. Sarah, thank you for the update. Do you know approximately if the Mac messenger will be available soon? Macintosh users can’t even get in to chat to try out the chat rooms as they are being updated. It might help with some constructive feedback as well.

    http://www.geocities.com/bad_bad_sloar

    Comment by Sloar — August 24, 2007 #

  2. Thank you Sarah for the news! And for all the hardwork you and your staff are doing to find a solution to the chat room nightmares.

    There are so many folks out here in cyberspace going through “chat room withdrawals” that I don’t know how much longer they can hold out! LMAO!! Great job and keep us posted!!

    Comment by tomcat656 — August 24, 2007 #

  3. thanks sarah i hope u guys are serious this time. im not trying to sound rude but if this problem is not fixed soon im deleting all my yahoo accounts including the paid services im enrolled in. I just cant deal with this anymore.

    Comment by thanks — August 24, 2007 #

  4. There is no reason to even bother going into yahoo chat then if we have to go to a room that is nothing but porn bots. Until this is fixed, I will not use the service.

    Comment by HopeSo — August 24, 2007 #

  5. ttytytytytytytytyty cant say it enough tytytytyty lol

    Comment by back in chat — August 24, 2007 #

  6. heard it all before sarah. im not playing along anymore.

    Comment by thanks — August 24, 2007 #

  7. Wow got in on the right room on the first try , and theres only 8 bots in there . Damnmnnn

    Comment by Mortech — August 24, 2007 #

  8. omfg the bots are gone!!!! but for how long.

    Comment by wat happenin — August 24, 2007 #

  9. thank you sarah and team for all the hard work

    Comment by therealbill — August 24, 2007 #

  10. they didn’t say the bots was gone yet only that you can now acess rooms normally.. sheeshh be happy

    Comment by back in chat — August 24, 2007 #

  11. WOW!!! CHAT IS WORKING!!

    Comment by Vixen — August 24, 2007 #

  12. I’m just wondering why yahoo chat servers have all these issues when Pal Talk has none. Paltalk also has voice in Vista. I know that protocols, etc are different but it just seems yahoo should be so far advanced above others. Why can’t there be some sort of sign in procedure like obtaining a new yahoo ID where you have to type in letters and number to join a chat room. The bots can’t type for sure!

    Comment by Jan Sapp — August 24, 2007 #

  13. yahoo isnt dead…. woooooooooooooooooooot

    Comment by xenon — August 24, 2007 #

  14. Thanks sarah that is cool, is bloody brilliant infact

    Comment by Mark — August 24, 2007 #

  15. i dont care what they said look at the roomlist and you will see the rooms are open again

    Comment by wat happenin — August 24, 2007 #

  16. sorry about swear word great brilliant is really pleased just keep the good work going now XXXX

    Comment by Mark — August 24, 2007 #

  17. For the love of Chat. You Yahoo! employees need to get your act together.

    *** Room entry to ‘Yahoo Fighter:6::1601057093′ failed because you need to be a member to join this club?. (err: -32)

    As if you eggheaded, wannabe IT dropouts could pull a rabbit out of a hat. Work some overtime and come to grips with the fact that millions of people are counting on you to bring all the rooms back online with functionality. WE click the links to your sponsors and provide Yahoo! with user continuity, not your landlords and girlfriends who will be very disappointed when a mass exodus to other Internet Servers occurs and your paychecks bounce.
    Every day is a game of Russian Roulette with your chat service from any angle of perspective, and your commitment to noninvolvement with the communities that have formed in your chat rooms has become a malady that can be compared to devine nonintervention.
    Hire some people like myself that are intelligently involved with your services. Fix your server in ways that do not approach blindness. Understand that rooms are communities by nature and not functions of pings for tokens alone.
    Thank you and good luck.

    Comment by Apollonian King — August 24, 2007 #

  18. Sarah…thank you! Chat room entry is fixed and most of the bots have been eliminated. Room listing appears to be updating too! Keep up the good work :-)

    Comment by dilbert36m — August 24, 2007 #

  19. Great work Yahoo! The changes have worked. You’re restoring our long gone faith.
    So happy!!!

    Comment by Jaunty Mellifluous — August 24, 2007 #

  20. how do i get yahoo messeger?

    Comment by Mara phillips — August 24, 2007 #

  21. The “Room entry to ‘whatever room::1601057093 failed because you need to be a member to join this club?. (err: -32) simply means that room has not been created yet. The 100 rooms per category are gone. It’s back to opening a new room when the current high number becomes full.

    Room joins are quick and you can pick what you want (of the open rooms) All in all a step in the right direction. If they tackle the bots (captcha login?) it’ll be usable again.

    Comment by Jack — August 24, 2007 #

  22. if ur having problems getting in aroom try signing out then sign back in.;)

    Comment by gina — August 24, 2007 #

  23. Thank you, Jack. I hope they are serious about making this work for them.

    Comment by Apollonian King — August 24, 2007 #

  24. Question, why are some rooms missing, like the Hackers’ Lounge rooms?

    Comment by Venom — August 24, 2007 #

  25. Honestly, turdheads, can you make a chat server work, or do I need to get Dave?

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

    (yes, I think I am funny)

    Comment by Apollonian King — August 24, 2007 #

  26. thank you sarah forget all the sarcastic things i said over the last week or so :X

    Comment by Yahoon — August 24, 2007 #

  27. back in chat, I bet your head pops off like a Ken Doll.

    Comment by Apollonian King — August 24, 2007 #

  28. the rooms are back yes but the bots are still there. how can anyone enter the room if it’s full of bots.

    Comment by miranda — August 24, 2007 #

  29. Thats great to here miss,how abaut us new vista ussers?it says (THIS COMPUTER DOES NOT SUPPORT THE REQUIRED AUDIO COMPRESSION, an lets me in like before an i can type an see people on the right side in the box but no movment in the box where i type an send the messeges an dont see oithers typeing eiether is there a fix for this prob miss…thanks keep up the great work yahoo,god bless u all an your familys l8r for now sincerly jerry in christ.p.s send me any advise please?

    Comment by eshenbaugh jr — August 24, 2007 #

  30. Thank you for your help, I was suffering withdrawels, thought I was gonna have to start smoking again.

    Comment by Larry — August 24, 2007 #

  31. **Bows to Sarah Bacon ** thank you so much-yes I tried to get to the room I usually chat in and boom no problems I even tried a 3rd party client and no problems also-Thank you Sarah for the update and can you pass along my thankfulness to the team that helped make tonight a wonderful if not a complete success in getting the chat rooms back for us to enjoy. Also accept my apology for the comments I made here and at the other blog-just frustrating and I am glad I choose to wait and be patient and give you and your team a chance.

    Comment by Mark — August 24, 2007 #

  32. “omfg the bots are gone!!!! but for how long.”

    about 5 seconds

    Comment by JC — August 24, 2007 #

  33. btw, yahoo messenger 8.1.0.416 has voice chat working..

    Read http://shadow-corp.net/blog

    Sarah, couldnt the chat servers have an anti idle timeout added, disconnect after say 3 hours, thus keeping the rooms entrys flowing.

    this will also stop the bots been stuck in rooms

    Comment by Dermot — August 24, 2007 #

  34. I must admit to some degree of amazement. I am actually getting into rooms and finding real people. Something that has been a problem for months! In any other circumstance I would be singing yahoo’s praises. And I may yet do so. But, at this point, I need more then just chat room improvements to restore my faith in yahoo services. If past history with you folks tells us anything, it is that trust must truly be earned. This is clearly a step in the right direction. Keep up the good work and stay on top of things so that this degree of destruction never happens again and maybe yahoo as a corporation may yet survive. But this whole debacle has been brought on by a lack of concern for quality; by a failure to listen and act on consistent user complaints; by a series of false promises tied to a lack of any sense of responsibility to explain failures to the loyal users of your service; by a lack of any demonstrable willingness to promptly address obvious issues; and by poorly conceived efforts to try to convince users that the issues so obvious to them are minor; by a laughable effort to deflect attention from the real issues with idiotic posts about sudoku and smiley contests. This loss of faith in your company and the perhaps irrepairable reputation for dismal customer service will not be corrected with this one fix. It helps. It gives us hope that maybe the corporate culture is changing, Perhaps you will remain diligent, display honesty and frankness, and willingly admit that obvious problems exist when they are found. I certainly hope so. I remain hopeful and will continue to see how things develop. You have already lost many formerly loyal users. You may now have a chance to save the ones remaining and even win some former users back. But you are going to have to maintain, for the long term, a commitment to service that has been sorely lacking. It is, after all, much harder to restore lost faith then it is to develop faith in the first place. We have lost faith and you wil need to work that much harder to restore it. Let’s hope that this new “fix” is a sign that a real commitment to users has been made and that quality will be something yahoo values. Prove to us that this is not just a solution implemented ONLY because of a complete catastrophe, but rather, a sincere effort to improve,not just chat, but your company’s severely damaged reputation. And not just for the moment, but for the long term.

    Just my nickle’s worth.

    Comment by Bill — August 24, 2007 #

  35. Well Sarah, your about half way there now - thank you- now lets eliminate the bots before they eliminate Yahoo again ? !!!!!

