Yahoo! Messenger Blog

477 Comments

TrackBack URI

1. Thanks once again Sarah, your updates are always appreciated. Hopefully everyone can quit complaining soon.

   Comment by Parry Hotter — September 13, 2007 #

2. Thanks for the update! Another issue you should fix in this upgrade is the IDs not leaving the room even after getting disconnected (forcefully/booted) from chat. If the ids remain stuck in room then slowly it will take away the spaces available in the rooms which is already limited to 50 per chatroom.
   Also please add a captcha popup box in messenger itself instead of opening browser everytime for verification, it gets kind of irritating after sometime opening so many browser windows just for changing through different chatrooms.
   Last but not the least please limit the number of connections that are allowed from the same ip address to yahoo chat server within 1 chatroom. Yahoo should limit it to at maximum 3 connections per ip address, then we won’t have so many users using multiple ids in same chatroom to eventually lockout the room for other users.

   Comment by Rick — September 13, 2007 #

3. Ah, thank ya. Please say you’re going to progressively address the other little issues too. Thanks! =)

   Comment by Venom — September 13, 2007 #

4. These are much needed improvements so I’m glad that they’re being made. Bravo Yahoo!

   Comment by Adam [Torseq Tech] — September 13, 2007 #

5. Out with the old bugs.. in with the new bugs.

   Heh. Heh.

   There’s one very annoying thing when you’re doing voice chat. When you press the Talk button and someone PMs you, you lose focus on the chatroom window which causes the Talk button to pop up and knocks you off the mic. It’s very annoying. It makes no difference whether you let PMs go to a separate window or not, the window still loses focus.

   By the way, this is very annoying when you’re typing too. You start typing to someone, you get a PM and it steals focus and the typed characters go to the wrong window.

   Also, I hope you guys are planning on a feature in messenger (client-side or server-side) for flood protection, which would kick in if someone from IP address w.x.y.z sends 50 messages inside of 5 seconds. There should also be an option to auto-ignore anyone hitting the threshold. It won’t solve booting, but it’s a very simple way to cut way down on it. mIRC and other clients have had that for years.

   By the way, I also hope you consider a 2nd type of ignore. You select a user and press an Ignore All Communication From This User’s IP Address. You already have the IP address on the server-side, so it wouldn’t be very difficult to add a simple IP block per session on the server-side.

   Anyway, it looks like chat is doing better these days, except for today. There is flakiness going on, presumeably from the update. I keep getting Room Full messages after I enter a valid CAPTCHA. I used to get Room Full before entering the CAPTCHA, which was far less a pain in the ***.

   Comment by Elbo — September 13, 2007 #

6. Hi Sarah,

   At first I was a little annoyed with the new Captcha security layer, but I thought it would be worth it if it kept the cam bots out. For a while it seemed to work, but today every room I entered had several cam bots all asking me to sign up for their website. Guess they found a way around the verification process. Also I now get the message that a room is full AFTER I do the Captcha verification, not before. What a waste of time that is! I doubt the first 10 rooms under a specific topic ALL have 50 people in them… especially when I get into one and all I find are cam bots!

   –Rand

   Comment by randseed — September 13, 2007 #

7. Your new chapta or whatever it’s called is not right. No one can see text or the chatters in the chatrooms with or without ytunnel. So what good is your new security if you can’t chat? No wonder people hate yahoo any more. You make all these new changes but you don’t fix the proper problems that need to be fixed so folks can use your chat program. What’s up with that? Who cares if you take out the bots or not when you can’t even see anyone chatting? Useless fixes and not addressing the more serious problems just doesn’t make sense!! I’d rather have bots and be able to chat with friends then have no bots and not be able to see my friends!!! C’mon get with the program here!! Fix the chatrooms the way they should be so we can chat and to hell with the bots! We all have iggy sheesh!

   Comment by deb — September 13, 2007 #

8. I have to admit that this is the most I’ve seen Yahoo do with their chatrooms in years, so for that alone I tip my hat to you, at least you are finally trying to do something to take care of all the problems.

   Also those of you complaining…notice that the times for maintance are pacific time. As of me writing this they still have another hour approximately of maintance time left. I know you all are getting tired of all this, but please at least recognize they are trying to make things better and give them the time they are saying they need.

   Thanks again Sarah for the updates and for your staff’s continual improvement/debugging of the chat.

   Comment by Jon — September 13, 2007 #

9. Well I just hope I can keep sound now and not let the voice bots have it .

   and I ‘m wondering here every time you all do a update the rooms that are already open close, This is getting old now cant ya find a way for that not to happen geesh!!!

   Comment by Julianna — September 13, 2007 #

10. Thanks for keeping us informed. Pleeeeeeeease get it figured out. I am going through yahoo withdrawls.

    Comment by badass — September 13, 2007 #

11. 2 things 1st one is with a bug in Yahoo Messenger 8.1 that has always been there as the 1st 8.1 was released now this was not in 8.0 and down but only with 8.1 when you format the pc and reinstall Yahoo Messenger 8.1 some times on signing on and you try to send a user a pm or they pm you you cant see there text or you cant see theres you will have to sign off Yahoo Messenger then sign back on then you can see there text and yours , The other thing is a lot of users still like 7.0 as with anything above 7.0 if you turn pm’s off to users not on your list if you go in a chat room you cant see no users type only if there on your list with that being said its a down fall because most users who do like Yahoo Messenger and do enjoy chatting have to keep there im’s open just so they can see users typing i think Sarah Bacon and the workers over there should change it back to if you turn your pm’s off then only people on your friends list can pm you and if you go in rooms you can see and others can see your post as how it is now like i said people are pretty much forced to keep there pm’s on and anyone can pm bomb people still or send cam bombs and that so can yous change that and fix that bug thanks in a new build of 8.1 Thanks

    Comment by Cisco — September 13, 2007 #

12. Thanks for the update will wait and see how the new changes make a difference to chat.

    Comment by Banger — September 13, 2007 #

13. Ah so maybe that’s why I was having some trouble for about 15 minutes today, tried to enter a chat room so I entered the captcha then it would go to a webpage with a 999 error. Ok that’s cool. It only happen that one time.

    I also made the mistake of doing the Yahoo Messenger update through Yahoo Messenger itself, a dialog box appeared to update. That was a bad thing, now I can hear voice but all my voice controls are greyed out. I can’t even hit the talk button and chat away in voice. Going to uninstall Messenger and install on older version to fix this until a fix is issued.

    It’s getting there, unfortunately with a lot of the people having left including a lot of friends I used to talk to on Yahoo it could be a situation of too little too late.

    Comment by KBSoftware — September 13, 2007 #

14. The room list for for Karaoke Club and The Fight Room is all messed up. You missed the Voice Chat rooms on all your chat updates, Just try to enter any of the rooms. Still getting errors when trying to enter these rooms.
    Will they be fixed soon?

    Thanks

    Comment by Nelly — September 13, 2007 #

15. Why would anyone want more the one connection to a chat room. Those that use more then one are just playing games. Isn’t there enough games going on? I would suggest only one IP connection per chatter. Eleminate those getting into the room and then booting , cloneing or what ever. I also agree with fixing the ignor so it ignor’s the IP address and not just a name.

    As for the other problems some folks seem to be having, I havent had any problems getting into the Kansas Rooms.

    I would also like to see yahoo come up with a way of booting those that log onto messenger and their name sits there for days and the individual is not even at home. This may lighten the load on the servers.

    I will cross my fingers and also hope my long time friends have not givin up on yahoo, because of the mess in the last few weeks.

    Ya have to admit it Sarah. You knew it was coming, why wasn’t anything done to prevent the current situation.

    PS. Test the updates, make sure they work first.

    Comment by kssnuggle — September 13, 2007 #

16. a few things that Nelly typed
    I also agree with fixing the ignor so it ignor’s the IP address and not just a name.
    That made No Sense.
    also
    I will cross my fingers and also hope my long time friends have not givin up on yahoo, because of the mess in the last few weeks.
    Hum it has not been a few weeks its been evr since Oct 6, 2006 note its alot better from back then as you can get in to rooms good now but they still can fix some bugs in there Messenger as i typed a few post above
    also i seen you typed lots of oops that need fix as it was a hard time for me to understand some of the things you typed.

    Comment by Cisco — September 13, 2007 #

17. Welcome. I have a few more bugs i’ve identified in Mac client too. I continue to update my report daily. I’ve also been looking over CSS code used to control some functions and see need for improvement for rendering speed. Beta 2 runs quite slow on older

    Comment by Adam — September 13, 2007 #

18. If yahoo would implement the 1 ip - 1 user those e-cafe would greatly affected by it and probabably gone bankrupt also yahoo would loose alot o f costumers like hotels and some other establishments that uses LAN connections. If you are talking to eliminate the room fillers/booters that uses multiple ID’s in the room they can easily by-pass this by using proxies..

    Comment by hard_kill — September 13, 2007 #

19. OK howd you guys screw this one up?????? the captcha pops up BEFORE the room status??? so now I HAVE to type in the damn captcha only to find out the room is FULL???? GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER!

    Comment by SICK_OF_IT — September 13, 2007 #

20. thanks

    Comment by fatou — September 13, 2007 #

21. Yahoo,

    Get rid of the security layer. It isn’t stopping the bots one bit. I have to enter in a security code for each chat room, and now, I find out after entering the code, that the room is full. Waste!!!

    The rooms still don’t accurately reflect the number of chatters in the room. Seems the upgrade didn’t help at all.

    Comment by Charlie — September 13, 2007 #

22. Bravo. These fixes were very much needed. I’m sure there’s still a few kinks here and there (nothing is bug free), but most of the major ones are fixed now.

    And to kssnuggle, limiting Yahoo! Chat to one login per IP address is not a plausible solution. Not every computer on the internet has a unique internet IP address. Often times, a single IP address is shared by multiple users via Network Address Translation. This doesn’t only apply to home networks either. Most businesses and many small Internet Service Providers use NAT so they don’t have to assign each computer unique internet IP address.

    Comment by Infinite Luta — September 13, 2007 #

23. oh and by mac team working on problem you mean Karl Adam right? he’s the one and ONLY Mac messenger developer with tristan gone work for apple.

    Comment by Adam — September 13, 2007 #

24. They can’t do anything based on limiting connections from one IP, folks.

    Think of companies and proxy servers in general. When you are at work next time, visit http://www.whatismyip.com. Then have your friends do the same. If you have a corporate firewall you will all have the same IP (or couple, if multiple pipes).

    So what you suggest would lock out hundreds of legitimate different users from one company, for example.

    Comment by LearnNetworking — September 13, 2007 #

25. Looking at what has changed, the way the captcha verification now works along with chat error messages is quite problematic…

    When you join a room, you are now prompted to verify regardless of whether the room is available or not. It’s not until AFTER you complete the verification that you receieve any chat error messages (room full, if the room is full; user refused join, if the room number doesn’t exist yet; or communication error, if the entire roomspace is full). This means that if you want to make another attempt to get in to a room that’s full, you have to verify again. This can get old very quickly and makes getting in to full rooms very difficult. Users don’t want to verify only to find out that the room they were trying to join is full or otherwise unavailable.

    Yahoo needs to seriously consider going back to the old behavior of reporting chat errors (including “this room is full”) BEFORE the captcha validation process. With the old behavior, you would count toward the room’s user limit apon entering the “validation room”. This would assure that you would successfully enter the room after entering the captcha. If you didn’t verify within 5 minutes, you’d get disconnected from chat and the space reserved for you in the room would be released. As long as there’s a mechanism to flush unvalidated names out (which there was), I see no problem with that system.

    Against the popular belief, the fact that unverified users took up room space was NOT the reason rooms’ maximum user limit was going down. It was due to old chat sessions not getting signed out when you start a new chat session. This problem is now fixed. Altering the captcha so you have to veirify before finding out a room is full was an unnessassry step that only makes everything harder for the end user.

    While I’m pointing issues, how about some of the common problems with Yahoo! Messenger 8.1? They’re all chat related. These include the following:

    1.) Using the feature to “ignore anyone who is not on my Messenger list” also ignores chat text from people in the room if they aren’t on your buddy list. If ignoring chat text from non-buddies has to be a feature in Yahoo! Messenger, it should be OPTIONAL aside from the option to ignore users not added to your messenger list. That way you can prevent unsolicited instant messages while still being able to effectively use chat rooms.

    2.) The ‘auto ignore’ autrophy filter is broken. When a user triggers the auto ignore filter, it attempts to ignore your own username rather than ignoring the flooder. The end result is constantly receiving a “you can not ignore yourself” message when someone floods a room. If the flood is fast enough, it can even lock up messenger.

    3.) The chat profanifty word filter doesn’t honor the perference set from Yahoo Messenger preferences. The cause is simple. The WordFilter value is saved to the registry location “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\yahoo\pager\profiles\[Yahoo!_ID_Here]\Chat” yet is loaded and applied from “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\yahoo\pager\”.

    I know Yahoo! wants chat to work and are capable of doing so, but they must follow through with it and make sure everything works.

    Comment by Infinite Luta — September 13, 2007 #

26. OK the problem we have now is when changing rooms, it moves to the new room, the Captcha web page comes up and then after entering the verification code the room reports full. So you end up in limbo…. Before the room would report full before the Captcha page came up…

    Comment by Chris — September 14, 2007 #

27. can u guys understand simple English or u are just plain stupid? The title of this post is yahoo update meaning they are doing something in their server right at this very moment can’t u just wait until yahoo announce that the update is finished? Of course ul have some issue when u join rooms right now! thats the reason why we have an update right?

    second point u always said u can still see porn bots!!! hello stupid! yahoo never said captcha will elimanate porn bots for good they say it will just reduce the numbers coz it will take away the auto login capability and it is proven effective!. Yah sure u can still see 2 or 3 porn bots it might be joined manually in that room but hey use the ignore option for yahoo’s sake!!!!!if the bot send u a PM ignore it and report as spam is that simple? i wouldn’t take 5 sec to do that not unless u are mentally disable! in case u are (meaning a retard) u have no bussiness chatting u should confine urself in an institution!

    Yahoo is trying to address the issue let them do their job!!! and please while yahoo is doing the update get ur big fat ass out in ur basement meet some real people and have some taste of real life!

    PS… thank u yahoo for making the update “Yahoo Rules!”

    Comment by jamesbond — September 14, 2007 #

28. Ok whats the deal… The rooms are fillin up w/bots again n it’s makin it down right impossible for real people to get in n even more the bots aren’t leaving… I’ve been in one chat room most of the nite n these non talkin no profile bots are still in there n the real chatters who want in can’t get in… This is sooooo bs… So what did someone find a crack or something… I thought the Captcha was suppose to keep most of them out aint the case in the 30sh rooms… what gives

    Comment by Irriatated chatter — September 14, 2007 #

29. Sorry for my last post it’s just been frustratin tonight… Friends can’t get in takin an hour at least for some… I love the idea of the Captcha, it is workin but for some odd reason tonight there are a lot more bots maybe it is the upgrade, they snuck in somehow… I’ll just be glad this will get bk to normal I hope… (Without so many bots please)

    Ty n sorry

    Comment by Irriatated chatter — September 14, 2007 #

30. I’ve been waiting for a few more updates to the chatrooms and user validation (captcha) to see how things were going to go. I definitely applaud the efforts made by the development team as there’s been a significant reduction in bots although there’s still quite a few around (far less than the estimated 85% before the addition of the user validation). I imagine that some of the spammers are so intent they’ll eventually have the proverbial monkey throwing the switch. Although this last update fixed a few problems it introduced a few more:

    1) A bug in the chat servers causes the user validation code to be accepted, the user added to the room but they do not receive the list of users in the room or messages. They can however send messages and be seen by other users in the room. This may be related to #4 below. In some cases the user validation code is accepted but they are never added to the room even at all.

    2) You now get the ‘Room Full’ error after entering the user validation code. While this might have been a quick trade off due to the problems with the previous issue of rooms being full of people waiting to be validate it’s extremely annoying. The main problem is that you always get the user validation request EVEN if the room is already full.

    3) IIRC there have been at least two new releases of 8.1 (builds 419 and 421) since the introduction of the user validation code yet no integration with Messenger. At the very least you could have it embedded in the chat window or a popup window.

    4) Older versions of messenger can no longer enter chat rooms. They still receive the user validation request but even if the correct validation code is provided they do not receive the list of users and cannot see room text. They are however added to the room and can send messages to the room. Not really a big deal as I personally would like to see the servers block older versions of the YMSG protocol.

    Comment by Chet Simpson — September 14, 2007 #

31. The whole chat experience is lost with the latest modifications. Trying to get into a chat room, or changing chat rooms is frustrating and time consuming. When a room is reported full I end up nowhere, at least I used to stay in the original room. Often the Captcha verification fails. Its getting worse, not better…

    Comment by Chris — September 14, 2007 #

32. Time to take another 2 weeks off while things get fixed, anyone know a god IRC chat client ? Or is it time for me to sign back up for AOL ? (biig ew)

    Comment by Julie — September 14, 2007 #

33. You people writing long-winded, detailed bug reports are wasting your time. Assuming all these comments are even being read — which is doubtful — Yahoo might get around to fixing ONE bug (and thus creating 4 new ones,) WHEN THEY’RE GOOD AND READY. Which, judging by past performance, could take months.

    Yah00 pushes the limits of unusability.

    Comment by mourning_still — September 14, 2007 #

34. Why is it when you logout of Yahoo Messenger & then login again later that day or some time later you have deal with maybe 100’s more off line messages that have been sent to asking whether or not you want to add them to your address book etc. There is nothing you can do with this annoying pop-up’s prevailing dominance presiding until you have completed the tasks. Ok, you to your preference section and check the boxes to ignore messages from unwanted people, but it DOES NOT WORK as you still receive them.

    Regarding the Captcha, it is a complete waste of time & effort having to keep clicking on the hyperlink in the room that you wish to chat in. You are logged out after while then you have to re-select a room again, and then, repeat the whole process again. It would be much nicer if you could access you quite quickly and if you do not like it could just select another room and view what’s going in that room - no! You have to keep hitting the Captcha link for you Profile fro variation each time… Do something about this please as may start losing people.

    Comment by Off-line PM's — September 14, 2007 #

35. Ahhhhhhhh an up grade? Thats starting to become a dirty word around yahoo. Your up grade yesterday between 2-5 has now gone into day two of not being able to enter chat rooms of choice. We should all start calling yahoo and complaining-408-349-3300- is their number. Maybe if enough people call and bug them, they will get the up grades right.

    Comment by Dolly — September 14, 2007 #

36. I still think a “report as bot” link in the message window, coupled with deleting IDs of confirmed bots will be of use. If the runners have to keep taking time to create new IDs for their bots every few hours, sooner or later they should give up, like a lot of humans are doing now in dealing with the rooms full of bots.

    Comment by Carl27ga — September 14, 2007 #

37. One other thing I’ve been wishing for a long time, Sarah, is a bigger ignore list. Right now we can only hold 100 names on the list, but with as many trouble makers as there are on Yahoo now, that list needs to be a whole lot bigger. I would say 1000 name list would be a good start. I usually chat in one of the Christian rooms, and either people are being rude, cursing, or fighting. Not only that but then you have those who come in and post in constantly in arabic (why they do that in an english speaking room is beyond me). I would like to put all them on permanent ignore, but with the short list you all have right now for Ignore, I can’t do that. Please, please, make this list longer. Thanks.

    Comment by Jon — September 14, 2007 #

38. I want the Client the bots are using.

    Comment by mourning_still — September 14, 2007 #

39. Yahoo Team….i visited the chat rooms and i saw lots of bots obviously these bots are logged in manually using Room Destroy a program made by Vn1. i got hold with that program (the latest version 5.7) and still it can’t join automatically meaning ur catpcha really affects the functionality of this program. But these cyber morons just don’t know when to give up what they are trying to do is discourage yahoo from implementing the captcha by locking rooms even if it means doing it manually my guess is these people are the customer’s of ASR and maybe the porn bot owners themselves. Why i say this? simply becoz due to the recent yahoo patch (update) most ASR toys is working no more specially master of the voice a.k.a voice bots so these creatures are trying to get back at yahoo by filling rooms with bots! hoping by doing so yahoo will give up and bring back the old way of joining rooms then these boys can play with their toys again.

    Yahoo team i know u are far smarter than these bunch of monkeys show this bastards whose the boss why won’t u disconnect ID that is idle in room ID that is not typing?
    also deal with ID’s that are sticking in rooms..i know u can do it. Don’t let this stupid kids beat u to the punch!

    Regards…

    PS. by the way ASR site is…http://asrprogs.com/modules/wfchannel/

    Comment by YM Chatter — September 14, 2007 #

40. I don’t believe bots are getting into chat. All those names in the chatrooms are people who were in the chat but left, and for some reason their name is still in chat. If they are actually bots, they aren’t saying anything. Also, this problem, with IDs sticking in chatrooms, is causing rooms to be full when in reality those people left long ago. Since you guys are actually trying to solve a lot of issues with chat lately, I am sure you are already trying to fix the problems. I think the captcha feature is great and it’s really working well. Keep up the good work!

    Comment by Mark — September 14, 2007 #

41. maybe if thay band all of the booter and hacking web sites it would work

    Comment by e.p — September 14, 2007 #

42. I now get the message that a room is full AFTER I do the Captcha verification, not before. This takes a lot of wasted time. Hope you can get it back where it will tell you the room is full before it ask for Captcha verification.

    thanks keep up the good work

    Comment by ck — September 14, 2007 #

43. DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE VOICE DOMINATION THINGY,YOU MAY HAVE SUCEEDED PUSHING AWAY THE VOICE SPAMMERS BUT WHAT ABOUT THE VOICE DOMINATION……THEY CAN HOLD AND LOCK THE MIC FOR AGES….THANKS (LOVE CAPTCHA)

    Comment by MANI — September 14, 2007 #

44. Please fix the captcha verification process for full rooms. If the room is full…say so first, dont have us waste our time typing in the captcha code just to get a room full message and we have to choose another room and start over. It’s just common sense to check if the room is full first. Thx

    Comment by dilbert36 — September 14, 2007 #

45. well I dont have a Captcha problem
    I have a loose sound after 15 minutes in a room then when I refresh it tells me the audio input couldnt initialize and if I try to go to another room it gives me the yahoo has encounter a problem and needs to shut down.

    Someone Please Help !!!!

    Comment by Julianna — September 14, 2007 #

46. Yes have to admit the captcha before room full is VERY annoying, please fix - do we have to wait til next Thursday for a fix? It’s gonna be a long week

    Comment by Banger — September 14, 2007 #

47. Yahooo0000oooo! :d

    Comment by Jaunty Mellifluous — September 14, 2007 #

48. Seems Yahoo is having trouble getting it right

    It would also be nice to have a feature, something more then just putting such a person on ignore. There’s some nasty people out there who should have their id’s closed at a minimum.

    An example of many.

    Pinky Brain (9/13/2007 9:46:24 PM): I’m currently busy and do not have the time to chat
    only4sakawa (9/13/2007 9:47:01 PM): why are you saying that
    Pinky Brain (9/13/2007 9:47:29 PM): I’m busy.
    only4sakawa (9/13/2007 9:47:34 PM): ok
    only4sakawa (9/13/2007 9:47:43 PM): i am the son of the president of ghana
    only4sakawa (9/13/2007 9:47:56 PM): i just want to learn how to chat
    only4sakawa (9/13/2007 9:48:03 PM): 00
    only4sakawa (9/13/2007 9:48:04 PM): 01
    only4sakawa (9/13/2007 9:48:05 PM): 03
    only4sakawa (9/13/2007 9:48:06 PM): 03
    only4sakawa (9/13/2007 9:48:07 PM): 04
    only4sakawa (9/13/2007 9:48:07 PM): 05
    only4sakawa (9/13/2007 9:48:08 PM): 06
    only4sakawa (9/13/2007 9:48:09 PM): 07
    only4sakawa (9/13/2007 9:48:10 PM): 08
    only4sakawa (9/13/2007 9:48:11 PM): 0
    Pinky Brain (9/13/2007 9:48:14 PM): I’m putting you on ignore.
    only4sakawa (9/13/2007 9:48:22 PM): ok
    only4sakawa (9/13/2007 9:48:29 PM): i dont care
    only4sakawa (9/13/2007 9:48:39 PM): but i am in love with you
    only4sakawa (9/13/2007 9:49:29 PM): i will ,make sure u are killed with african magic
    only4sakawa (9/13/2007 9:50:21 PM): I will definately kill u

    Comment by pinkysbrain68 — September 14, 2007 #

49. well Yahoo has helped as far as bot’s but now we can’t get in room’s every room is full except the bottom of the list and the counts never change always say’s 50.. and when i turn on and off my webcam it kicks me outta the room. and list goes on as far as BUGS but why bother.. yahoo fixes one thing they make 20 new BUGS

    Comment by Mike97 — September 14, 2007 #

50. Thanks for the heads up!

    Comment by Dog Clothing — September 14, 2007 #

51. i hope you do not think yahoo chat is fixed, and i keep getting a not responding on messanger and it closing down on me, and the radio luanch plug in when i push my station or want to play music it just turns into a blank. I have just been having major issues with the new messanger and how about fixing it where you can stop unwanted pm’s from people, but still be able to see people who are not on their friends list in chat. I really miss the old version of yahoo. You really had something there right now it just seems like you are blowing it and flushing it down the toliet.

    Comment by miranda — September 14, 2007 #

52. the cam bots are getting out of control now, also entering the captcha code and then getting the room full message is really annoying, would be good if they notify us if the room is full before entering the code.

    Comment by syst3m — September 14, 2007 #

53. its even funny if you close your cam now in room it kicks you into the captcha code sign in, can we say there are yet lots of bugs to work out yet. But with anything new bugs are expected so I hope these coments help some.