    Comment by Andrew Dallison — August 24, 2007 #

  36. Wow, they broke it so bad, it cycled back around to ”fixed”
    Surely this is an accident.

    Comment by Mindthug — August 24, 2007 #

  37. The rooms are just going to fill up with junk advertising again. It’s a predictable circle.

    Comment by JC — August 24, 2007 #

  38. I got in the chatroom I wanted, Thanks!!!!!! It is so nice to be able to click on the number I want and go there, I will be able to connect with my friends again.

    Yahoo, I love ya!!!

    Comment by Aida Alvarez — August 24, 2007 #

  39. You should make an image verification before you can join a chat room, that would take care of the bots

    Comment by Sam — August 24, 2007 #

  40. what about cancelling the adult sites? arent there enough porn sites elsewhere?

    Comment by carol — August 24, 2007 #

  41. well it seems yahoos working ok im not holding my breathe though but you are going in the right direction well done for that :-)

    Comment by Karl — August 24, 2007 #

  42. Googleis puttin to yahoo in new ways every day, the poor excuse for chat that yahoo is now is just another example

    Comment by Dave — August 24, 2007 #

  43. i can get into a room, can see some folks, some can see me, but i can get into my room…….. guess the reset has to smooth out.

    thanks again sarah

    Comment by kevin — August 24, 2007 #

  44. its about time chat was open again now come on yahoo don’t screw up again

    Comment by paul (sir kick) — August 24, 2007 #

  45. thanks glad 2 see an hear the room entry is being fixed, got a quick question, why is it in some rooms text still isnt been seen? also ive found out when im just using yahoo messenger, when i type in the room, i get a chat error.. an then poof im gone an messenger goes off.. an when im using ytunnel, with messenger, some see my text some dont? wil this be fixed? thanks

    Comment by ducky — August 24, 2007 #

  46. I made a huge mistake today when I saw this blog entry. I re-installed Yahoo Messenger.
    First thing I noticed 100 rooms, holy smokes.

    Then that gets fixed and now the electronics rooms are gone, basically my only reason to use Yahoo Messenger gone, at least for now, who the heck knows tomorrow maybe there will another 100 electronics rooms by then.

    I view those who are fixing Yahoo Messenger problems are being equally inept as a computer repair shop that has a large sledge hammer. They fix all your computer problems by smashing your computer with the hammer. It works all my computer problems are solved, unfortunately that just creates far greater problems.

    Well at least one good thing has come out of this, the Yahoo jokes are now greater in number then Microsoft, at least for now and a few are actually funny.

    Comment by kbsoftware — August 24, 2007 #

  47. You guys had the capcha on the alpha server in the begining then took it away. I guess you were testting it. Like everyone is say it would be the best danb thing to ever come to yahoo chat i would love to have added to the chat room a human can only put in what you see in a image a bot can’t. The bots will be gone for good if you did this.

    Comment by Rob Madden — August 24, 2007 #

  48. i love my yahoo again

    Comment by Name (required) — August 24, 2007 #

  49. OH MY GOD!!!! I’m soooooooo happy I can kiss you Sarah My rooms are back and we are all able to sign in without problems and bots are few if any. THANKS A MILLION. Keep moving in that direction cause it’s the right one. Btw, the idea of limiting being in a room inactive like many bots do is a great idea and a 1 hour limit I think would be great. Once again from all of us who use Yahoo Chat Rooms in Puerto Rico THANKS!

    Comment by Jose — August 24, 2007 #

  50. You can please some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time.

    Dont forget to impliment IP bans for all those cracking programs that I hear are working overtime on the yahoo servers since the initial update.

    Comment by Timothy — August 24, 2007 #

  51. It’s defiitely better than it was. Sorry. Thanks Yahoo.

    Comment by JC — August 24, 2007 #

  52. Instead of 100 rooms full of porno advertising there’s only 10. That’ smuch better.

    Comment by JC — August 24, 2007 #

  53. Thanks Sarah! I finally was able to get into my favorite room and not as many bots! Still have a problem with yahoo rejecting my posts every once in a while but this is better than it has been for the past couple of weeks. Waiting for you guys to take care of the bot problem but am a happy camper that I can chat in Yahoo instead of having to use Pal Talk.

    Comment by John — August 24, 2007 #

  54. im sure it will go up to 50 soon but that’s ok. thanks yahoo!

    Comment by JC — August 24, 2007 #

  55. i know you are “looking into it” but i just wanted to thank you! God bless yahoo

    Comment by JC — August 24, 2007 #

  56. it appears all you’ve done is change 1 thing and reset them.

    First of all, you simply made it respond back with “room full” if the room is full and your id does not get dropped into an empty room.

    But by the looks of it, that’s all you’ve done.

    Bots are filling the rooms again, give it a week until we end up where we were a week ago from now., ALSO

    Comment by Craig. — August 24, 2007 #

  57. ALSO very annoying, your id gets “stuck” and refuses to move room, highly annoying, not fixed.

    Not sure why everyone is praising for 1 fix and it’s not resolved anything other than it makes it slightly harder for bots to fill the rooms up they actually have to try :1 :2 :3 and so on, so yeah we will end up in a situtation we had before yahoo made the changes, and i do believe people were sick of the bots then as well…

    So congratulations, you might have reduced the bots down to the state they were in before the “alpha” server was introduced…. wow…. so great.

    Comment by Craig. — August 24, 2007 #

  58. looks like the bots have filled up the rooms again. This only a few hours after you dumped them all. The only thing that seems fixed is I’m able to get to the room I click on rather than a random room.

    Comment by Kat — August 24, 2007 #

  59. Sarah i cant beleive this your srill completely clueless on what the problem is common wake up jesss read this carefully and think will you. repost from what i said on another blog

    WHAT A JOKE .A bug thats a good one lol. Come on yahoo we are not born yesterday, Thats a complete lie, I ve been telling you the problem for almost a freaking year and this has been the case for over 2 years.Yahoo just ignored every email i sent, I clearly said im also a software engineer and they still ignored every one. Your incompetance is really pathetic. It boils down to one thing and all this crap could have completely been avoided. Its ridiculious that you allow single entities to aquire unlimited user names. If your managment had any brains and adjust your bussiness rules to limit new usernames issued at he start to one ip address which you are recording allready this problem would not exist. Whaty really happened on this latest problem was due to one entity doing this flooding to the extreme. with 10s of thousands of bots with 1000s of usernames that yahoo blindly issued .Yahoo the bug is you and its called incompetance simply said..

    Comment by jb — August 24, 2007 #

  60. If the bots are gone, who will I talk to? There is nobody in any of the rooms but bots. They talk to me. For my webcam click here.

    Comment by gL — August 24, 2007 #

  61. got my fix, sarah, thank you for all the information thru the updates, i can go into my fav room, and chat with all my friends, very few bots

    yahoo is rockin once again…….. i hope

    Comment by kevin — August 24, 2007 #

  62. Kevin and to the rest of your ignorant people, this is not a fix, this is just something to keep people hanging on just that little longer..

    The only real fix is, release a new messenger version which a new method of logging into chat.

    Kill 3rd party clients, and you will kill the bots as well, why do yahoo continue to allow 3rd party, you know what i think? i think someone important in yahoo uses a 3rd party chat client and obviously does not want to see it die so you find excuses to not fix the bot situation.

    Comment by Craig. — August 24, 2007 #

  63. Well kill the 3rd party clients if it kills off the ads. im all for it.

    Comment by JC — August 24, 2007 #

  64. Sarah,
    Thanks for your updates and for the improvements. I have one question. When trying to enter the rooms now on some I get the following message “user refused join” and cannot enter the rooms. It seems that in the category of chat I was using the first 14 rooms were fine and 15 and up resulted in “user refused join”. Can you explain why this message appears or is it just another bug that you have to address? Again, thanks for the improvements.

    Comment by jabadoobie — August 24, 2007 #

  65. killing third party chat clients will not kill the bots

    whoever thinks that obviously doesn’t chat much

    yahoo need to implement captcha but they need to have an automated random captcha image not a list of say 50 images or porn bot runners will crack the captcha by running the 50 or using edge detection.

    the captcha used for chat must not be the same you use currently for the rest of yahoo as that in itself is limited.

    Yahoo currently have a “chat transition” form in messenger that shows a massive advertisement that shows up once a session, instead of a button on there you should have the captcha there beside a start chatting button that will show and chat will not happen with out it.

    Comment by Dermot — August 24, 2007 #

  66. if the ads are being sent by third party clients and yahoo disables those, shouldnt it work?

    Comment by JC — August 24, 2007 #

  67. Killing the 3rd Party Chat Clients by using an uncrackable login method will definitely be a step in the right direction. All these Chat Clients use the same login methods as Bots (which is YMSG15 without passing through the https/ssl login), so if Yahoo release a new method of logging into chatrooms which can only be possible through Yahoo! Messenger alone, it will kill all the bots instantly. Not only will it help reduce spam but all these chat users who use 3rd Party Chat clients to chat will be forced to use Yahoo! Messenger for chatting. In chatrooms users will be made to see the Ads displayed by Yahoo! while chatting which will only help Yahoo! generate some additonal revenue which has been missing since the beginning of 3rd Party Chat Clients.

    Please find a new login method Yahoo! all this captcha and other stuff can stop bots only to a certain extent it won’t stop them from using other chat services from Yahoo! like Private Messages, Webcam Invites etc… Patch The login Stop The bots.