    Comment by Ring — September 14, 2007 #

54. and if u try to join a room and its full, then you are automatically disconnected from the room you were previously in.

    Comment by syst3m — September 14, 2007 #

55. i went into a room…typed in the code…..and only other name listed was yahoo’s messengers chat buddy
    so i came here looking for an answer as to why……and there was the reason for it……that was easy…….now why not have a full time chat/messenger status board up and running so it can always be this simple?

    just a suggestion.

    Comment by Joe — September 14, 2007 #

56. Hi So far so good. But as far as people logging in under multiple nics with 1 ip . I think it should be limited to only 1 nic per ip address. reduces the idiots from booting.

    Comment by Theresa — September 14, 2007 #

57. Yahoo isn’t getting rid of the bots. If they wanted to do more, why not make Captcha case-sensitive. Then it would require actual input. and love the screw-up with Captcha BEFORE checking room status. I’ll echo everyone else’s sentiment… yahoo updates = MORE PROBLEMS.

    Comment by Kentlee — September 14, 2007 #

58. Dropping old YMSG protocols would have more of an effect on bots and booters than the captcha.

    Comment by Venom — September 14, 2007 #

59. Ok so Yahoo updated chat and now not only I can not use my favorite rooms because it says they’re full but also I’m getting disconnected after about 15 minutes for no reason. I know you people are working hard to solve this issues but I think it would please everyone if you first present the status of the room (full or available) and then the Captcha Code. Please pretty please ! try to fix this ASAP. Thanks in advance

    Comment by Paramedic — September 14, 2007 #

60. Applauds Chet!! Regarding your #4 it doesn’t matter if you’re using the new version of messenger or an old one…it does the same thing. I have not been able to use messenger since all this so called “updating” and captcha started. Thank goodness for chat clients!! I could care less about the bots, that’s what iggy is for, and if people don’t iggy cause they’re afraid they might miss something oh well they’re problem!

    Comment by deb — September 14, 2007 #

61. What’s up with all the cams? Is this the NEW BOT? Can’t enter rooms, but after continual attempts for over 30 minutes my name finally entered the room only to find 38 of the 50 in the room with cams. They don’t type or chat in the room, it seems they’re only in there to take up space.

    Since I continually get disconnected, why don’t the ones with cams, or the bots? The same names with cams have been there since the last total shut-down.

    For a few days it appeared yahoo was back, PLEASE back up one “fix” and let us get back into our rooms!

    Comment by Too Good To Be True — September 14, 2007 #

62. ok its back 2 not being able 2 get in the rooms again…they all say 50 users and after u do the verification it says ur already in the room and thats for every room..lol damn im good if i can be in that many rooms at once!

    Comment by ya im bored — September 14, 2007 #

63. everytime i fill out the verification code, i still cant chat in a room..and when i go to another room at the top what do you know it says i got to fill it out and when i try to click on it, it just doesnt go to it..

    Comment by adrianna — September 14, 2007 #

64. OK the attempt at getting rid of the bots has failed. Logging in to a chatroom smaller than room 10-11 (usually only the #1 city chatrooms have people in them) is now impossible. You are let in to the room, the link for the authentication pops up and you enter the text and then you are told the room is full.

    Obviously people are paying dorks to load bots in by hand and must be running 100’s of bots off of one ip address. The bots sit there doing nothing for days without getting kicked out. If someone… a person or a bot doesn’t type anything for 10 minutes they should be kicked out.

    As of now yahoo chat rooms are useless.

    Back to the drawing board guys!

    Comment by lapercussion — September 14, 2007 #

65. OK….this is now Sept 14 8:11 EDT…can only get into upper rooms and not in my reg rooms…it sure takes time to get something done..why am i not surprized!!! Wouldnt be so bad if i found normal ppl in upper rooms, instead of the C2C invite crowd..grrrrrrrrrrrrr

    Comment by tempervess — September 14, 2007 #

66. Ok so limiting the number of user to a single IP address may not work, for some groups. But at least try and limit the number of names a single user can create. Let’s say each user has a single user name and then say 3 sub names for each user.

    I also receive the “room is full” after doing the sign in thing. Pain in the ***. It take 12 clicks for each attempt. I finally gave up. I am sure many other chatters are also. At this rate
    all the chatters will have moved on.

    Again!! Test the updates before you update the servers.

    Comment by kssnuggle — September 14, 2007 #

67. I now get the message that the room is full only AFTER entering the code on the website, which means that apart from the 6 clicks to get to the code, you also have to enter the code. To find that the chat room is full. I have been entering codes about 30 times and gave up.
    Of course, when you get to enter the code, you are out of the room you left from, so you have to enter a code again to get in there again.
    Not an improvement. If a room is full, just say so before moving a person there.
    People are really getting fed up with this you know, and finding other platforms. Any news on the VISTA version that is scheduled for half a year ago yet?

    Comment by Saskia — September 14, 2007 #

68. As usual you have messed things up again. I still say the only way to get this thing fixed is if everyone starts cancelling all their premium service accounts and tellin yahoo that is why they are doing it. If they can’t give us what we want lets hit their pocket book. Join me in boycottin anything that you pay yahoo for.

    Comment by devildog1941 — September 14, 2007 #

69. Well… I don’t know about any improvements. I couldn’t get into any rooms to find out. To repeat some comments/complaints: It is a total waste of time to go through the Captcha (?) verification only to get a Room Full error!

    I give you credit for trying to fix the problems, but it appears that more testing is required before a release is made.

    Comment by Rick — September 14, 2007 #

70. I just tried 25 rooms and after all the captcha bs it still says all are full. You know this cannot be true. I picked room numbers at random so as to find out. It must be true that you yahoo techs are nothing more than monkeys at keyboards. All they have to do is go back to what was workin allowin us into chatrooms til they get a fix. I still am askin everyone to join me in a boycott of all premium yahoo services.

    Comment by devildog1941 — September 14, 2007 #

71. blah just keep in mind that yahoo chat is a free service. begger can’t be chooser. Just give them sometime to work out all of the bugs. Do you know anything programs out there without bugs.

    Comment by genghis — September 14, 2007 #

72. its free so there for u need not complain when things are continusly screwing up? ummm i dont know of any chat room that u actually have 2 pay for!!!

    Comment by ya im bored — September 14, 2007 #

73. i dont think the update is good. i tried goin to a room today and every room i went to is full.
    that sucks cause you i tried my luck getting into 1 so i have to type captcha code over and over again…

    Comment by kimpz — September 14, 2007 #

74. I said about 2 months ago, captcha would be useless, upgrade the damn authentication method…

    All bots, clients, booters go…. Why do everything to avoid killing off these things? Why not just do it?….

    Comment by craig — September 14, 2007 #

75. You guys managed to “fix” chat for a few weeks.. I was impressed.

    Then you guys managed to break chat again in a pretty bad way. Tons of rooms are full again with 50 users… way, way, way beyond normal numbers. They have to be bots or the room counts are messed up again, but worse than before.

    I seriously doubt any of the chat developers know what they’re doing, or even test chat before pushing the code out.

    Comment by bots-b-gone — September 14, 2007 #

76. Just if I wasn’t clear above, I’m not talking about bots. I’m talking about real people who prey on others (especially women).

    To me, that’s just as bad as the bots. Unfortunately we can’t use the “Ignore anyone not on my Messenger List” feature if we use chat rooms.

    Bummer. =(

    Comment by Venom — September 14, 2007 #

77. Oh yes, underage teens are still getting into chats. I’ve found them in mostly the music rooms (probably others as well). Faking your age is too easy these days.

    Comment by Venom — September 14, 2007 #

78. Can’t get in to any rooms. Get captcha after captcha, until it finally crashes and shuts down.
    Back to the drawing room, guys. 11pm eastern, Friday.

    Comment by Sigh... — September 14, 2007 #

79. Seems like names are getting stuck in the rooms and clogging them up. I don’t know what went wrong with that last “update” but you should fix it quick. Rooms are getting impossible to enter.

    Comment by Ann — September 14, 2007 #

80. Yeah yeah…the August 17 maintenance proved Yah00 doesn’t know the meaning of “roll back.”

    Comment by mourning_still — September 14, 2007 #

81. At least when I was automatically bounced to another room, I met some interesting people, and even ran into some of my friends. Now I can’t even do that. Oh well, it will be fixed someday……… maybe

    Comment by wickedwtch — September 14, 2007 #

82. sorry david but i think they have their hands full trying to get the rooms straightened out…should have left well enough alone but who are we to tell em huh? as far as your vista messy again it’ll be awhile i’m sure! sorry you have vista cuz it sucks!

    Comment by deb — September 14, 2007 #

83. I agree with the user who said to change the code and eliminate all the problems. There would be no booters, no bots, and chat would work effortlessly and properly. How many different gimmicks and fixes do you have to keep adding to a product before you realize it just don’t work as it is? About version 5 of messenger was the last good one. You could do room visits by following friends on your list, you could join a user in chat easily, the good old user rooms existed so you could find a room of your specific interest and actually find someone with that interest to talk too.

    Chapta was now the greatest latest fix that worked for a couple of weeks. WOW. Report that to the news agencys that something actually worked at least temporarily. So now you do another supposed upgrade and every room ends up as full with the chapta log-in appearing even if the room is already full. So you spend the time typing in all the code to find out that you couldn’t get in the room to start with in the first place. Yes sir, that is one major improvement you rolled out this time.

    Open up java chat again. At least you couldn’t get booted by goofballs in chat rooms. The graphics and look of it was 1960 but at least it worked.

    Comment by Daniel — September 14, 2007 #

84. Great idea Daniel, we do need java back!

    For now I have a feeling we’re stuck with whatever problem this last update has caused because they’ve turned out the lights and locked the doors for the weekend………bummer.

    One would have expected that once they realized what happened it would have been reversed by now, even though it would take another shut down to clear the rooms, but I guess they’re going to enjoy their weekend first and leave the rooms unavailable to chatters.

    Comment by Too Good To Be True — September 14, 2007 #

85. Okay…. chat is pretty much 95% broken. Can’t get into any of my usual rooms. Every room is full.

    Broken just in time for the weekend. Thanks. Enjoy your weekend you lazy, bum Yahoo programmers.

    Comment by bots-b-gone — September 14, 2007 #

86. I have an idea for dealing with abusive, bots etc. How about what like eBay does, have user ratings. Then have an auto ignore that we could set, so let’s say a user with a negative rating would automatically be ignored.

    Just an idea.

    Comment by pinkysbrain68 — September 14, 2007 #

87. Yahooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo wake uppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp

    Comment by pull_me2002 — September 14, 2007 #

88. I highly doubt they’d bring back the YCHT protocol, since it means more to maintain.

    Comment by Venom — September 14, 2007 #

89. I have a sneaking feeling an “abuse” rating would easily be abused by malicious users to get IDs killed.

    Simple answer: Drop the YMSG protos below 15, and change the auth on the servers. No more bots, boots, or clients.

    Comment by Venom — September 14, 2007 #

90. Well, it was good for a few days there. Regional rooms full of tourists not from the region is about as bad as the rooms being full of bots. 31 rooms saying full in the SF bay area and a couple days ago there were only about 5. What happened?

    Comment by JC — September 14, 2007 #

91. Yahoo Team ur doing the right thing i just went to ASR site the one who make this voice bots and other yahoo toys and they are on panic mode right now coz their toys won’t login no more. lol

    But there is still a lot to be done… ID’s sticking in rooms which closes 95% of yahoo rooms so think it about time to do some house cleaning just like what u did b4. Then deal with this ID sticking issue and i guess thats it all things will be fine. I hope to see Yahoo be back in business in a day or two…

    Thanks yahoo and keep us updated

    Comment by jamesbond — September 15, 2007 #

92. HONESTLY GET YOUR CRAP TOGETHER. THIS IS DISGUSTING I TRIED 20 ROOMS ALL WERE FULL THE ONES (2) THAT WERENT FULL WERE BOT LOCKED. YOU GUYS COULD SCREW UP A WET DREAM GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER I AM ENTIRELY SICK OF THIS GARBAGE YOU TRY TO PASS OFF AS “A NEW CHAT EXPERIENCE” YOU GUYS SUCK

    Comment by SICK_OF_IT — September 15, 2007 #

93. hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm well the great yahoo did it again, updated and totally messed things up again you now have 150 rooms that u cant get into and if u do thers no one there. names but not people.sorry but these are suppose to be extronaiary people woking on these problems but it seems they can never get it right.I say start contacting the advertisers maybe they can lean on yahoo to fix things right and now or else.if your people cant seem to fix it fire them all and start over what do you have to loose its totaly screwed anyway i really dont see that it can get much worse……..