    Comment by Rick — August 24, 2007 #

  68. ok….what about the rooms under the voice chat ?!?!?! are these ever going to reopen?

    Comment by rhonda — August 24, 2007 #

  69. now i get it. this is just a big waste of time.

    Comment by JC — August 24, 2007 #

  70. Gee thanks Sarah I can get in the room now but every time I type more than 3 sentences I get Chat error then get booted out weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee its so fun rebooting every 15 min if I want to chat in the room.

    Comment by Ana — August 24, 2007 #

  71. Thanks for all da hard work there. Goodbye to all those who have done nothin but complain and have no patience. Must be unreal to maintain and operate this system> hats off to you Sarah and your team. I dont see any apologies or thanks from those going to paltalk, etc. Have fun there you all. Word of advise…. let those 3RD PARTIES GOOOOOO!!, and PRIORITY TO YAHOO MESSENGERS. Wonder if any of those complainers are on 3RD PARTY systems??? Hummmmmm.

    Comment by thanks — August 24, 2007 #

  72. It would be pretty good, if…

    1) Post weren’t dropped after 4 to 5 posts (AKA Chat Error).

    2) Names didn’t get stuck in the room.

    3) Names didn’t get logged out of chat every 60 to 90 minutes.

    Other than that, it’s a step in the right direction. Please keep us informed on the latest news and updates.

    P.S. Is anyone still encountering the “communication” error?

    Comment by Venom — August 24, 2007 #

  73. no, they fixed that bit

    Comment by JC — August 24, 2007 #

  74. JC which bit? None of the 3 bugs I listed above are fixed yet (as far as I can tell).

    Oh yes, can you have your Messenger devs fix the annoying WordFilter bug where it’s always stuck on even if you set it to None?

    Reason for this is simple…

    The global WordFilter key under HKCU\Software\Yahoo\pager instead of writing to the per account WordFilter key.

    Comment by Venom — August 24, 2007 #

  75. “communication error”. i can log into rooms without that message

    Comment by JC — August 24, 2007 #

  76. Well, I’m glad that they hopefully addressed that one. Thanks for the info. =)

    Comment by Venom — August 24, 2007 #

  77. One last thing. Can you guys/gals PLEASE finally address the “cannot ignore yourself” issue, when somebody floods a room? =)

    Comment by Venom — August 24, 2007 #

  78. I CANNOT use messenger on my platform. The UNIX client hasnt been updated in YEARS. If 3rd party clients are blocked, then I will have no choice but to remove my yahoo accounts. I use the portal all the time, viewing ads might I add, but if this is the way Yahoo treats anyone who doesnt fit their ideal profile, I have no choice but to abandon ship. Lock out 3rd party clients, and you lock ME out. Along with the money I spend on your services.

    Comment by phil — August 24, 2007 #

  79. ok sarah, really..you’re a bot aren’t you

    just kidding

    Actually the bots are not really as much an issue as Yahoo! needs to take some stronger actions about the booters..

    People running malicious content on your servers should be at least considered in some sort of violation, or even criminal acts..

    This is why I (and I am sure many others) use a 3rd party client.. It is not because we want to avoid the ads, but feel more secure from getting booted by these trailer park morons.

    Yahoo! messenger is actually a nice tool for what it is worth, but it is about as secure as a downhill train with no brakes..especially the limits on how many people (or bots) you can ignore, and if you want to ignore permanently, which to this day I still don’t think Yahoo! messenger can do without y-tunnel, etc.. you have to turn to a 3rd party client..

    If you took the better features of these others and put them into messenger, we would use it instead :o)

    Comment by radstorm — August 24, 2007 #

  80. you missed a spot…..do it again.

    it almost works right.i heard a rumor maybe someone could confirm or deny
    i saw someone say in whatever room i was in,that chat was supposed to be fixed by sept 4?
    anyone know if theres any truth to this?

    will yahoo ever…really.. be “fixed”?

    Comment by fat-head — August 24, 2007 #

  81. Yahoo will never get rid of the bots. They are a source of revenue. You don’t think they’ve let this go on for so long without being paid off by those who run the bots, do you?

    It’s easy to fix. It would have been fixed years ago if it wasn’t a source of revenue.

    Comment by john — August 24, 2007 #

  82. It would be pretty good, if yahoo fix these problems

    1.Post weren’t dropped after 4 to 5 posts (AKA Chat Error).

    2.Names didn’t get stuck in the room.

    3.Names didn’t get logged out of chat every 60 to 90 minutes

    Comment by Prince — August 25, 2007 #

  83. Sarah, thanks for this update Yahoo did.

    The pornbots are back in the room Im in. On top of that I get disconnected from the room , without any reason (which I believe Yahoo should answer). Is this how chat should be, like getting disconnected and interrupt friends communication?

    I guess to my understanding when we also get disconnected WE ARE NOW CONSIDERED AS BOTS OR PORNBOTS IF WE DONT TYPE RIGHT?

    Yahoo is changing YES we got to face it, but if its changing for the WORST obviously we have the obligation to comment or complaint.

    Sarah or to whom it may concern, DO NOT DELETE THIS POST and RESOLVE ALL THIS ISSUES WE HAVING IN THE CHAT ROOMS.

    Comment by Dave (Yahoo Chat Fanatic) — August 25, 2007 #

  84. Sloar. Thanks for looking out for us.

    Comment by Dexter Morgan — August 25, 2007 #

  85. question here—-if people are using the old yahoo messenger to chat-are they gonna be able to see the posts in the chat rooms-or not???seems people are saying they dont want to upgrade to the newest version cause some are using Ytunnel and they will have to upgrade to the newest version of Ytunnel so they can upgrade their yahoo messy-doesnt seem fair to me-and please save your opinions about Ytunnel thats not why I am asking this question. Thanks.

    Comment by Mark — August 25, 2007 #

  86. I believe I’ve figured out what’s happing with all the “missing rooms”. If all the rooms in a particular roomspace become empty, the room is closed and removed from the room lists. However, you can force a known room to reopen using the /join command as long as you don’t specify a room number. On Yahoo! Messenger, the room’s capitalization must be exact. On anything other than messenger (third party clients), you must specify the roomspace number (but not the room number).

    Comment by Infinite Luta — August 25, 2007 #

  87. My problem has nothing to do with bots. When I log in through pager/messenger I only see two people typing. No One can see me.

    When I log into Yahelite, I can see everyone typing but again, no one can see me type. Not one person.

    I did the security update, could that be the problem?
    Seems everyone else can see each other just fine

    Comment by Tide — August 25, 2007 #

  88. Sarah and Team

    Thank you for the update and giving some sign of life. Progress is now being shown…small steps \:d/

    Paul

    Comment by Paul — August 25, 2007 #

  89. the rooms might be reopened but dont be fooled the BOTS havent gone try going in threw chat client and look at your #’s on ignore for example im sitting in room right now and out of the 2164 bots that ive ignored in the past few weeks 44 of them are in the room as we speak so BOT beGone is a joke they are still there.. why dont yahoo just dimp all users in a room empty them right out and do as the Devoted chatters suggested Real chatters have to type in a code to get into a room Yes it will be a inconvience but not any more inconvient then a room fulla bots!!!

    Comment by getreal — August 25, 2007 #

  90. Why on the new servers, with this supposed fixes, is there lack of availability, before the “update” the rooms where available, just hard to get in because of packet drop.

    Comment by Tommy — August 25, 2007 #

  91. While I am grateful that Chat usability has been restored, somewhat, I am also a bit disappointed that it wasn’t first SHUT DOWN to dump all bots that were present. It would’ve been nice to see them GONE, if only temporarily.

    Are any of the excellent suggestions that were made here even being considered? Or have we just been venting to each other?

    Comment by mourn4chat — August 25, 2007 #

  92. Really good to the see rooms back..Thanks Yahoo!… please…don’t press that button again…remember what happened last time…lol… seriously…good to see it back.

    Comment by Pj — August 25, 2007 #

  93. im happy

    Comment by Laarni quiaonza — August 25, 2007 #

  94. All I can say is much better, keep up the hard work, maybe someday user rooms may even make a come back

    Comment by demonic_urge — August 25, 2007 #

  95. yea seems chat works now why do you not implament the old methods of removing spam belive it or not yahoo had some measures lol such as when you type a url such as http://www.333 it bans the id

    Comment by Karl Mayhew — August 25, 2007 #

  96. Hi Craig, I didn’t like your comments about “it appears all you’ve done is change 1 thing and reset them. First of all, you simply made it respond back with “room full” if the room is full and your id does not get dropped into an empty room.”
    Just read the announcement again man. That is exactly what they’ve done at the moment. You should be appreciating what they’ve done and expect better results in future.

    Comment by Jaunty Mellifluous — August 25, 2007 #

  97. Tide, are those two people in your buddy list? If they are then there’s a good chance you have the “Ignore anyone who is not in my messenger list” option enabled from messenger preferences.

    Comment by Jaunty Mellifluous — August 25, 2007 #

  98. Yahoo Inc , sort out that CHAT ROOM DISCONNECT please!!!!! Are we suppose to be disconnected same as the pornbots????

    Comment by Dave (Yahoo Chat Fanatic) — August 25, 2007 #

  99. Hey thanks so much it works great but ONE BIG THING THAT NEEDS TO BE FIXED!

    There was a command where you could join rooms by typing /join room:2 that doesnt work anymore, please if you can reinstate that

    Comment by MissKim — August 25, 2007 #

  100. Yes but so are the others

    It’s still happening too.

    Everyone else is having no problem communicating.
    I just had one other person confirm they can see me type that I don’t have on my list.

    The other problem is when I use messenger, I can’t see them either. But pop into yahelite and walla, everyone is there. Unfortunately, I can’t be seen and I’m the only one having this problem.
    I’m not sure this just started either.
    Two nights ago, I couldn’t be seen either but I chalked that up to yahoo being messed up

    IM’s are fine though.

    Comment by Tide — August 25, 2007 #

  101. To add to that, I downgraded messy to see if that worked. Nadda

    Comment by Tide — August 25, 2007 #

  102. #

    Hi Craig, I didn’t like your comments about “it appears all you’ve done is change 1 thing and reset them. First of all, you simply made it respond back with “room full” if the room is full and your id does not get dropped into an empty room.”
    Just read the announcement again man. That is exactly what they’ve done at the moment. You should be appreciating what they’ve done and expect better results in future.

    Comment by Jaunty Mellifluous — August 25, 2007 #

    What?!

    Get off the drugs, they’ve done 2 things, one is return a room full message if it’s full and the other is put the proper age, other than that..

    they’ve not stopped id’s sticking
    they’ve not stopped the bots
    they’ve not stopped the chat packets from being dropped.

    So Jaunty, i don’t like YOUR comments either, get over it.

    Comment by Craig. — August 25, 2007 #

  103. keep up the good work guys - but the bots are back and the chat errors as soon as u write something are a pain

    looking forward to a resolution of the problem - im seriously missing yahoo chat and paltalk is ok to keep with friends but not the same

    bots must be destroyed in the most painful way possible

    Comment by oli — August 25, 2007 #

  104. thier are no excuses valid enough as to the state of yahoo chat…they have been in the chat business for 10 years,the state it is in now you thing grade 1 kids were running the show.10 years and they look like amatuers.

    Comment by mazz — August 25, 2007 #

  105. i hope yahoo has informed their advertisers no real people are viewing their ads…some of us are thinking of sending off emails to them to inform them they are paying and nobody is seeing them!!

    Comment by mazz — August 25, 2007 #

  106. Before you all start blaming Yahoo for dropping packets, you should find out if Yahoo is even receiving them. There are routers out all over the world for various reasons. Some are owned by busnesses that have gone under. Some have been knocked out of service by natural disasters. Others could just be broken. Many aren’t even registered on the internet traffic site so it’s hard to tell for sure how many routers are actually working or not.

    Yahoo can’t be accused of dropping packets if they haven’t even received them.

    Also, people who insist on sending out those stupid “send this to everyone on your list” messages are just helping to overload the servers. STOP IT!

    Another thing, someone commented that bots can’t type. You obviously have never run into a chatterbot. They can type and they can carry on a complete conversation. If you want more info, just Google chatterbots.

    People really make me laugh at times. If you buy a piece of software and it doesn’t work right out of the box, you could spend days, weeks, even months trying to get it to run on your system. BUT! You expect Yahoo to be able to install new software to make your chat experience better and have it compatible with millions of different computer configurations in the blink of an eye.

    Get real. It takes time and they are trying to get it done right. Leave them alone and let them do what needs to be done.

    Comment by Storm Watcher — August 25, 2007 #

  107. hmmm, there is still a problem here, after being an hour in the room yahoo logs you out?? this is the message i am getting”Logout of Chat Rooms by Yahoo! Will Log you back in … (1 Hours 1 Mins 24 Secs)”

    Comment by miranda — August 25, 2007 #

  108. i see lot you you people think these issues have just come up with the server change over…im sorry but NO!!these issues have been going on for about 2 years with bots filling up rooms…so what you are trying to say is it takes years to iron out the problems…I THINK NOT!!past 2 or 3 years if you were to go to any room in the romance section,30+ bots at all times per room.so their are NO EXCUSES!! plain and simple.

    Comment by mazz — August 25, 2007 #

  109. Hello Sarah;;)

    Thanks for keeping us informed as you make steps to improving your free service. I’m sorry you’ve had to face abuse from our more fanatical chatters, we’re not all like that, though a lot us have cultivated some deep friendships on yahoo chat and it means a lot to us. In some sense the most rabid detractors amongst us are yahoo loyalists at heart because they love yahoo as it used to be.

    I’ve tried out some other chat services while yahoo’s being fixed and found them vastly inferior to yahoo chat(when it works), and nothing beats your cute as cute can be smileys;)), or the large communities you helped foster. From the state of chat as i type this you’re bringing home the bacon Sarah, thankyou, may the matrix of consensual telepathy which is yahoo chat live forever.

    Comment by Kris — August 25, 2007 #

  110. mm, Craig, I got over it. But what you’ve listed as 2 things Yahoo! did is what they said in the announcement. So what’s the big deal then anyway?

    Comment by Jaunty Mellifluous — August 25, 2007 #

  111. Definitely a good step in the right direction. At least people can get into chat now.

    Comment by Chet Simpson — August 25, 2007 #

  112. Its sad that the bots have taken over most of the sports rooms. I visited some and there were nothing but bots. Yahoo needs to come up with something fast to kill these bots.

    Comment by Cant Enjoy Sports Rooms — August 25, 2007 #

  113. For the love of all that is sane - Fix the fight rooms. When the fight rooms are not open, people from the fight rooms join other rooms and fight.

    Comment by Zeus — August 25, 2007 #

  114. Hi Sara
    thanks for fixing the chat room issue almost. There are still few things in need of fix
    1. Still getting chat error while typing text in the room
    2. Rooms like Music lobby , Rock etc are still not fixed. Only thing you find there are bots as compared to other rooms like Pop where atleast one can find real ppl
    Looking forwards for more impovements hopefully

    Comment by Zammy — August 25, 2007 #

  115. Sarah,

    When will the Mac users see the long awaited new release of Yahoo Messenger with Chat? The recent changes to the chat protocols have taken away our ability to access the chat rooms through. The only way for us to access it used to be 3rd party programs such as Adium, Charla, etc. but they are of no use any more.

    Comment by Todd — August 25, 2007 #

  116. Hi there Sarah!
    wow everything looks possible in chatting……..

    Comment by Mae — August 25, 2007 #

  117. IN ALL EUROPEAN ROOMS THERE IS STILL THE “COMMUNICATION ERROR” PROBLEM… PLEASE FIXX!!

    Comment by ItalyBoy — August 25, 2007 #

  118. In http://blog.messenger.yahoo.com/blog/2007/01/22/lets-chat/
    Sarah wrote..
    “We appreciate all your enthusiasm and comments on our blog. We do read the comments, and it’s clear there are concerns around Yahoo! Messenger’s chat rooms. So we want to address some of them.

    Right off the bat, we want to let you know there was an outage the weekend of January 12th that prevented users from signing into the chat rooms. This is uncommon, and we were able to fix it. We appreciated your patience as we tackled the issue.”

    That was January, now its August… patient aren’t we… I hope they appreciate that.

    Comment by fred — August 25, 2007 #

  119. Great work done. thanks sarah.
    cheers :*

    Comment by Sarfraz — August 25, 2007 #

  120. Maybe if you sniff out the none proxy server that are yahoo’s maybe you can find the bots becase
    1 - the porn bots are on there own proxy server
    2 - and the kiddie with the mass iggy bots use proxys too

    Comment by Mike Hunt — August 25, 2007 #

  121. Sarah:

    I’ve been hearing about some requesting to be able to ignore a specific user ON THIS BLOG, along with a few other wishes that are less reasonable than that one itself. I’ve started to agree with them.

    On the topic of chat, the servers, and the problems we are having, I prefer not to flame, but it looks like you’ve reverted back to old code. This is not any kind of progress. Here we are, almost 9 months later and chat is still in the same condition it was in when you initially posted about how you were fixing chat. Seems like few, if any fixes at all.

    I actually liked the old method where it informed me of a users country of residence. I’d like to see that come back and remain and not be viewed as a privacy concern. Most countries are large enough to shield a specific person from any real problems, unless they give out the information publicly (like their physical address).

    That is, if you would fix the yacs hack that is a major security breach from the script kiddies.

    Finally, I want to compliment you on not commenting at all on which method(s) you are considering for validating users. The last thing the bot herders need is a heads up on what security measures are going to be integrated.

    Comment by RegisteredTrademark — August 25, 2007 #

  122. Another general rule in identifying bots is any ID that begins with “aa1″ IS A BOT! There’s 9 — count ‘em, NINE! — in the room I just left. X-(

    Comment by mourn4chat — August 25, 2007 #

  123. The bots are back in full force, for pete’s sakes.
    Servers are fast now, this is good.. Implement
    human verification asap Thanks folks.

    Comment by John — August 25, 2007 #

  124. WAAAAAAA, W, W, WAAAAAAAAAAAA.

    Cry babies..

    Comment by mike — August 25, 2007 #

  125. it is getting bad as ever bots taking over again can u fix again

    Comment by Mark — August 25, 2007 #

  126. Nice update Sarah and crews, but you havent open yet my fav room (Married But Looking:69),sorry i really miss the room and the long dickies there..lol..But anyway thanks and keep up the good work..I hope that you will change the bots,instead of female put male bots and that would be interesting..