    Comment by johnm12666666666666666 — September 15, 2007 #

94. since your Sept 13, upgrade and cleaning of the bots a new problem in the rooms which is an old one but not addressed is the staying of names in the rooms even if we have left the rooms. Also someone is using multi-logins to add names to rooms to get there old rooms back only it has back fired and no one can get in the rooms. Most of the names in the rooms are of people not there and only a few real bots. I miss being able to get to my room and hope that yahoo can fix the problems of names staying in the rooms. Thank you very much for your time and letting me address issues. Angels

    Comment by angels — September 15, 2007 #

95. Good Morning;
    I have been using Yahoo for 7 years now and there has been alot of changes over the years. I am not a programmer so I dont know how difficult or easy it is to make changes, but I really feel that the changes that have been made now are bad. Dont get me wrong, i appreciate not seeing trish and her friends, but the bot makers are finding ways around that,,the bots are still there but dont advertise.

    The problem i have is after i do my verification , i get in the room and i cant see half the folks that are in there and i cant see text at all. I thought i was having problems because of running ytunnel, even with this turned off , i am still having the same problems. and for the last week voice has been a big problem, via conferences or voice chat,, i.e.( not authoirzed to join conference or voice server error. at this point even if i cant use voice but could see the text of other chatters, i would be ok could still communicate with them.

    I am not here to b***h,although from reading some of the blog comments, I am sure i will get bashed too for my comments. I just want yahoo to be straight up and tell us will we ever be able to chat as we did before? Are 3rd party chat clients better to use until the fixes are made? If I am missing something here that can make my chat time more enjoyable during these fixes, i am all ears.

    Thanks for letting me vent this morning.Marybeth

    Comment by marybeth_d1957 — September 15, 2007 #

96. Hmm something is definetly broken, I KNOW I’m typing in the right verification code but it still won’t let me in the chat room

    Comment by misskim — September 15, 2007 #

97. And it seems all rooms are full now??

    Lol why is it every time Yahoo is upgrading something, something always screws up :p

    Anyway I’m sure they’l fix it soon

    Comment by misskim — September 15, 2007 #

98. BTW it’s especially some room categories more than others, romance/adult/Role Playing Chat is much more bugged than games/Role Playing games for example

    Comment by misskim — September 15, 2007 #

99. Ok it seems the rooms are FULL of bots AGAIN!!!!!

    The captcha thing is great but they simply log in the bots manually and let them stay in for weeks.

    I think the best thing you could do would be to reset chat every day at midnight or maybe every 2nd day.

    The bot makers won’t have the energy to manually re log on 2000 bots every day

    Comment by misskim — September 15, 2007 #

100. Man yahoo’s got this thing totally screwed up now. Moving the captcha to before the checking to see if the room is full means the /knock function no longer works. it puts up a new captcha everytime it knocks, there’s no chance to cancel the knock, and the room becomes inaccessible.

     And since now all the rooms are either full of bots or nicks that haven’t been deleted when users leave, that means none of the rooms are accessible.

     And if i’m lucky enuf to get into a room, my iggy bin has somehow got at least 20 people in it, none of whom have I iggied.

     So far, it worked best before the captcha sequence was moved. I thought, till this last update, that things were getting better. Now it’s worse than ever. Does Yahoo actually TEST any of this crappy code before they role it out? jeeeeeeeeeez!

     Comment by Sigh... — September 15, 2007 #

101. hay there 10 years yahoo vet. not bots have a way to lock the captha code so they only have to enter it one time. take a look in the yahoo help chat rooms they have room filler bot in like the first 3 rooms (123) now i love helping people that is why i go there. but if yahoo dont fix the prob its going to go right back to the way it was before

     Comment by bob — September 15, 2007 #

102. Back I go to Paltalk, where they have PROFESSIONAL programmers!

     Time to open up the Yahoo refugee rooms again. Remember: Paltalk.com, no bots, works great. good voice and type and video chat. Free with one small banner ad and a very occasional popup. With no ads, it’s $40 1st yr, $12 annual renew.

     Lotsa rooms, lotsa people. Good interface. Help rooms with real, live help. Rated rooms, meaning the obscenity is limited to rooms where it’s expected, and there’s more to talk about than just body parts and attacking other chatters.

     Come see what a PROFESSIONALLY made and operated chat site looks like.

     Comment by Sigh... — September 15, 2007 #

103. Sarah
     Looks like you have many passionate users! I suggest using this blog to inform the masses of exactly what is going on with chat rooms. Obviously some issues have arisen when we can’t get into rooms- and rooms are suddenly ‘filled’ with 50 ‘people’ each.

     It does make one wonder how seriously Yahoo takes its’ web services, customer service, and development. Makes me question whether or not I should have Yahoo host my small business site. Makes me question whether or not Yahoo stock is over-valued.

     You have an opportunity to ‘make it right’- but it is slipping away I’m afraid. Best of luck.

     Comment by Steve Jones — September 15, 2007 #

104. Sarah

     I can’t thank you enough for the update. We know you’re busy in your never-ending quest to improve our chat experience, so I really do appreciate your efforts to keep us in the loop. We Yahoo users are hungry for information.

     Here’s a humbly offered suggestion–the next time you upgrade chat could you possibly test your fix before unleashing it on an unsuspecting public? Your current method of crossing your fingers and sprinkling bat blood around the room prior to installing a fix doesn’t seem to be working.

     Sarah, we would appreciate another update to the blog, and I don’t mean one of your chirpy entries that really doesn’t say anything of substance. What problems does Yahoo acknowlege need to be addressed? When can we expect a resolution to those problems?

     Your last fix transformed a very trying chat experience into an impossible one. Kudos.

     Comment by Loretta — September 15, 2007 #

105. Hmm, lets try to log into a room shall we? Hmm, lets see, originally chapta checked first to see if the room was full and gave you the room full warning so you didn’t waste your time typing in the “secret code”. Now with this wonderful upgrade chapta lets you go ahead and type in your “secret code” first and then it tells you if the room is full. Yeah, that is one hell of a wonderful upgrade. Just what users want to do is spend their time trying to access rooms that are full in the first place.

     Hmm, then go look at your friends list next, which is usually lit up with wonderful people you chat with on a normal basis. But looking at it now you see that it none of those people are online. Obviously they are like myself and many others who are tired of trying to get into yahoo chat and just don’t log on anymore to see if yahoo has anyone with enough talent to do a chat program correctly.

     Wasn’t Google going to buy Yahoo at one time recently? Perhaps Yahoo should beg for mercy and let the talented folks who bring you all the interesting Google functions buy your company. They could put their talented programmers on the case and probably within one day we would have secure rooms with no bots and features that work.

     What ever happened to the good old days of being able to join a friend on your list without having to ask them why they are? Remember being able to follow a friend and take room tours to go see what other topics were being discussed in other rooms, without having to ask that user over and over what room we were going to tour next? Remember rooms that all the wonderful users or yahoo had created themselves where you knew it was real people and not advertising bots? Remember those rooms were down to one specific topic most times so you knew what the topic was going to be before you even entered the room? Remember these rooms being all closed in bulk by yahoo because of a few bad apples lurking in the shadows? Remember yahoo over-reacting to that issue by closing all the rooms instead of just closing the teen rooms where this was suppose to be a problem? Remember yahoo being the best website on the internet to go to for news, sports, chat etc etc?

     It might be time to sell yahoo. Someone has to be able to steer the ship better then this.

     Comment by Daniel — September 15, 2007 #

106. I am glad Yahoo was able to rectify the chat room situation for a while. Up until the last day or so- roughly the timeframe of the latest “fix”, eventhough I could not get into my regular room because the lower room numbers were not full, people were able to once again enjoy chat.

     Unfortunately, for the past 2 days, the lower number rooms seems to be locked and if you do manage to get into one, you see almost no one real and names that are stuck in the room of people you know are offline.

     I would also like to briefly address the anti- chat client people. I use a chat client for the simple reason I can turn off my pm’s. As some of you complain about unsolicited pm’s from people saying “hi” or constant ASL questions, I choose not to have my screen constantly interrupted by rude people. On older versions of Yahoo messenger you could set your preferences to ignore anyone not on your messenger list who pm’d you. However, since the 7.0 version (possibly earlier- I can’t recall now), if you set your preferences this way and enter chat, the only people you can see typing or hear on voice are the ones already on your messenger list. At least with a chat client, you are able to control your chat experience. If you choose to speak to someone one time only in a pm, you can without opening your pm’s up to the entire room. If it is someoe you choose to speak to regularly in pm, you can add them to your messenger list.

     If Yahoo would go back to the old way of allowing users to set preferences, perhaps chat clients wouldn’t be as popular.

     Just my $.02 on the subject.

     Comment by sands — September 15, 2007 #

107. Every room I go in now has a chatter called Yahoo.Chatroom_Moderator and another called Ymlite.ymlite.

     Once the kiddie scripters find a way to enter every room using just one name they will flood yahoo. It will only take 50 names for every single room to be full.

     What is the deal with these 2 names in every room?

     Comment by Zarabyte — September 15, 2007 #

108. It looks like the “update” didn’t work. Every stinking room shows full. Why don’t you stop trying to make messenger look pretty and fix the problems?

     Comment by Mohay999 — September 15, 2007 #

109. ok, i have a question….. if we are all having to relog in every 3 hours, why arent the bots? seems to me the re log in thing would keep all the rooms to a minimum of users and they wouls always be accessible……why isnt this working?

     oh and sarah, i dont know what you guys did, ….but it aint working!!!! i see absolutly NO difference

     Comment by So0o0_Confused — September 15, 2007 #

110. I cannot believe that again all the rooms are full again with bots. Do you people try your updates before pushing them on the rooms or do you just toss them over the fence and see what happens? I wish google would start a chat service, atleast they have a clue of what they are doing!!

     Comment by Trej14 — September 15, 2007 #

111. Yes i agree with you sands the ignore everyone not on my list feature literally does just that now with every new version of messenger the problems increase yet yahoo have forced people to use the latest one or you can not enter chat this in itself is pathetic no one cares about the plug ins etc they are a complete and utter waste of system resources and make yahoo much more bulky its not what 20mb+? feel sorry for the folks on dial up thats for sure since the updater if you can call it that makes you download the WHOLE thing again lol bots still Spam as normal they just send pms now instead of joining the chat sure some get into chat but with this no pm option you are constantly swamped with pms this alone is a reason why people use clients that is why i do and will continue to until yahoo fix this bug (hell i am not holding my breathe) thats for sure on the other hand chat is now screwed again the CAPTCHA gives a invalid response even though you typed it in correct lol… then if you do get past that you are not entered into the text server and stuck in limbo but hey thats just what its been like for me prob works for most but is seems yahoo has once again wiped its hands of chat they must have thought this would fix it lol boy did they underestimate the issues it has and the determination of spammers who can blaim them its easy money

     Comment by Karl — September 15, 2007 #

112. ok wit i lied, i do see a difference….. when you have to ‘knock’ to get into a full room, it used to throw up the capcha window when there was an opening to get in…..NOW it just keeps throwing up a capcha window at every knock!!!!! boy, thats REAL improvement

     Comment by So0o0_Confused — September 15, 2007 #

113. i totally agree with some comments above, one it ttally sucks that you get the gatcha everytimes, 2 totally suck you have taken away the posibility to jump for m one room to other /join chatroom:, third the botss oovercame such security yet, 4 everyone is leaving yahoo because that, i always had said that yahoo is the best messenger and everybody copies yahoo technologies but darn your not doing a great job lately rooms are almost empty (colombia rooms) and it didnt get easily to the rooms and i cant choose the number of the room , pleasee fix it soon

     Comment by oscar s. — September 15, 2007 #

114. 150 rooms per category and its really amazing that these rooms are full of real people..long live yahoo..lol..

     I think you will find 90.99% are stuck ids lmao …. and a LOT are now swamped with spam

     Comment by Karl — September 15, 2007 #

115. KARL

     I’m still on dial up thru no choice of my won either. ( just not avail in my area ) theres no way i will dnload yahoo messenger over and over . thats just another reason i LOVE my Elite

     Comment by So0o0_Confused — September 15, 2007 #

116. oscar s

     i don’t see how everyone copies yahoo…. if anything they copy other peoples innovations such as pms in the email? from google talk… voip from google talk much more email space from google talk Lmao trhe list is endless google will one day have chat rooms and i would put money on them being 1000x the chat rooms yahoos are

     Comment by Karl — September 15, 2007 #

117. So0o0_Confused

     yea i used to be on dial up and 20mb is a BIG download why on earth can they not have a light version of yahoo, icq and aim has it hell even msn has it. They can keep there huge overbearing ads i and a lot wont care we just want to chat if we wanted launch cast etc we are capable of opening a web browser and going there ourselves!

     Comment by Karl — September 15, 2007 #

118. Like i said before…….. here’s an idea……. eliminate the capcha, let the bots back in and open the room to unlimited users, my client gives me ‘auto ignore’ on bots, and unlimited ignores, i’ll be happy as LONG as i can get back into help room one

     Comment by So0o0_Confused — September 15, 2007 #

119. Great idea confused, but Yahoo will not do that because they will not be able to use the bot excuse to cover up their inability to properly program and maintain thier software.

     Comment by End is near — September 15, 2007 #

120. For 9 years now I have watched Yahoo go downhill because they continuously make untested “upgrades” and make it more difficult for chatters to have an enjoyable chat time on line. SARAH wake the hell up and pay attention to what we are all telling you here!! Your upgrades are the pits and are no good. Take it back to the way it was years ago where you didn’t have to worry about stupid upgrades and bots were easy to iggy and we could all see each others text and get voice!! FFS what moron did Yahoo hire to screw it up again? No offense, but probably some dumbazz towel head who swore up and down he knew what he was doing. If I could, I’d turn my son lose on Yahoo and he’d have it fixed in no time! I’ve not seen a screw up like this in any chat! OMG I wonder why people are leaving Yahoo and seeking other forms of chat? Hmmmmmmm…could it be cause Yahoo has dumbazz fckups working for them that have no clue wtf they’re doing?!! *grins* Can yas tell I’m a bit pissed now? *LOL*

     Comment by deb — September 15, 2007 #

121. Clock is ticking Sarah. From what I have seen, the rooms have been screwed up since the update..Which was the 13th and here it is the 15th and no response from yahoo. I guess custromer service isn’t their strong point.

     Comment by End is near — September 15, 2007 #

122. Man, what kind of upgrade was this????? Can’t even get into a room now because they are all full of bots. When people sign out their id is left in the room and now all the rooms are maxed and you can’t even get in. For crying out loud at least go back to the way it was before this upgrade or get it figured out once and for all….

     Comment by This Blows — September 15, 2007 #

123. No one from yahoo is going to read any of this until Monday at the earliest. Everyone should save their questions and keystrokes and just chalk Yahoo up as closed for the weekend. I’m assuming chat isn’t generating much revenue for them anymore since they really make a quarter hearted (at best) effort to maintain it. I’d rather have had it the way it was before they touched anything than the way it is now.

     Not that you care Yahoo, but no one is impressed.

     Comment by Useless — September 15, 2007 #

124. So0o0_Confused wrote…

     “Like i said before…….. here’s an idea……. eliminate the capcha, let the bots back in and open the room to unlimited users, my client gives me ‘auto ignore’ on bots, and unlimited ignores, i’ll be happy as LONG as i can get back into help room one

     Comment by So0o0_Confused ”

     Yeah thats what u scumbags are waiting right? to let ur porn bots back in? (automatically) and play with ur voice toys again! screw u! right now u monkeys locks yahoo room even if it mean ul goin to do it manually just to make yahoo give up its captcha system. I have a news for yah u worm! yahoo is a lot smarter than u! they will fix the server and everything will be just fine! so forget about ur porn bot business forget about ur yahoo toys just go get a gun and blow ur brainless brain up!!!! this world has no use of a creature like u!

     Comment by Dr. Evil — September 15, 2007 #

125. Yeah thats what u scumbags are waiting right? to let ur porn bots back in? (automatically) and play with ur voice toys again! screw u! right now u monkeys locks yahoo room even if it mean ul goin to do it manually just to make yahoo give up its captcha system. I have a news for yah u worm! yahoo is a lot smarter than u! they will fix the server and everything will be just fine! so forget about ur porn bot business forget about ur yahoo toys just go get a gun and blow ur brainless brain up!!!! this world has no use of a creature like u!

     Comment by Dr. Evil — September 15, 2007

     Ladies and gentlement, I give you one of the super inteligent yahoo programmers..

     Comment by End is near — September 15, 2007 #

126. I personally thought that Yahoo! was supposed to “Better Our Experience” by taking down YCHT, Chat2, and User Rooms. I personally believe all Yahoo! has done iis made their chat system worse! Nothing ever works, says rooms are full when there’s only 10 people in there, and the bots were back into chat 8 hours after Captcha was launched. It seems to me that Yahoo! is turning into the next Microsoft, in other words..you are starting to offer a horrible service with loads of bugs and exploits. The user rooms you took away were good for hiding from booters, bots, and just plain out idiots! bring the user rooms back, I think that would improve Yahoo! alot. I personally think that the captcha needs to be taken down, cause it hardly works anyways..lol

     Comment by Unhappy Chat User — September 15, 2007 #

127. Yahoo is running perfectly. If you have the right software like ymlite then you will have no problems at all.

     Comment by Craig — September 15, 2007 #

128. The bots are back in again..looks like they found a way past the Captcha? From what I have seen in past 3 days a lot of users are switching to Eyeball Chat and PalTalk..don’t blame them..at least they work.

     keep

     Comment by free_downloader (keep) — September 15, 2007 #

129. While unlike the majority of you i appreciate the fact that yahoo has made steps to reduce Spam what i never thought they would do sure its a good concept and has its flaws but it has worked chat rooms have a lot less Spam now who can argue with that?. I see people complaining o it does not work etc no one says thanks for trying i also have issues with the CAPTCHA it works 2/10 times at best then once you get into chat you are still not verified to enter the room yes highly annoying i know but the most anoying thing i myself personally find is the ability to turn pms off has been stopped well it can be done but with messenger it ignores everyone else i do not know what clown thought of this idea or even if its a bug.. that is prob the case Y! messenger has always had more bugs than a can of raid can handle i find that amusing since a multi million dollar company has so little employees to maintain its chat system it is in steep decline the CAPTCHA clearly does its job but causes more issues than before in my opinion but then again its new so another 8 years from now they will fix it lmao the real issue at the moment is the room list count! every room is full nearly. but in reality 99% are ids stuck and false room counts when that issue is fixed it should run a lot smoother but the ids being stuck in rooms has ALWAYS happened ever since i started using yahoo at least i cant see it being fixed in the near future your complaints fall on deaf ears here folks yahoo lined themselves up for a public backlash when they made this blog i wonder if they knew how unhappy everyone was with there service i bet Sarahs little fingers hurt by the end of the day deleting comments (although in reality comments could prob be removed automatically or some type of filter etc.) still an amusing thought lol but yea a lot of babble just to say fix the room listing issue so we can get in chat geez!

     Comment by Karl — September 15, 2007 #

130. people who want to let bots in again should just go and die please ok..

     The current system works great, it’s just temporarily bugged, the only thing that would be awesome would be if Yahoo restarted chat once a day or once every 2nd day at midnight. That would mean everyone has to re-login their bots again, and that isn’t funny when youhave to login 2000 bots every day or more.

     Comment by misskim — September 15, 2007 #

131. misskim
     lol the CAPTCHA has long been broken there is many many many ways around it such as word scanners etc this is all done automatically and would not phase the average spammer they make more money than you and i in a week than we do in months… lol

     Comment by Karl — September 15, 2007 #

132. quick tip 4 those chatters that r going through withdrawl…sign on2 messenger and click on canada not the states..there is tons of local rooms that u can get in2 that have actual people chatting!

     Comment by ya im bored — September 15, 2007 #

133. Ok so finally most of the old rooms are open.
     FINALLY…. i can compleatly live with having to put the code in everytime i want to get to chat…. but this rooms roll over thing…. it’s nuts!!!! alot of us had friends we would hang with in certain rooms and have a good time…. Now you have no choice what room you get into and what kind of idoits are in there. I don’t see what the big problem is with opening X amount of rooms …..and giving chatters the choice of going to the room they would like. But then again that would be freedom in chatting and it seems like that is something yahoo is taking away !!!!!!
     In all honstly i wish the chat rooms would just go back to the way it was …..bots and all !!!!
     At least then we had choices of what room we wanted to pick to chat in….not the next aviliable room on the list….. come on yahoo lets concentrate on one thing at a time…. like fixing the chat rooms …then moving on to other ideas….. looks as tho someone has too many irons in the fire.

     Comment by rebel — September 15, 2007 #

134. I agree with unhappy…chatting here seems to work just fine and there are no bots. Get yer chat on!!!

     Comment by Waaaahhhh — September 15, 2007 #

135. you GO deb!!! i couldnt have said it better myself

     Comment by So0o0_Confused — September 15, 2007 #

136. This is not a ‘fix’ but it is a workaround for those who want to chat with their friends.

     Change your status message to display the room you are in. As your friends log in, they can see what room you are in and join you.

     Happy Chatting

     Comment by RedefinedVariable — September 15, 2007 #

137. HOW TO GET INTO THE ROOMS ……….. You can access the rooms easily but it will take a little bit of work to get the one you want. For example, if you want to get into “Florida 2″ you need to click on the “Florida” group name and not try the individual room. This will log you into the lowest numbered Florida room that has an opening. Surprisingly you may find some people you know for they are using the same way to access the rooms. You can then do the same step again to try to access a lower number room, for each time you try it will move you to the next available room. Eventually, you will get to the room you want. I did this for rooms I frequent and after about 10 tries I made it all the way to room one. It just takes luck and some timing, but the rooms are open.

     Good Luck.

     Comment by Daniel — September 15, 2007 #

138. Why does everyone think if you use a third party client you are automatically booting? Why would they think because you understand the packet overload…you boot? Why can’t people grasp, that if you understand the way yahoo is exploited and choose to use a third party to protect from yahoo’s exploits, you are automatically booting? The people I knew who booted, used a third party to log into chat and logged their bots in via messenger , so the booting actually happens through messenger. Doesn’t it make sense that in order to protect yourself from something you need to understand the process first? Not every person logged into a third party chat client is booting, so please stop with the generalized comments that all third party chat clients are booters, spammers or, porn bot makers. Most people who do yahoo porn simply point the camera down and don’t bother logging in as a porn bot.

     Comment by comfortably_yum — September 15, 2007 #

139. Way to go Deb…u sound a little ticked off and I can’t blame ya….things are somewhat better than b4 but how come some rooms say full when u know they are not? What is this Yahoo.Chat_Moderator in most rooms? I know it can’t really be someone from Yahoo. Wonder what chat they use to find or talk to their friends..hmmmmmm? And of course we still have room fillers….their life must be really boring to have to come into Chat to get their jollies….what a sad life they must lead….but all I can do is LAUGH at them….hahaha…

     Comment by skeeter — September 15, 2007 #

140. Thanks for the tip Daniel. It worked!

     Comment by Waaaahhhh — September 15, 2007 #

141. Seems most the rooms are ghosting chatters and are filling up quick so most of the lower rooms are now full, oh well back to conferences for the time being.

     Comment by Banger — September 15, 2007 #

142. Right now, Saturday 9/15/2007 1:55pm Pacific Time, there are currently 21 “Seattle” chat rooms, and the first twenty are maxed out at 50 users (I’m sure that 99% or more of those users must be bots). So obviously the bot problem is not fixed at all by the CAPTCHA you’ve implemented. Please come up with a more difficult CAPTCHA or some other solution.

     I tried entering Seattle:1, entered the CAPTCHA, and only THEN received the “room is full” error dialog. It’s annoying to have to type in the CAPTCHA before finding out the room is full anyway, so please fix that.

     So I just joined Seattle:21, because the room list said it had 14 users. But the room actually only contains 10 users. So obviously the room list counts are wrong. Please fix that.

     Two of the users in Seattle:21 had icons indicating their webcams were turned on. But when I chose “View Webcam” on either one, I got an error dialog saying the user’s webcam was not available. So obviously the webcam user icons do not update correctly to reflect reality. Please fix that.

     I just have to ask: don’t you Yahoo employees know how to run a software development project? Don’t you track bugs in a bug database so they get prioritized and worked on rather than lost or ignored? Don’t you perform even the most basic regression testing on your code changed before you make the code go live? Don’t you do any threat modeling or analysis on your architecture to identify and spot obvious vulnerabilities and points of attack before you ship your code?

     In short, don’t you CARE at all? If not, why not? If you don’t believe that Yahoo Chat is a worthwhile business to be in, then just kill it off already. That would be better than the half-assed job you’ve been doing with it for the last 6 years or so.

     Comment by hotgeek30m — September 15, 2007 #

143. If these are improvements then please go back to the way it was, The bots were a pest before but they could always be put on ignore, and when you left a chat room your name did not get stuck.
     I think you fixed something that wasnt broke…
     Yahoo has always had it in its control to ban users, so why havent they actively banned the bots?
     If it was the intention of yahoo to discourage people using chat, they have definitely succeeded.
     I never thought I would see a company sabotage its own system…. good one yahoo!!!

     Comment by andrew — September 15, 2007 #

144. i wish you could return the old system of chatting,everytime i enter chat room it writtens,to help prevent spam and bots from distrupting your yahoo chat experience please click here to verify account (this link will open a new web browser window>no matter how i click the captchat it doesnt work and its irritating for me since i just started using a computer i wish you could help people like me to make it easier or return the way we used before..thanks

     Comment by karube ma cecilia — September 15, 2007 #

145. Another bug: when you ignore a user who is “voice spamming” the room by permanently enabling their mic and blasting music over it or something, their IMs get ignored but their voice/mic keeps playing (does not get ignored like it should). Please fix this too.

     Comment by hotgeek30m — September 15, 2007 #

146. Um, I’m sure u are already aware that things are going to hell in a handbasket again. I was excited with the CAPTCHA code and thought the bot issues would be fixed.. But as already posted on this thread there seems to be GHOST bots in the chat rooms filling up the rooms to capacity and now none of the regs can enter THEIR rooms!! It’s very frustrating and I’m hoping this issue will be resolved very SOON and not take nearly 2 wks to fix like last month.