    Comment by Gloria Macapagal Arroyo(Pres. of The Philippines) — August 25, 2007 #

  127. Why did people say thanks to the modifications they made? i don’t get it, both issues that got “fixed” came with the new server anyway, in other words, what have yahoo made better since the upgrades that took place last week?…

    Absolutely nothing is the answer.

    When i see yahoo fix something that was actually wanted before this new “upgrade” fix the bots, stop the buffer overflow d/c maybe by throttling or using a similar technique to the http login, then we’ll be 1 step closer in the right direction, so far we’ve seen 3 steps back and nothing to indicate it’s getting any better.

    Add captcha
    Change the authentication
    Encrypt it
    do something.

    Yes, people on the mac will lose chat, people on linux will as well probably, but right now it’s getting back to the stages where nobody can chat.

    Comment by Craig. — August 25, 2007 #

  128. I know the rooms are opened again but no one can see typing so what is the point, I know they are working on it, but it has been months now, this is crazy!!! I hope it gets fixed soon before I lose all of my friends elsewhere.

    Comment by sharon_ann344 — August 25, 2007 #

  129. BOTS BOTS BOTS-easy fix, use your ignore feature-and stop complaining-FIGHT ROOMS-let them come into the other rooms-they can easily be ignored as well-BE THANKFUL for what you have now-and give the rest of us a break from all your whining-cause I got the perfect aged cheese to go along with almost everyone’s WHINE-rolls eyes at the inconsiderate messages-.

    Comment by Mark — August 25, 2007 #

  130. ignore all you want mark. the room will still be locked so whats the point duh!!

    Comment by hey dummy — August 25, 2007 #

  131. Thank you for all your hard work an efforts get Yahoo Chat back up to a more working state. Look forward to see what else these change’s will bring about :-d

    Comment by Dave — August 25, 2007 #

  132. Sarah:

    We are using the conference thing now with our chat group, it works well and we’ve all become more adept at it. But we would love to have the regular chat rooms back pleeeeeeeeese! Its more fun to meet new people in regular chat rooms.
    Thanks, Lou

    Comment by Linda — August 25, 2007 #

  133. HELP !!!!! Does anyone know why, after ” chat error ” notices, i’m being booted every 2nd to 4th post since yahoo has been ” repaired “, whether using a newly created id or an old id or whether using my former Messenger version ( 7.0 ) or a newer one ( 7.2 or 7.4 ) . . i am Not a bot, a pornographer, a pedophile, a terrorist, a government informant, a chat abuser or any other abomination . . i had no such issues before these so-called * repairs * began, rather this issue surfaced about a week ago . . i might also add that there is at least another chatter i know of, a librarian in New England, who is also experiencing the same difficulty . . Any assistance would be very much appreciated . .

    Comment by clearlight — August 25, 2007 #

  134. Can’t you develop include/alter these chat features on Yahoo!?
    1. pm blocker for non-friends which you don’t have to see…
    - or the non-friends im box all in one that does not go on top of your window each time a new im comes in. That you can see just whenever you want to read them.
    - or that after receiving 2 lines of ims from anybody and you don’t answer, they are automatically blocked from sending any ims again until they relog-in?
    2. please take off the buzz feature from non-friends or take that function out entirely. People tend to overuse the buzzing feature and it’s so annoying.
    3. include a persistent room entry retry function.

    Thanks.. I’m a loyal yahoo chat user since 1998 and i know we all want a better chatting experience on Yahoo!. More power to you guys and thanks for the hard work.

    Comment by Nanski — August 25, 2007 #

  135. Why can’t yahoo have some of these warnings like Camfrog.com chatrooms. You see the warnings before you even start chatting in the rooms. Here are the examples of Camfrog warnings. WELCOME
    Room rules are
    No nudity or requesting that others get nude.
    No disrupting the room with repeated text, or spamming.
    Do not directly insult Users,Operators and Owners.
    No graphic sexual content.
    Do not violate the Camfrog TOS.
    No Swearing
    No Music or singing allowed in this room
    You are now logged in Camfrog

    Comment by mr nice guy no more — August 25, 2007 #

  136. Sarah, I would still like to see a service announcement at the login of messenger? Something that Yahoo use to do whenever the system was undergoing maintenance, but hasn’t done in quite some time.

    Also I am still getting alot of reports of people unable to see type in the rooms using the new messenger, I wonder if that has to do with the message delivery upgrades going on with the groups servers, possibly some old code left behind from when groups had rooms available to them, just a thought.

    Many thanks for having this site available with news and update info, Finally people are starting to get the word and leave me alone about whether or not its thier own system causing the issue.

    Frosty

    Comment by The Original Frosty — August 25, 2007 #

  137. Whats You Mean from Update and Fix !!! This Chatrooms have same problems and instead of )Chat Error ) we got a new errors => (room is Full ) or User Refused to Join ) Sarah please Close this Chatrooms for ever…you know with your information never and nevesr cant fix and imporve this!!!

    Comment by Petter JAne — August 25, 2007 #

  138. Fixed? Since when? All rooms are showing full to capacity and the only one I got into was full of bots.

    Yahoo your competitors are laughing their socks off! This problem has been building for ages and as so many have pointed out you’ve simply ignored all the feedback and warnings from your users. You couldn’t even send out a generalised email to keep us up to date, we have to get lucky and run across this blog.

    Get your people of their asses and get them into gear fixing this thing…..putting out messages of “we’re sorry but our fix unleashed even more problems” is totally unprofessional (unless MicroStupid have taken you over without telling the rest of us).

    Consult your users. There’s been suggestion after suggestion on how to sort this problem. Godammit via all the people who use your chat rooms you have access to some of the best IT/computing skills in the world so try using them and even more so try not offending their intelligence with simplistic “baby food” reassurances that all will be well while you blunder from one disaster to the next.

    Not a happy bunny!

    Comment by James and Kay — August 25, 2007 #

  139. Thanks for the warning about camfrog, mr nice guy no more. Now I know not to waste my time on a chat suitable only for children and prudes.

    If Yahoo Chat got like that it would truly be in the toilet.

    Comment by mourn4chat — August 25, 2007 #

  140. Yahoo was working fine last night and I was able to get into the room I wanted to go. But today….can’t get into any room I want and only found a couple of rooms that the bots haven’t taken over. It was nice while it lasted but seemed like the bots must have figured it out because they have tied up almost all the rooms again. How long is it going to take Sarah and company to eliminate the bots so we can chat without being sent to rooms we don’t want to go just because the bots are tying up all the other rooms? I am almost tempted to go back to Pal Talk until Yahoo gets this mess completely worked out.

    Comment by John — August 25, 2007 #

  141. IT does NOT work

    Comment by mcratty — August 25, 2007 #

  142. The only way I can chat is to log into messenger and invite friends to Conferance. Request denied when trying to log into anyone of the chat rooms full of BOTS

    Comment by mcratty — August 25, 2007 #

  143. Verification should need to be entered every 15 minutes or you’re booted out of chat. Theres no reason for ANYone, bot or not, to sit idle in a room if they aren’t actively chatting.

    Comment by Parry Hotter — August 25, 2007 #

  144. Re; i dont care what they said look at the roomlist and you will see the rooms are open again

    Comment by wat happenin —
    maybe open but still full of bots. Is Sarah real or a Yahoo bot trying to placate us?

    Comment by james_cork53 — August 25, 2007 #

  145. yahoo it’s time to reset the rooms again and implement the chat verification word upon join in. this will band aid the problem for now. of course you will delete this post so fu in advance.

    Comment by fuu — August 25, 2007 #

  146. Bots in again almost unuseable can sort please

    Comment by Mark — August 25, 2007 #

  147. #

    ignore all you want mark. the room will still be locked so whats the point duh!!

    Comment by hey dummy — August 25, 2007 #
    —————————————————————————————
    CLICK !! SEE IT WORKS WELL-ROFLMBO lock down the rooms-unlike YOURSELF i don’t live in chat rooms-nor do I waste my bandwidth on abusers like yourself-give me a address so I can send you some Cheese to go with your WHINE-Bahahahahha!!!!

    Comment by Mark — August 25, 2007 #

  148. Was great last night can u sort it so we can have are chat back come on bots taking over again plllllllllllllllease

    Comment by Mark — August 25, 2007 #

  149. Ty you Sarah for all the hard work. Lets just hope some of the friends we grew to know have not left yahoo chat.

    On other matters though.
    #1 why Do I get “Chat Error” When I am sending a message while in a chat room?

    #2 Is Yahoo doing away with the profiles. I went to update my photo and was asked to select and alternate site. Can you explain the reason for this?

    Comment by kssnuggle — August 25, 2007 #

  150. Sarah,

    This chat room disconnection set by Yahoo, is it going to get fix? I thought the point for that was to disconnect bots/pornbots, but why us real chatters getting disconnected from the room too?

    Please address Yahoo about this action which I think is a bad idea, who’ll suffer most are those in dial-up for joining back the rooms (hassle) instead of the bots/pornbots.

    Why I raised this dial up issues, very soon I’ll be on dial up for 20-30days as Im moving house.