     Comment by LaLa — September 15, 2007 #

147. First of all — Thank you Yahoo for trying — Thank you Sarah for updating — please keep the info flowing — ignorance is not bliss.

     I realize everyone is cranky about these problems ongoing for months since January ‘07 at least. But for two weeks we’ve had mostly bot free chat, along with fast easy access, and I, for one am grateful for that. It has been, for a brief time, much like the ease I remember from 2003 when bots were only an occasional nuisance.

     Currently there seems to be some sort of server glitch that causes names to not be released from lower numbered rooms and a rollover to higher numbers. So yet again we are forced to conference with friends privately and not meet in our usual hangout rooms. This may be okay for first time users, but for all the jaded room regs, half the fun of chat is new people being introduced to old.

     I’d like to agree with another poster, that if Yahoo could shut down chat once a day, it would at least give us all a few hours daily to meet in our regular rooms until they fill back up again. We are all used to being booted every few hours from chat anyway - so this added inconvenience would not be any worse than what we are accustomed to.

     I would greatly appreciate some plain talk from Yahoo as to progress daily. I would also appreciate it if folks would cool the rhetoric a bit in their complaints and realize that a free service cannot independently respond to all of us. A once daily update from Ms. Bacon however, would do a lot to restore our patience and confidence.

     We all love Yahoo chat — so please keep trying folks — thank you for what you’ve done — but as repeated efforts fail week after week we are all becoming more than a tad disillusioned.

     Good luck!

     Dex

     Comment by Dexter — September 15, 2007 #

148. i always go to room 1 that where all the reg used to before yahoo mess with thier servers now at first the captcha work now the only room i can go to is room 21 and there the people from the ME or bots!! why the first few room don’t work???

     Comment by RICHIE — September 15, 2007 #

149. 3rd day in a row that after going through the security stuff which I think is OK, it get “Room Is Full” error. I must have tried 10 rooms each day to no avail. Nice security system ~ it seems to keep EVERYONE out! Maybe AOL isn’t so bad after all.

     Comment by Rob — September 15, 2007 #

150. Dex

     It is free to us, but we pay by being subjected to all the ads. I would gladly pay for a service if I did not have to put up with sub-par service and it was ad free (example: the old AOL). And as far as hour rhetoric, we all just want someone from yahoo yo listen to us and what we want. But then again what do we know, we are only the consumer, the end user and with out us..Yahoo wouldn’t make a dime off advertising.

     Comment by End is near — September 15, 2007 #

151. DEX…Yes, we realize that Yahoo is doing what they can do. Regardless of the “FREE” service that Yahoo provides us. Don’t forget this is a million dollar company that cannot afford these “TECHNICAL PROBLEMS” that has been going on for the past several months.WE the consumers and regular chatters of YAHOO have just as much right to voice our dissatisfaction as you do defending their sub par performance in fixing the chat rooms. OUR rhetoric is justified and EVERYONE is entitled to their own PERSONAL opinion. With all the technical support that YAHOO is suppose to have one can’t help but wonder what is the PREREQUISITE to get a job there at YAHOO and wonders what kinda Yokels is running the company.. Sorry Yahoo.. But it’s the truth.

     Comment by Rhetoric Rant — September 15, 2007 #

152. heyyyyyy unhappy, at least i found u here…lol sent yahell a e mail and they replied back…that it was either my server or spyware in my puter…lol come on yahoo, get it in gear, this is pitiful.

     Comment by yafooled — September 15, 2007 #

153. wow yafooled is good to see youuuuuuuuuuu since we cant get into chat.. good to see you here.. i am sure this is” off topic” and not allowed here.. but since chat is down, give me a holler sometimes here lol

     Comment by unhappy — September 15, 2007 #

154. All the people who have posted with an I.T. background should know the type of task Yahoo is faced with the limited staff and scale of their network. Yahoo in an earlier blog posted that they are hiring for their Messenger team , so it’s obvious they are short handed. For all who want to criticize, try doing some research on the matter, use this blog to help them as thats the only way to help them fix it. Don’t just complain about it. I like being able to finally get into chat and talk to online friends from around the world about technology and appreciate the efforts that are being made. If you are so addicted to chat as to where it becomes personal then maybe you should seek counseling or pursue a real world social life.

     http://www.geocities.com/bad_bad_sloar

     Comment by Sloar — September 15, 2007 #

155. Don’t you know it takes 3.1 jigawatts to get you into a room “unhappy”..You are prolly getting maybe getting 2 or 2.5…Try and hard boot your pc while holding down the ctrl-tab-semicolon-capslock-backspace keys with your left hand while patting your belly with your right. This should get you the 3.1 needed to get into chat.

     Comment by End is near — September 15, 2007 #

156. heyyyyyyyyyyy it worked end lmao thanks

     Comment by unhappy — September 15, 2007 #

157. end….I sent my resume to that email addy only to get captcha Does it never end?? lmaoooooo

     Comment by deb — September 15, 2007 #

158. just had a disturbing thought…do the ME’ers know of this blog would hate to see them asking ASL in here and to IM them

     Comment by tempervess — September 15, 2007 #

159. Were you wearing your homemade tin-foil hat when you sent the resmue? Maybe we all should apply, we can carpool in my company car…we should be able to get 12 programmers in my mini-cooper

     Comment by End is near — September 15, 2007 #

160. Are you aware that users who are disconnected from their internet while in chat rooms are having their names permanently stuck in the rooms? There are approximately 16 stuck in Depression Support:1 right now. Thought I would give you a heads up.

     Comment by Teflon — September 15, 2007 #

161. Yahoo need to do one of two things.

     Put some real resources and fix the chats properly. Apart from the verification farse there are a 100 and 1 other bugs to fix and tweaks to make. And get some moderators in to kick out the perverts.

     Or get rid of chat for good. Shoot it in the head like a race horse with a broken leg.

     It is truly amazing that a company such as Yahoo are not able to develop and manage a product properly.

     Comment by Geekster — September 15, 2007 #

162. Sloar, are you suggesting that Yahoo is a company with limited resources?

     HAHAHAHAHAHA!

     Comment by Geekster — September 15, 2007 #

163. I’ve been trying since last night to get into any chat room in romance..but to no avail, have I been able to get in?…it says chat error and that room is full and to try another one…I’ve tryed so many till I’m blue in the face?…whats the problem now?…I’ve also upgraded my messenger to 8.1….and still having problems…this totally gives me a headache to no end…makes ya wanna leave chat altogether…wonder why I even try anymore…not worth my time and the headaches…

     Comment by frustrated again!!!!! — September 15, 2007 #

164. red noises?

     Comment by dont wanna say — September 15, 2007 #

165. The rooms are full of dead IDs. They are not bots.
     If someone just shuts down without logging out their ID remains forever.

     Many of the ( excuse the term ) “squiggle writers” dont know enough english to understand the proper way to log out of chat.

     The result is a room full of ghosts.

     Two of the ghosts are mine because my IP belched and I got dumped ofline for a few min. I still cant get rid of them even though they are mine and I have the password because the room is full and I cant even log into the system.

     Comment by Witchgrl — September 15, 2007 #

166. I still say we have to capability to make yahoo pay some attention to us. Just start cancelling all your premium yahoo services and give chat problems as reason for cancelling. The only way to ever get attention is to hit the pocketbook.

     Comment by devildog1941 — September 15, 2007 #

167. I am really amazed that yahoo hasn’t added captcha to this blog to make it harder to post here.

     Comment by devildog1941 — September 15, 2007 #

168. Premium accounts and stop using their search engine and email. Look at the money google makes off advertising and they listen to their users. I cannot believe that anyone is not monitoring the chat server, hell my work server has 24 monitoring service…

     Comment by End is near — September 15, 2007 #

169. callin yahoo telling them chat is broke and they need to pay them overtime to come out on weekend to fix it???

     Comment by totally bored now — September 15, 2007 #

170. oh another Big complaint….Why do I have to keep my PM’s open to see everyone in the room?…I’m so sick of this crap..all it does it send me all the PERVERTS, middle east , ASL Crap…and men who are here looking for phone sex or someone to CYBER…Can’t ya’ll get your Chit together…hell….my 8yrs granddaughter could do a better job then your so called intelligent employees…NOT….OH and Hello out there out you wonderful people who feel as I do….hehe!!!

     Comment by frustrated again!!!!! — September 15, 2007 #

171. hmmm zero bids on ebay for the purchase of Yahoo!! Wonder why!! lmaoooooo

     Comment by deb — September 15, 2007 #

172. I’ve been able to get into rooms without any problems. Someone mentioned it earlier in these comments - enter by going into the top level lobby iof a category. Afte doing captcha, It will put you into the next available room in that topic.

     Comment by Bill P. — September 15, 2007 #

173. well…well..well….I tryed once again to get in chat…but to no Avail…still the same ole crap…room is full….try another…still the same, doesn’t matter what room you try, they’re all FULL….aint this da chits?….Yahoo needs to go back to the old way of chatting…Chat 2.0 or Java…at least they worked…LMAO….Hello out there all ya wonderful people..lets all Complain…yeah..lets…hehe

     Comment by frustrated again!!!!! — September 15, 2007 #

174. I am really amazed that yahoo hasn’t added captcha to this blog to make it harder to post here.

     Comment by devildog1941 — September 15, 2007 #

     devildog1941, PUHLEASE don’t give them any bright ideas.

     Funny, the first thing I do when downloading messenger to any new box is to remove the auto updater. I don’t want to update some buggy crap that isn’t going to work, so I wait and let me friends download updates then watch them complain. Besides, if I wanted a nag box yelling at me to update, I’d marry, have an affair and upgrade the proper way. **blankstare**

     Comment by comfortably_yum — September 15, 2007 #

175. Frustrated again, I’m with you. I can deal with just about anything with yahoo (when it’s working), but not being able to turn off the ims in a chat room is annoying. I am tired of being buzzed, asl, i love you by ME men, only to be told they are going to kill me if i don’t answer them. (Killing me would be better than the other things they say they want to do to me) Sure, I am smart enough to put them on ignore and deal with the next one that comes along. But we shouldn’t have to do this, we should be able to set the ignore option and still chat in the room with people who are not on our friends list. I gave up going to Yahoo for help as I got tired of the oh so helpful generated email response of putting them on ignore. Duh!!!!

     Comment by bella — September 15, 2007 #

176. Geekster, obviously the company as a whole does not have limited resources, however the chat and messenger part of it, I would guess, yes. There maybe at most a few hundred thousand users receiving advertisements from messenger and chat , while their other services may be serving advertisements to millions. I know if I were an executive the money and resources would be allocated to the services proportionately aligned with ROI (return on investment). How else would you stay in business , let alone grow?

     Comment by Sloar — September 15, 2007 #

177. It’s actually worse than the bots now. I can’t even get into the Gay chats. I prefer being bombarded with bots than not be able to go into chats at all. Of course I’d rather be rid of bots and be able to chat, but if it’s one or the other, I would prefer bots.

     Comment by C — September 15, 2007 #

178. ughhhhhhhhhhhhh..why do i have to go thru the whole captcha process to find out a room is full?????????????and youre actually tellin me all these rooms are now full?????cmon get with the program..the improvements were good but finish the job guys

     Comment by erotas321 — September 15, 2007 #

179. OK DAY 3 OF THE COMPANY THAT TECH SUPPORT FORGOT. I CANT BELIEVE THAT THEY HAVNT UPDATED THE BLOG…READ POSTS OR DONE ANYTHING TO LOOK AT AND OR TRY TO FIX THE ISSUE. I CANT FATHOM HOW ANY COMPANY WITH CUSTOMER SERVICE LIKE THIS IS STILL AFLOAT.

     Comment by SICK_OF_IT — September 15, 2007 #

180. I agree with erotas321…..this totally sucks, will we ever be able to just log in one time and be able to move from room to rooom? I hope so, AOL is looking better and better all the time

     Comment by wndwshopr — September 15, 2007 #

181. I have figured out why yahoo is not working and why they are not answer the blog. The whole yahoo chat staff as been taken over by al qaeda. This must be another attack on freedom by al qaeda, someone needs to call W and tell him. He could fix this problem, I’m sure he has statergery for this problem….lol…sorry

     Comment by End is near — September 15, 2007 #

182. I’m so glad that they fixed the chat rooms so that we can no longer get in. I’m sure the bots are having a great time!!!

     Comment by me — September 15, 2007 #

183. Everything is fine I can get into chats with no problem and all my friends are there thank you

     Comment by frank — September 15, 2007 #

184. Just kiding. the bots took over

     Comment by frank — September 15, 2007 #

185. They arent bots. They are ghost IDs that Yahoo cant/wont remove.

     Comment by Witchgrl — September 15, 2007 #

186. So the female in the room with the cam on, fake profile leading to a web site of porn isn’t a bot? hmmmmm

     Comment by bella — September 15, 2007 #

187. I found people in chat help 11, real people!

     Comment by Doc — September 15, 2007 #

188. I sent the following email to Customer Support about Yahoo Adult Chatrooms… this was after I sent them the same email and got back an auto-response that I was having ISP problems, for god’s sakes…

     *****

     You guys are really rather pathetic, aren’t you. No wonder all other online services go passing you by. You didn’t even read what I sent you, did you? Here’s the upshot… ALL the adult rooms on Yahoo Chat are full of bots! Camera bots. Your new password system made things better for about a week, but obviously someone distributed software to the “bot places”, showing them how to defeat your password system.

     Now the adult chatrooms are FULL OF CAMERA BOTS, who get into a room, and sit there, and never leave. All the rooms fill up, until the first one you can get into is say, #39, when, if there were no bots, any room over #12, say, would be half empty, and you can get into any of them with a few tries.

     In fact, I just looked, and I couldn’t even get into room 139… #139!, for god’s sake, as it was full. I guarantee you there are just 50 camera bots in that room. If there were no bots, the humans online wouldn’t fill 11 rooms… not 11 !!

     Don’t you care? Am I going to get a lame, totally irrelevant auto response to this complaint, too? No other chat software I’ve ever been on… MSN, IRC, AOL… none of them, have been as bad, or *are* as bad, as Yahoo Chat. Unfortunately for me, all my friends on on Yahoo, as, until a year or so ago, it worked pretty decently.

     But now, it’s totally unusable, and free or not, I’d be completely embarrassed, if I were you, about having such a cruddy product out there, one that just screams, “Yahoo is incompetent, and doesn’t care at all about its users at all.”

     Maybe if one person in your tech department would actually sign on and try to get into any of your Adult Chat rooms, you’d understand what I’m saying, and see just how your system has totally fallen apart. Sigh…

     Jo

     Comment by joan26ss — September 15, 2007 #

189. P’haps all you whiners should use the time Yahoo have given you off chat to find jobs?
     Just a thought

     Comment by Timothy — September 15, 2007 #

190. A dumb thought, Timothy, as I’ve been gainfully employed since three weeks after I graduated from college. Make relevant comments or just rant about the Chat problems or go away. We all know we’re addicted to chatting and enjoy the friends we’ve met and made online, and your cheap shots are not appreciated, along with being just plain wrong.

     Jo

     Comment by joan26ss — September 15, 2007 #

191. How bout eliminating the thousands of completely empty rooms, that are listed as having people in them? Its a bit annoying to have to hunt for rooms that have people in.

     Comment by thomas — September 15, 2007 #

192. That would be fine, Thomas, except that in the Adult Chat rooms, there are currently about 150 rooms in the “group” that I like to be in, and all but ONE of them are totally full… all of them with camera bots. Witchgrl keeps saying they’re ghost ID’s, but I don’t think so. I think they’re autobots that just get on, having broken through the new password protocal (thanks for trying Yahoo, and I mean that), and sit there forever, making it impossible to find a not full room, and spreading the humans out to 150 different rooms, where it’s impossible to find anyone new to chat with. :-((

     Jo

     Comment by joan26ss — September 15, 2007 #

193. I seem to have touched a raw nerve joan.
     I make no cheap shots…just honest comments about the majority using & abusing yahoo chat…I’m sure your employer were he/she to realise you were spending most of your working life sat in a chat room would have something to say about your gainful employment.

     Comment by Timothy — September 15, 2007 #

194. I’m glad for the update and the effort. I want to know when I can get back in a room? Havent been able to for 2 days.

     Comment by logan — September 15, 2007 #

195. Where are your facts to support your assertions, Timothy, as I never get onto Chat from work… only late at night from home, which is none of my employer’s business, frankly. Name one person, specifically, who gets onto Yahoo chat as opposed to looking for a job.

     Please know that when you make mistatements and lie about people, that you can always strike a nerve, much the same way as a blindfolded monkey can hit a pinata` if they swing at it long enough. No one likes to be besmirched with no proof or facts, whatever.

     I do like the one suggestion, though, if Witchgrl should happen to be right… just boot everyone, once an hour, as the humans can get back online and to their rooms far faster than the randomized bots can.

     Jo

     Comment by joan26ss — September 15, 2007 #

196. JO, there i have absolutely no trouble getting to the adult webcam chats, and aside from me 99% of them are empty.

     Comment by thomas — September 15, 2007 #

197. ~sighs~ .. i wish i could say that i canNOT believe it - but unfortunately … i can .. and have .. and probably will continue to believe that the more patience i have the less Yahoo seems to take care of the issues @ hand. wOw! Every room has 50 chatters! …. i’ve said it before, i’ll say it again .. obviously bot programers have their shite together for yahoo chat - why don’t they just sell it to us and then we will no longer be bothered by bots and can get past whatEVER it is that yahoo can’t seem to EVER EVER EVER EVER fix! it just gets really old. my friends can’t seem to connect with me on messenger … we add and delete and re-add and they STILL don’t either get me completely added TO their messengers! OR - they never get my offlines ~sighs~ .. some think i am just being plain rude when i don’t reply to them. and NOW i can’t EVEN access chat … so what really Does WORK? with Yahoo …. ~beginning to think that Yahoo chat is a thing of the past~ ….

     Comment by ~same ole same ole~ — September 15, 2007 #

198. the chat rooms are getting worse u fill out theacpchet bs then they say room is full such a waste of time i have spent better over 2 hours trying to get into the chat rooms to no avail all are full full of people that log in and arent anywhere to be found chat used to be great for talking with friends no its not even chat anymore just avatars that sit and take up room for chatters seemed like it was gonna work but no way thanks for trying NOT

     Comment by bruce — September 15, 2007 #

199. Yahoo shareholders? Sell your shares right now before it’s too late.

     If they can’t even fix the basic problems with chat then they don’t have the resources to fix bigger issues.

     It’s no wonder that Yahoo shares lost a third of their value in the past 12 months.

     I’ll be posting a ’sell’ call on their shares on Motley Fool tomorrow.

     Comment by Dublin Guy — September 15, 2007 #

200. Ms. Bacon:
     Any updates as to what’s happening, and possible timelines for fixing the problems?

     Appreciate any information you might shed, even if it’s..”We’re not sure when. May be a day, may be a few days.”
     Thank you.

     Comment by Paul — September 15, 2007 #

201. Hey everyone — send your complaints directly to Sarah Bacon’s e-mail address: sbacon@yahoo-inc.com

     Comment by hotgeek30m — September 15, 2007 #

202. You see how wrong you are, Thomas, how out of line… at least in terms of the Adult chat rooms? At my last try, 140 of our lesbian chat rooms are completely full of bots… and a few humans who managed to time it just right to get into them to replace one of the three other humans who managed to get on there?

     I’ve been on Yahoo chat for almost four years now, with over 250 members on my friend’s list… 250 friends and erotic partners, and all that is going by the boards now, because Yahoo doesn’t seem to care. It’s only fitting that I’m listening to my favorite James Taylor album now, and to this song…

     Places in My Past

     There are ladies in my life.
     Lovely ladies in these lazy days.
     And though I never took a wife,
     may I say that I have loved me one or two.

     All the people in my past…
     fading faces in a waking dream.
     And though they never seem to last, very long…
     there are faces I remember,
     from the places in my past.

     And I say, “Ohh, the dead-head miles,
     and the insincere smiles…
     Sometimes I can laugh and cry
     and I can’t remember why.”
     But I still love those…

     Good times gone by…
     hold on to them close or let them go..ohh, no.
     I don’t know…I just seem to sing these songs
     and say I’m sorry, for the friends I used to know.

     ******

     If they don’t fix things these other women are off limits to me, nearly unfindable. You can make fun of us and our commitments to the real world all you like, but you don’t really know, and will never understand… not really.

     Jo

     Comment by joan26ss — September 15, 2007 #

203. Chat is falling apart. Sigh. I hope Yahoo doesn’t drop chat entirely. Do they realize there are better ways to implement chat? How come other chat protocols don’t have so many problems? How come other chat clients don’t get booted or hacked as much as Yahoo Messenger?

     Oh right.. those were designed from the beginning to be fault tolerant, allow message throttling (flood protection), behave defensively (since you are dealing with untrusted data input over the net), perform input data validation, run statistics for identifying probable bots, offer moderation functions, feature many server side options controllable by the client, provide all sorts of options to control who may communicate with you, provide powerful block/ignore controls (that work!), and encourage 3rd party plugins which add features Yahoo doesn’t have the time or foresight to implement.

     I mean come on. Haven’t Yahoo developers used at least one chat program/protocol outside of Yahoo? Jeese. I think the last several weeks has embarrassed Yahoo.

     Anyway. I hope you guys get your stuff fixed next Monday because if the executives find out you’re messing up and end up nixing chat, guess what? Your job goes bye bye.

     Comment by Elbo the E*n*ch — September 15, 2007 #

204. so much for the sept 13 upgrade to fix the bot problems. have to go to about 25 to 30 rooms from room 1 to find a open one then no one is really there just says there are.

     Guess its time to start using someone else’s service besides yahoo. Just really had high hopes that yahoo techs could fix chat rooms but guess not.

     Comment by ck — September 15, 2007 #

205. I believe what yahoo is doing will prove great in the future but one thing that I have seen is that the people who use softwares to push mass IDs in the room are still successful, they call it STBs, I am still to know what does STB mean but whatever it means it is still able to bypass the captcha security and get the rooms full.

     This means there’s definitely a hole in the captcha which enables these people to cause problems for the rest and push IDs in bulk in the room.

     Also, it will be great if yahoo can force a time difference between pm like one second or 1 and a half second, this might prevent booters from booting. Also, if you there’s an auto responder can prove great everytime someone sends a pm before that minimum interval fixed it will get a response from the server “you have to wait for ___ seconds” this will take up considerable amount of booters bandwidth putting at least some breaks to the booters activities.

     I am not a technical person but I think these techniques can work.

     Comment by Zareen Gul — September 16, 2007 #

206. Great, great post, Elbo… that’s pretty much exactly it. Do you think they could create a totally human chat area for five dollars a month? I don’t really know, as the spammer and hackers and bot producers probably laugh at them. I DO appreciate their attempts to fix things recently, and I had such high hopes that they cared and had succeeded… but now it’s worse than it’s ever been, and practically unusable for those who counted on Yahoo to care, and to put out a product that could protect us all from those god-awful, unconscionable bots that NO ONE ever seems to access.

     There’s a dark spot in hell for all those who create bots and spam that no one wants, and no one ever accesses.

     Jo

     Comment by joan26ss — September 16, 2007 #

207. Joan..you ask where are my facts..well at the moment they are sat in private confs whining about yahoo spoiling their chat….YOU responded to MY initial post on the blog..not me to yours.
     I wont detain you any longer as you clearly have such an intensive chat/work/lurk life…no doubt you’ll need you sleep so you can put another intensive day in chat/work/lurk.
     You appear to be getting raher upset over a point that clearly didnt concern you.

     Comment by Timothy — September 16, 2007 #

208. If Yahell would spend more time in fixing the chat rooms instead of deleting ppl’s post in here I do believe they could get the chat rooms fixed under 2 wks this time.. Freaking idiots.. Pay attention to the rooms not the freaking blogs.. Get a clue and get a grip! Do it and do it right this time.. Too much time wasted on what ppl think of you and not enough time fixing the REAL ISSUES at hand.

     Comment by Rhetoric Rant — September 16, 2007 #

209. Zareen
     STB stands for Suck The Beep!
     It hankers back to the days when if you had 8 voice ignores you could not talk on mike or hear the room once you had pressed the talk button.
     Yahoo fixed this ages ago by still allowing you voice with a weak mike no matter how many ignores you had.
     Voice bots are NOT a problem on yahoo…as I have pointed out in the past chat works via consensus meaning if the majority dont want to listen to the bot master they simply click him/her & continue talking.

     Comment by Timothy — September 16, 2007 #

210. Alrighty.. Another snag, another snaffu.. thx for the update, it still hasn’t fixed my YAHOO.. No more worrying who says what .. concentrate on the issues and stop reading this gruff… U have bigger issues than us to deal with at hand. PPL boo~hooing about Sarah and her Merry Team of FLOPS just have to realize that limited minds can only do so much.

     Please FOCUS yahoo.. Get the rooms fixed then delete ppl and their posts here.. Get busy; time is a wastin.. GET ON IT..

     Comment by Tryin2Rhyme — September 16, 2007 #

211. Sarah,
     At the moment I would say that more than 90% of the rooms are full or closed.All rooms under “Romance” ie 20’s,30’s, 40’s,50’s and 60’s are full or closed as are all 150 of UK rooms.Not very good considering an update was done 2 days ago.Rooms are full of cam bots and stuck id’s

     Comment by eezy.ryder — September 16, 2007 #

212. Wow!

     How can it have gone so wrong? I logged in to Glasgow Chat this morning to discover that i went into room 37 rather than the normal 8, and found my mate’s id there among the 43 users. He has been on a plane to Australia since yesterday morning, so won’t have logged in to yahoo in that time!