    Comment by Dave (Yahoo Chat Fanatic) — August 25, 2007 #

  151. Sarah,
    I’ll believe it when I see it. I’ve used these rooms for over a decade. Never have they been this bad. I imagine someone will loose their jobs over this pathetic excuse for enginering. Perhaps your the scapegoat ! With service like this, it shouldn’t be too long before Google buy you out. One can only hope.

    Comment by Justy — August 25, 2007 #

  152. Cripes. The first room I entered tonight had 37 bots with “cam head.” The next room had 25. Another room had 32 bots. I did not count the ones without “ears.”

    What is it gonna take to convince Yahoo — and some of you posting here, who think the problem goes away if you Iggy them — that bots are choking the system?

    Comment by mourn4chat — August 25, 2007 #

  153. Well, I can get into some rooms, which is an improvement. But as others have indicated, some rooms are still royally screwed up and impossible to enter.

    Comment by Janus — August 25, 2007 #

  154. well on my side there is still rooms showing 5000 and rooms are full.so i dont think the rooms are fixed yet.still alot rooms show 5000 and full cant get in.what is the problem??please update us with more please.and also i was in earlier and chat signed me out of the chat room. thank you.

    Comment by gina — August 25, 2007 #

  155. My suggestion, since the bots basicly filled up the rooms, during the troubles last week.

    Why not shut chat down, clear the rooms of bots and chatters.

    If this is done, during peak chat hours.And announced ahead of time.

    It will allow, humans to to again fill the rooms.

    And the bot problem, will go back to the way it was , before last weeks troubles.

    That will give yahoo time to come up with a solution for the bots.

    Comment by mark — August 25, 2007 #

  156. nice to find this blog, although its useless to me

    We of the wide-brown-land downunder…

    Yahoo7 dont run a blog, nor are they acknowledging any problem,,,

    nor are they fixing anything…

    Sarah! surely, it cant be hard to rid us of bots! That ONE THING would make life tolerable again.

    And down here, our other great scourge is the mass invasion of rooms in the aussie regional section by indian/pakistani/philipino users.

    WTF?

    Comment by Paull — August 25, 2007 #

  157. Wow..one day and the bots nearly wiped out chat again….it’s just horrible..the rooms keep getting filled up and people are just being pushed to the higher numbered rooms more and more each day..until eventually the bots fill up yahoo completely again and no one will be able to get in rooms like before. It’s horrible.

    Comment by justin — August 25, 2007 #

  158. Elligitimate ? Nice command of the “English” langauge there “News”.

    Comment by yer_house — August 26, 2007 #

  159. Hey all, oohya chat just got their new system up and is supposed to have voice and cam working monday.

    Comment by iabullrider — August 26, 2007 #

  160. Ok here’s a very serious post at what needs to be fixed I hope you read this:

    1. The rooms are full of bots, you need to make sure EVERYTHING works 100% and then shut down yahoo for some hours, and then restart so the passive bots that hang out in rooms constantly don’t get a chance to fill up the rooms. As it is now it is virtually impossible to join certain rooms because they got like 30 passive bots.

    2. The “/join ” command has to get working again in some sort of way.

    3. The room list is still showing every room as 50 ppl in them when it is clear that most of them, especially the higher ones don’t have 50 ppl.

    Thanks for everything

    /Sue

    Comment by MissKim — August 26, 2007 #

  161. Sarah,

    Thanks for the update. I for one find it rather amusing to hear just how much so many “people” are having withdrawl from chat. You have done a great service by allowing them a break from thier fantasy and an opportunity to focus on real life. Keep up the good work.

    Comment by idle lurker — August 26, 2007 #

  162. Thanks for getting chat back up. Will be so glad when you can control or do away with the bots who clog the rooms and always sending porn messages. Used to love yahoo chat and used yahoo services alot and purchased from yahoo ads but now with all the bots keeping us out of our chat rooms I dont do much business on yahoo anymore. Lot of the regulars are migrating to other services. I would just think with a company the size of yahoo with all the techs that it wouldnt take so long to do a fix.
    but thanks for at least getting the chat rooms back up

    Comment by ck — August 26, 2007 #

  163. I can’t consider chat fixed when 90% of the names in any room are OBVIOUS bots. Another 8% are less obvious, but still recognizable as bots. The remaining 2% is ME, watching bots trying to hustle each other:

    chasing_hearts_6933: how is everyone?!
    a_vivacious.angel_3116: lolol
    perfect_princess_6037_qupf: hihi people… 20/female
    dancing_diva_8343: guys! play with me plzzzz!! LOL
    perfect_princess_6037_qupf: i am very hot
    dancing_diva_8343: i should play nasty
    a_vivacious.angel_3116: im going to get on webcam
    alana968sl: any guys from therUS/Canada here
    a_sexxy_one_3401: I’m 20/f… I have pics in my profile
    alana968sl: anyone bored n wanna chat?

    JUST SHUT IT DOWN!

    Comment by mourn4chat — August 26, 2007 #

  164. Hey, thanks. Appreciate the fixing of room entry, but could you do something about the bots. Seems they are holding almost all rooms to ransom & the genuine chatters are kept out. I agree with others that 48 out of 50 in a room is a bot, & the other two ID is simply stuck. Thanks again

    Comment by __RoosteR__ — August 26, 2007 #

  165. the fight rooms should not be open back up to many kids hang in there and plus they use rooms lockers to lock up the fight rooms,to many problems in the fight rooms,its time to moved on

    Comment by markj — August 26, 2007 #

  166. lmfao a day and the bots have pwned all the rooms lol everyone is full no real chatters HAHAHAHA y! had this coming fu yahomo

    Comment by tamz — August 26, 2007 #

  167. Umm, just a thought that’s been going through my mind, but did it ever cross anyones mind that Sarah is just a copy and paste job by yahoo who was never really here to begin with?

    This entire thing was for a quick pat on the back and that’s it. Sarah is not here and never was and never will be.

    Just a thought

    Comment by Tide — August 26, 2007 #

  168. By the way, I’m happily back in the room not typing so I won’t get kicked off by the chat error notice, and watching everyone else get disconnected due to the same problem.

    At least I can watch?

    This is not the way to chat and I know that would be new chatters will never stick with yahoo due to this and and bot issue.

    Comment by Tide — August 26, 2007 #

  169. the bots go in rooms buy camand line only seeing they are lil hack programs. they are full of code like code to enter a chat room. so change the code to get in the chat room and put some type of aint-spam aint-virus aint-malware scanner at room entry and switching cuz if you think about it if your home pc get a bot on it you have virus malware and spam scanners to find them and remove them..a chat server is just like a home computer.

    Comment by jeremy — August 26, 2007 #

  170. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

    The bots have taken over again!

    Cant… get … into … the … rooms!

    Comment by Brad — August 26, 2007 #

  171. There is more serious aspects of the BOT flood. Most of the ones in chat have just shown up with the new servers. Either someone has an axe to grind, or security exploits have been found and are being utilized that previously didnt exist. Either way, the percentage is still up , and growing. Also most bots have a profile usually, matching data fields from profiles should be used to flag Yahoo of possible bot activity. Flagged profiles should then have visual verification to login to Yahoo services AT ALL. ( Come on, how many “Vegas 23/F’s can there REALLY be? ) Clearing of invalid usernames could prove to be more useful than all the chatroom modifications altogether. OK, if Yahoo is making a buck off of some bots, just keep them down to a reasonable percentage, less than 5 per room. Instead of banning ALL 3rd party clients, I would encourage Partnering with them, at least those willing to do so, as their clients have features that are quite beneficial to the user-not for malicious usage, but to enhance chat. Thanks Yahoo for listening enough to step back from some of the planned changes, and hopefully some other things will get sorted out soon.

    Comment by Julie — August 26, 2007 #

  172. 5 ids per ip? lol…. what about a company network with 40 machines all sharing the same IP address all wanting to join the same room ?

    then what?

    upgrade the authentication, kill 3rd party, let’s see all chat clients die including my own.

    Comment by Craig. — August 26, 2007 #

  173. now craig…who would you bitch and moan to if 3rd party cliens were disabled…seriously though..yahoo should be in contact with programmers such as yourself and david and other client makers..to resolve these issues..you guys are the best at what you do.

    mazz

    Comment by mazz — August 26, 2007 #

  174. This may sound foolish. But is there not a legal remedy to the bot infestation? Yahoo owns the servers. Yahoo is a commercial enterprise that makes revenue from advertising. The bots are simply intrusive advertisements that are using yahoo’s servers and service and, I assume, are not payng for the use of those services. And, although I must admit that I have not read the terms of service agreement in detail (who really ahs?) I would assume that there is something in there that would be interpretted as an agreement for those using the service not to use it for that purpose. Is it not true, then, that the bot makers are stealing from yahoo? This is theft. Certainly yahoo could make a legal case against any bot maker or hoster they could identify, either as a criminal action or a tort action. Am I missing something here? If we assume that there would be some standard fee for each ad placed and multiply that by the number of times any single bot places a line of chat in a room or launches a PM times the number of bots any one server is hosting and the nu,bers add up quickly as to how much revenue is being stolen. A few multimillion dollar judgements would likely be a bit of a disincentive to attack yahoo services would it not? Sure, tehe bots from other countries woule probably be untouchable, but it would send a message. So why hasn’t any such action been taken? Or am I missing something here?

    Comment by Bill — August 26, 2007 #

  175. ho hum… chat not working, can’t meet anyone.. 50 porn bots in each room, can’t login, can’t change rooms…
    yep.. just a usual kinda yahoo day..
    I might go and rollerblade down the steep hill that is the yahoo stock graph..

    Comment by fred — August 26, 2007 #

  176. you know it sucks that it takes over a hour to get into a room i hate yahoo it sucks so muchi guess if your a big company you dont care about the lil guy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!i want to kill the manager

    Comment by bigdog30033 — August 26, 2007 #

  177. @ Bill -

    With your reasoning, Yahoo! could also add its customers to any lawsuit that use third party clients. This would bring Yahoo! to the same place the RIAA and MPAA are - suing their customers. Bad for business really.

    —END

    The thing is that there is a TOS, and there are violations of it, but if Yahoo would do some of the things that have been suggested by others they would see client usage drop. Yahoo refuses, or is incapable (?) of doing any of these fine suggestions like REAL AUTHENTICATION (not ymsg auth, but something more like what others suggest). Also, if someone has run a hack (or a program that uses a hack, or a script, or ….) to add someone and then sees them online and sends them a file that makes the recipient in violation of the law, well … you see the point don’t you? I sure did when I read it - and that is why I use a third party client. It blocks those who aren’t on my list. Yahoo can’t, or won’t do this.

    Third party clients also integrate packet filtering. Yahoo software/servers/’gerbil on wheel’ certainly doesn’t do this. If it did, 100% of the boot codes would no longer work.

    Maybe Yahoo! will get a million monkeys who sit at a million computers and will type for a million years to get a working chat?

    Comment by RegisteredTrademark — August 26, 2007 #

  178. pqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpq
    bdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbd

    Pat on the back to chat team for speeding up chat entry and room joins.

    good job!, keep it up.

    pqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpqpq
    bdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbd

    Comment by DeepThawt — August 26, 2007 #

  179. Bill…that’s not foolish at all. It’s one of the more sensible ideas I’ve read here. But you know what? Stuff that makes sense to us is ignored by Yahoo management. Good ideas and bad are equally ignored, same as complaints, spam reports and abuse reports.

    Posting here is just so much p1ssing into the wind.

    Comment by mourn4chat — August 26, 2007 #

  180. biil wrote ..>”Certainly yahoo could make a legal case against any bot maker or hoster they could identify”

    same for yahoo customers. we can make a legal case against yahoo for damages to our computers resulting from malisious attacks executed by booters and hackers. yahoo doesn’t enforce TOC service violations and I have a feeling yahoo wont be around much longer. until then i suggest everyone uninstall all yahoo products.

    Comment by hi bill — August 26, 2007 #

  181. hy Sarah , i’m fron yahoo brazil , end for long time the rooms doesn’t work , some people went to another chat’s , but all us are waiting for the best yahoo , we hope the problem get fix soon..thanks…..

    Comment by andrenj__yahoo brazil — August 26, 2007 #

  182. Hey sarah it just crap again bots everywhere clogging it all up no one real can get in

    Comment by Mark — August 26, 2007 #

  183. I know you aint to blame you are just passing the message on to us all but cant you go kick some butt with the chat technician’s for us all

    Comment by Mark — August 26, 2007 #

  184. Glad to see something is bein done. Also glad to see a few others threatening to boycott all Yahoo’s paid services. I think this is the way to go to make them responsible to us. They can make it decent again in a hurry if it is costin them.

    Comment by devildog1941 — August 26, 2007 #

  185. Sarah, I’m curious, how much is yahoo paying you to lie to all of us? I think yahoo should just drop chat all together because it’s obvious they have no clue on how to run it. I’m giving yahoo to the end of the month to do something about the bot situation and then if nothing has changed, I am gone.

    Comment by Alan — August 26, 2007 #

  186. while all this great updating is going on I wish you would consider a way that an individual can log into the adult profiles section just once and not have to then relogon for each additional adult profile that you wish to view. I find this an extremely irritating and totally unnecessary thing to do. I am also unable to get in chat AGAIN today it apears the bots have filled all 100 IL rooms again.

    Comment by illini_dick — August 26, 2007 #

  187. i dont understand the “philosophy” of bot’s creators: if all rooms are all full of Bot… who will be so ingenuous to try to chat with them…

    Comment by moorecat — August 26, 2007 #

  188. The end of chat rooms is slow but inevitable. MSN bailed out of the chatroom business last October. Text messaging and instant messaging is where the temporary money is at. You can go look at the YHOO stock news and see the writing on the wall. Yahoo is now dropping photos and switching everyone to flickr. Who knows how much yahoo has spent on 360 to compete with the facebooks and myspaces of the world. The core product that started the company, “yahoo directory” has lost the that battle to the big “G”. It’s portal offerings are going nowhere, Yahoo senior execs are to busy rearranging the deck chairs on the Yatanic to focus on more resources on chat.

    Comment by red_headed_stepchild — August 26, 2007 #

  189. oh well nobody uses yahoo for anything so it doesnt matter. i mean yahoo is so 90’s lol. p.s protect your personal information from hackers by deleting your yahoo email account!!! use a more secure service like hotmail etc..

    Comment by protect yourself — August 26, 2007 #

  190. another wonderful day trying to chat……seems the fix yahoo did only lasted half a day until the bots figured out how to get around it so they have taken over almost all the rooms again making damn near impossible of us to get into any room. It really sucks that none of us can get into any room and even getting bounced around we get stuck in rooms that are 99% bots. Apparently Yahoo is not working on this as hard as they should be and we are the ones suffering because of their lackadaisical attitude towards fixing chat. If chat ever gets fixed I will be surprised but I am not going to hold my breath hoping it gets fixed soon.

    Comment by John — August 26, 2007 #

  191. went in chat room today, 25 out of 30 in room were bots! to be honest, its a free service and i dont believe for a second that Yahoo cares one bit. been chatting for years and bots have only gotton worse. if they wanted to, you cant tell me yahoo cant figure out a way, by now to get rid of them. may as well get used to it. if there not under control by now, they never will be. thats just my two cents…

    Comment by Shawn — August 26, 2007 #

  192. So what IS a good alternative to yahoo chat ? Google is everywhere these days , do they have a solution ?

    Comment by Dave — August 26, 2007 #

  193. Sarah, while i appreciate being able to enter the rooms again, and voice finally works in Vista, when can we expect something to be done about the bots?
    When ever someone has clicked on that report as span box when iggying im’s, shouldn’t you be looking at this? If you have, you would have seen a pattern that is quite obvious. Also, if you look at your user list, and see that there is more then say 5 repeated name sequences wouldn’t that give you a clue also. I have been in several rooms where the same bot has showed up, and sometimes shows up in multibles, but the only thing diffrent about the names is the numbers posted on the end. Even the profiles are the same.
    While again thank you for fixing the errors, please do something about the bots, for it is driving away chatters to aol and myspace.

    Comment by origional_teddy — August 26, 2007 #

  194. In my opinion all those High level yahoo managers and exec’s who for some unknown reason decided to have the yahoo chat rooms, changed/updated/modify in the last few updates should be FIRED!
    They are the ones who should be held responsible. I am sure the engineering staff was only doing what there bosses instructed them to do. The above mentioned individuals are the reason Yahoo is currently going through this crisses.If it survives this crisses maybe the new exec’s will have learned a lesson. Yahoo watch the stocks…the public is telling you something. And that is get your act together, from the janitor to the CEO.

    Comment by kssnuggle — August 26, 2007 #

  195. I wish you developers would fix the hack or hole that lets people lock down the mic and you cannot ignore them no matter what you do or what client you use.

    Comment by Elbo — August 26, 2007 #

  196. Seems to me ,,this would be a inside job….I think you need to look at your team and weed out the bad ones…..Sat Aug 25Th chats seemed to be working fine all trough the night but by Sun 26Th as soon as the boss turned his back chat has went to hell again
    are you sure you are not getting a cut off the top for letting the bots take over…chat has went so far down hill there is no1 coming in the rooms and everyone is switching to pal talk and other chat servers … Hope you get your acts together!!!!!!!! how long will it take you to fix the mess this time a month???? Well hope it is soon

    p.s not trying to sound like a asshole but sometime people need little push in the right direction….and to check the situation from all angles….

    if a hacker can do this to chat in a day a team of many should have noproblem fixing it!!!!

    Comment by observer — August 26, 2007 #

  197. I am new to this messenger stuff and I need some people to add to my friends… anyone wanna chat???

    Comment by April — August 26, 2007 #

  198. On other thing, people voice chat using one id and text chat with another id. It would help if messenger let you ignore voice chatters not in the room by clicking on the name next to the Talk button.

    Obviously, there are serious architectural flaws in your chat system if hackers can write scripts in a matter of days that mess with your system, prevent people from ignoring them, lock down mics, send boot codes to people, cause people to ignore themselves, cause people to logout, etc.

    I presume you don’t check the login credentials on your low level messages in the chat protocol, because you just accept a logout message for user XYZ even though it came from unknown user on a different IP.

    Comment by Elbo — August 26, 2007 #

  199. anyone else having problems with text in chatrooms? that is seeing your own..and others?

    Comment by justin — August 26, 2007 #

  200. I managed to make it into a chat room last night through messenger with a few of my friends. They could see what I was typing but I couldnt see any of their text. Turns out I had to upgrade from 6.0 to 8.0 to see their text and I completely despise this new version of messenger.

    Comment by Alan — August 26, 2007 #

  201. Please I don’t know if Yahoo cooperates with the bot makers but understand that the current amount of bots makes it so noone will use yahoo chat and if noone uses yahoo chat there won’t be any use for your bots right?

    Before your “upgrade” there used to be maybe 10-15 bots in a room, a perfectly manageble number, now the number is near 35-40, people log in to a room that is devoid of humans and log out again..and more bots come.

    I know you guys have ignroed the bots a long time but seriously it’s really drivign real people away now, I hate to just yell wolf but I even started to check out pal talk, I really wish yaoo will get fixed and I also think it will

    Comment by MissKim — August 26, 2007 #

  202. SO much for the reduction in bots , 2 days after the rooms are back up , ther bots worse than ever . Thank god for Ytunnel , maybe Yahoo should just hire its creator to fix their chatroom problem since the in house IT can’t do it .

    Comment by Mortech — August 26, 2007 #

  203. The recent fixes did improve things, but it’s still far from perfect. Here’s my problems with the how the servers currently work.

    1. The servers are still rejecting chat text randomly. You receive a chat error when this happens.

    2. When changing rooms or leaving rooms, your name often gets ’stuck’ in the previous room. You can even become stuck in more than one room at once. This didn’t happen with the old behavior where any instances of your name still in chat would be logged out at chat login or joining a new room.

    3. Spam bots are still clogging up rooms. Add a CAPTCHA or similar anti-bot measure.

    4. Booting is still around. Stopping the buffer overflow disconnection would stop so many booters dead in their tracks.

    There’s a few other changes I’ve seen mentioned that either doesn’t bother me.

    1. The /join command “not working”. The command still works from Yahoo Messenger if you enter the room name with the correct capitalization. From third party clients you have to specify the roomspace id. It’s not that big of a deal.

    2. Getting logged out of chat every 60-90 minutes. This is annoying to a lot of people, but since I always used the YCHT protocol when it was around this isn’t new concept to me. I actually agree with having a time limit on a chat session to help kick idle users and bots.

    Comment by Infinite Luta — August 26, 2007 #

  204. i find it amazing how the real users get disconnected but the bots stay…havent seen a bot get disconnected..but every 20 mins i do.

    Comment by mazz — August 26, 2007 #

  205. lol…back 2 square one of not being able 2 get in the rooms again…communication error comes up now…****sighhhhhhhh****

    Comment by ya im bored — August 26, 2007 #

  206. Wow i didnt know join worked thats awesome.

    Anyway the absolute worst thing rightnow is that bots are TOTALLY clogging up the rooms, it’s virtually impossible to enter them, and if you do you’re laone with 40 bots

    Comment by MissKim — August 26, 2007 #

  207. shawn wrote >went in chat room today, 25 out of 30 in room were bots! to be honest, its a free service and i dont believe for a second that Yahoo cares one bit. been chatting for years and bots have only gotton worse. if they wanted to, you cant tell me yahoo cant figure out a way, by now to get rid of them. may as well get used to it. if there not under control by now, they never will be. thats just my two cents…

    thats why you dont sign up for any of their paid services. it’s that simple. yahoo doesn’t know it but they are running themselves out of town.

    Comment by protect yourself — August 26, 2007 #

  208. Yahoo is not being truthful about getting rid od the bots. It’s a source of income for Yahoo. I don’t believe it when they say they are addressing the problem. Yahoo just doesn’t get it. Why are they even wasting the money anymore on chatrooms? They lost millions of users because of the porn bots. And now more are leaving Yahoo, too.

    Downloaded newest version ..It’s full of browser add ons and spyware. But now I can’t see text. But I sure can see more bots than before.

    What a fricking joke yahoo is anymore.

    Comment by Yahoo Blows — August 26, 2007 #

  209. “And like before, your age, sex, location info shown in the chat rooms will reflect what is in your Yahoo! Profile (rather than your Yahoo! registration).”

    Im sadden that this issue is NOT fix as yet, Sarah.

    And also that room disconnect is very annoying, its bringing more bots in the room rather, us real chatters are included to this room disconnect.

    Comment by Dave (Yahoo Chat Fanatic) — August 26, 2007 #

  210. It’s pointless to even have the chats if they are filled with bots. If you’re not getting rid of the bots because you have some sort of deal then that’s extremely stupid on Yahoo!’s part. No *real* people will go in the chats anymore and Yahoo! chat will turn into how the AIM chats used to be and we all know what happened to the AIM chats…they don’t exist anymore because they were overrun with bots and AIM never did anything to fix it.

    Your update said that there were changes made but it is still the same for me. You still can’t talk to anyone in the chat so it’s worthless to me. Is there any reason why you can’t just put an image verification code check before a user enters a chat room? That would take care of the problem.

    Comment by courtney — August 26, 2007 #

  211. It’s nice to see the bot problem is evidently being tackled, going by my examination of the rooms as a chatter. Message transception in Professors’ Chat:1 is close to normal, RTT latency for a simple ten-character read-respond is only around 10 seconds, chat erroring is less frequent.

    I have been signed in for over 12 hours, at current time, and have seen little but increased stability, less bots and lots of people chatting to each other in the chat room. other rooms are also clearing up slowly.

    I’m sorry that some people can never be pleased, Sarah. For myself, I’m delighted with your engineers’ progress, and am enjoying the return of the room list code to normal, as it now means I can get into my home chat room.

    KEEP IT UP! :-D

    Comment by John Morden — August 26, 2007 #

  212. Btw, kudos for keeping us all posted (pun intended). ;-)

    Comment by John Morden — August 26, 2007 #

  213. The Yahoo! chat room bot fiasco is FINALLY getting a modicum of national attention (Washington Post).

    http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/08/yahoo_messenger_network_overru.html

    Perhaps now some bot remediation will be forthcoming?

    Comment by Will — August 26, 2007 #

  214. I have to laugh if you ppl really think the BOT problem is fixed or been fixed in any manor i suggest you try and click on ANY room in the Counntry MUsic room they are ALL full and you can bet your arse its NOT with chatters but filled with the ever so loving BOTS that have taken over yahoo chat rooms ….. If yahoos doing everything in its opwer to fix this mess they have allowed i know for one Im not convinced they are so those of you t hat are sitting there with rose coloured glasses on i suggest you take em off & Get a Clue!!!
    Yahoo Chat isnt yahoo chat its YAHOOPORN!!!

    Comment by getreal — August 26, 2007 #

  215. yeah come on can we have fix bots back cant chat to anyone they blocking out al lrooms

    Comment by Mark — August 26, 2007 #

  216. come on sarah u can dooooooooo it get it all back to how we used to love it :D

    Comment by Mark — August 26, 2007 #

  217. thanks for the post will. this is only the beginning though. you did it to yourself yahoo. I highly doubt anyone will use any yahoo provided service in the near future.

    Comment by thanks will — August 26, 2007 #

  218. _____________URGENT __________________

    Sarah ,

    Another problem here since Yahoo limit the rooms upto 100 only … now try and go to Interracial Dating …. any rooms is FULL of BOTS!

    I cant get in any of the rooms AT ALL!

    Now tell me is Yahoo Chat really fixed?????

    Please do check out that rooms and you’ll see for yourself that its totally full of bots and real CHATTERS CANT GET IN AT ALL!

    Comment by Dave (Yahoo Chat Fanatic) — August 26, 2007 #

  219. Courtney ,

    to make matters worst we now also have time limit of staying in the chat rooms which really is so annoying as you get disconnected by Yahoo every 60 - 90mins and once you get disconnected this creates a space for bots or pornbots to get in!

    Well what is Yahoo really doing??? They assuming its fixed but from what Im seeing, nones been done YET.

    Comment by Dave (Yahoo Chat Fanatic) — August 26, 2007 #

  220. Ok sorry yahoo rooms are right back where you left them your quick fix got killed by bots, instead of getting network error..every room is just full instead..

    Comment by MissKim — August 26, 2007 #

  221. i tried talk city the other day. it seemed ok and norton didn’t detect any spyware.

    Comment by searching — August 26, 2007 #

  222. MissKim, what the Yahoo Engineers did … they totally messed the rooms up!

    We/Us real chatters are also included with this Yahoo Room Disconnect every 60-90mins. Isnt that a joke once we get disconnected ONLY TO BE REPLACED BY BOTS/PORNBOTS (which cared most).

    Comment by Dave (Yahoo Chat Fanatic) — August 26, 2007 #

  223. Yah but they “fixed” the problems two days ago..you couldn’t enter certain rooms you just got “network error” message..well the rooms are just as bad now except its “room full”

    Comment by MissKim — August 26, 2007 #

  224. Well, it is batantly apparent that the bot makers have made it their mission to destroy yahoo chat. These bots are clearly now malicious in nature and not simple advertising. So what does yahoo intend to do about this clear attempt tp destroy their business? Just curious. Technical solutions are one thing, but this is something that goes to the very core of internet commerce. When an individual or group of individuals maliciously attempts to shut down a service, this must be dealt with harshly lest it become acceptable. I just woner if yahell has the chutzbah to actually make a stand against these invaders.

    Comment by Bill — August 26, 2007 #