     Before the new system there would be 6 or 7 full rooms in Glasgow (including the bots), so 350 users approx. This morning there are nearly 40 rooms, so 2000 users approx., with a similar pattern across all the different categories. There are 3 possible reasons: 1) yahoo’s membership has greatly increased in the last week, 2) the number of bots has greatly increased, or 3) some underpaid yahoo programmer has f*cked up (deliberately or otherwise) and completely broken what used to be a great service.

     My short term solution? Boot every user from the rooms and reset them all to 0.

     My long term solution? Bring back user rooms and let us police them ourselves.

     Comment by Mark Connolly — September 16, 2007 #

213. Sloar,

     If chat has no value why keep it running?

     The resources argument is a simple one: if there is a will there is a way. Yahoo can certainly afford to employ or re-deploy a few more developers to sort things out.

     The problem is that there is a lack of a strategy beyond the ‘lets keep the chat rooms open and maybe do something with them at some point’.

     For a company that is supposed to be a market leader and thrive on innovation, their chat rooms are a disgrace.

     Comment by Geekster — September 16, 2007 #

214. once again its at its best or should i say worse…gave up trying to get into room since it says full or closed.
     I say let them fire thier so call techs n developers and get new ones ..least some who know how NOT to improve for every time there is one.. it gets worse.

     Now i can fully under stand why yahoo old CEO quit… he probably couldnt get into a room

     sometimes newer IS not better.. they should have left well enough alone yrs ago…

     Comment by lynncee S — September 16, 2007 #

215. well sarah looks like yahoo are up to their tricks again why do u have to comtinue to mess around wjhm n it was long ago u had a maintainece now yr doing it again why do you continue to mess aroiund with chat u can’t even let the thing settle down before u have to mess agfain can’t even get into my regular room or any of the other roomswhen u going to stop all this messying around with the chat rooms people i have talked to have to confenernce rooms i amather annoyed right now caus e i have to settle for oyther rooms and not my my regular room i want my regular rooms back and stop screwing yahoo up every time u do something with it

     Comment by sir_kick — September 16, 2007 #

216. Okay all seriousness.. This is NOT a chat room..PPL come on please.. Get a grip!! U have the right to biotch here but seriously .. R U gonna make it a chat room.. Get on with it and go to conference!

     Sarah, can u please give us an update as to what the hell is going on with YAHELL? Obviously the bot issues and preexisting issues have prevailed.. Is this gonna be as long as the last time?

     Surely u ppl at YAHELL headquarters can get it together!!

     OOPPPPSSS is this post gonna be deleted? LOL

     Comment by R-U-KIDIN-ME — September 16, 2007 #

217. I think yahoo need to shut down there chat servers completely THEN start fixing them there is a lot they can do but simply refuse to like let people use there own filters etc but no there ”filters” just replace text with ***** lol pathetic if users could have there own filter like before! - the word replacement crap then yahoo would be a lot better

     Comment by Karl — September 16, 2007 #

218. Sarah, well somehow the bots and bad ppl got around the verification code because every room has 50 bots for 100 rooms in each category so yahoo chat is not functioning again. I hope u dont give up i think they have found that once one bot is in it can invite hundreds without verification or some by pass method. I really miss my friends in the thailand chatrooms and hope u will not give up trying to fix the problem. Thanks, mike

     Comment by mike johnson — September 16, 2007 #

219. ok you dummies at yahoo,im going to tell you how to fix your chatrooms since you cant seem to figure it out.put them back like they were 3 months or so ago then buy yahelite client and give a copy to all chatters and let them deal with the bots themselves which will make it eaiser for everyone and get rid of the spam problem.and let people make their own rooms and moderate them like msn used to do before they screwed up their chat by charging for it and causing it to go bankrupt.at the moment yahoo chat is totalled like a giant car wreck.the first five chatrooms of all catagiries are now filled with cambots spamming eachother and real people are blocked from going into them and the rooms they used to call home,goodluck.the great gunzmith

     Comment by gunzmith — September 16, 2007 #

220. it seems since yahoo 5.6 (the one without all the CRAP) yahoo has gone downhill esp with there messenger lol this company s stock value is going down at an alarming rate i hope it decreases more karma is a a bi7ch and you deserve it for neglecting the genral public with your automated responce emails lack of support (LOL @ support) cant wait till google get chat rooms that will be the end of yahoo google will blow you away like they have in some many other ways

     Comment by Karl — September 16, 2007 #

221. Sarah,

     I want to be among those to alert you to an urgent problem that has arisen in chat: the rooms all seem to be all full. I haven’t tried all the chat categories yet but I think what is happening is yahoo keeps the person in the room even after they have left, thus causing the room to reach capacity.
     I than you and your staff for your efforts and the overall improvements and I’m sure this will be addressed shortly.

     Comment by jabadoobie — September 16, 2007 #

222. Karl with a K thats a rude thing to say, (hope it goes down more). You have been a part of the yahoo chat infrastructure as have I. With out chatters what good is chat? Theyve let you play with out charging you money, now theyre having problems and you wish ill for them?
     How ungreatful.

     Comment by Name (required) — September 16, 2007 #

223. let me start with few points to suggest with,1)whats the barometer yahoo uses to decide that the room is full? 2) enhance the no of rooms and their cpacity if possible. 3) find out a solid and fullproof/foulproof system to distinguish between a human and bots/spams.4)finish the use of multiple id system 5) integrate voice server/video/messaging into one and make sure its avlbl to least speed user.6) let urteam should take account all suggestions made by the bloggers and work it out.9)and pl ensure that only and only one version of messgr which is approved by u will be connected to yserver and not all version till today and withdraw and dont support the otherversion than the latest, so that if it requires tobe fixed for any cause can be done easily than dealing with complains of all ppl using old version.

     last but not the least consider certain features like ignoring,,reporting abuse,stealth setting and displaying cam icon but someone cannot axes,
     so many r there but next tym. thanks sarah

     Comment by es kay — September 16, 2007 #

224. The problem with ghosts in chat rooms has been the for some time. It’s not a new problem. It did, however, get worse with the captcha addition.

     You might concider putting someone on your
     team who actually *USES* the chat rooms…

     and, “just waiting” is bogus answer. With things so broken you should be able able to flush the rooms or restart the server process.

     it can’t be that hard. who wrote this software?

     Comment by Brad — September 16, 2007 #

225. Jo
     They are ghost ID’s. I know this because I went into a room, left and saw screen echo from the room I just left for over a week and a half. People kept talking to me in the echo’s like I was still in the room I had just left. People kept buzzing me and trying to pm me, yet they were in the room my ID was stuck in till Yahoo did the last server sweep, I’d have friends see my name and say hi so I would pm them and tell them where I was and they would say , NO, you’re in room 43 with your cam on. I signed completely out turned off the pc for a few days, came back and was still ghosting in the same room no matter how many other rooms I managed to get into.

     Comment by comfortably_yum — September 16, 2007 #

226. just 2 let u guys know.i finally was able to get in a room.it isnt peoples nics that r stuck out there….its bots!

     Comment by ya im bored — September 16, 2007 #

227. Amazing how they uupgraded to get rid of bots and now TADA the rooms r full of em… i agree yahoo should shut down.. re do it and test it b4 we try n use it.. better yet let them hire NEW techies who are much better qualified …. now i know why my friend left n went to another chat client… i am giving up going into my room which is romance 49;21 … have feeling bots galore r in there .. well hope they have fun!!!! for im not.. tired of trying for 3 days and nothing..its BULL!!!

     Comment by LS — September 16, 2007 #

228. Good grief! I logged on last night and about 40 bot message windows opened. After I spammed all of them, which is supposed to also add them to the ignore list, they all reopened again! So, I spammed them all again. I then logged out of Yahoo messenger. I logged on about an hour later, and checked to make sure I was running the latest version, which I was. Then about 10 minutes later, all of those windows opened again. Oddly enough, the names were like ‘machine1′, ‘machine2′, etc. After my computer caught up to having 60 windows open, I checked my ‘ignore list’ in preferences, and none of the eariler spam/ignores were saved! So, I spammed all of these windows, and went back to ignore list, and none of them were there.
     So, I’m like everyone else. Chat is unusable now. Oh, and now the Yahoo photos are gone, and Chat is essentially gone….why am I still using Yahoo….hum….

     Comment by Notworkingnow — September 16, 2007 #

229. Can someone fix the OHIO rooms? It says we have 7500 users in 150 rooms. Inwhich, all 150 rooms are full. Please fix. TY.

     Comment by termite0035 — September 16, 2007 #

230. Some a-hole loaded a tone of i need bots into windows: 1, 2, and 3. It pisses me off ever dame time we get a room full of ppl then they leave then these f’n I need bots fill in ever damee day we are forced to a hugher god damn room because of it I wish yahoo would find the owner of them and band them.

     Comment by Rob Madden — September 16, 2007 #

231. pls just reset rooms as soon as possible cos all rooms full with boots

     Comment by Poison — September 16, 2007 #

232. You should give the Muzzies seperate rooms or another server, or give us a way to permablock them all. They’ve been taking up space in our rooms, since you took away the private rooms option

     say that in person i will tell u about ur real dad

     Comment by bastardbornamerican — September 16, 2007 #

233. Is PalTalk any better? Anyone care to share their experience with Pal?

     Comment by Waaaahhhh — September 16, 2007 #

234. It is obvious that Yahoo can have a dependable room for chatting, even if it is “Messenger Blog”. Perhaps we can all make new friends from the unknown here and meet as we did in the chat rooms of the past.
     Seriously, I have faith that Yahoo will get the problems corrected and bring chat back although it does seem iffy at this time. We all await having chat rooms being as good as they were before they were “fixed”.

     Comment by asylum — September 16, 2007 #

235. Here’s a dumb suggestion:
     Use the chat community to police the rooms…

     Give select users the tools needed to boot/disable accounts of bots/problem users from the rooms/yahoo. ( there are tons of people that campout all day online anyways.. why not use them?) … maybe have them use the yahoo messenger accounts while in the room and remain anonymous. You tell other roomies who you are. You lose the privledge.

     Make it so “room attendants” have to be a 5 year member plus….

     Have a one strike rule - you boot/delete a user maliciously. you lose the privledge and possibly your own account. I know i’d hate to lose my 10 year old yahoo account…..

     Give problem users a one chance rule. you mess up once we’ll forgive. You mess up twice you lose your account. Logon a different account and act up. We’ll take that too…

     I know some of the other chatters will scream about this. But, it’s a good alternative to being flooded in a room then having the flooder brag about it afterwards…

     I’d bet the flooder losing countless yahoo accounts would cool his/her heels in due time.

     Comment by termite0035 — September 16, 2007 #

236. for crying out loud, you fix something to take something away. i just cant seem to get into my favorite rooms anymore. please please this is supposed to be a place for people to create communities & friends & you have just fixed it so this cant happen.
     why is it so difficult to not be able to fix a problem without creating another. hope someone listens & does something about this latest bug.
     thanks

     Comment by __RoosteR__ — September 16, 2007 #

237. i think yahoo chat was better before than now even though they ask verification there r still many bots this has just increased our headache verifying everytime we change room moreover the many rooms are always busy and they dont show correct user count and voice service is not good….ithink u should do something

     Comment by david — September 16, 2007 #

238. We all have a choice as to whether we attempt to chat in Yahoo or to seek an alternative chat. If all those who seem to only want to rant and rave about Yahoo chat do find an alternative place, perhaps it will be a much more pleasurable experience here when they do get it fixed again.

     Comment by asylum — September 16, 2007 #

239. Folks, all the rooms are full and we can no longer enter them, could you at least reset the all the rooms daily until the problem is fixed. I might get bounced out once a day, but it would be better than never getting into a room again.

     Thanks for this awesome service, I totally enjoy it when it is working.

     Comment by Sebring Rain — September 16, 2007 #

240. PLEASE FIX THIS ERROR AND GET SOME REAL PROGRAMMERS BECAUSE YOU ARE JUST WASTING YOUR MONEY YAHOO.

     Comment by ARRRGH — September 16, 2007 #

241. Boy that fix was really a great thing!

     Can’t Yahoo do anything right?

     Comment by Ken_tuck — September 16, 2007 #

242. Gosh asylum, that really doesn’t make much sense. The people who are upset are the ones who found Yahoo chat fun and pleasurable before it began it’s unlovely slide down the toilet. Frustration arises when we are promised fixes that are slow in coming, and then when they finally do come a plethora new problems are introduced into the chat experience. This is then followed by a prolonged period of unresponsiveness from Yahoo.

     Sure, there are other places to chat. I’ve explored both PalTalk and Sparkpea and haven’t bonded with any particular room in either. And no, chat is not my life. I have a tiny window of time in the morning which I reserve for chatting with some very fun, funny, intelligent people that I’ve become quite fond of over the years. Unfortunately that is now impossible with the current state of affairs in Yahoo chat.

     Asylum, if Yahoo ever gets its act together I’m sure you’d find me a very pleasant chatter. I do, however, make for a pretty pissy screwed over customer.

     Comment by Loretta — September 16, 2007 #

243. can yahoo do anything right… well they havent done so in over 6 yrs why should they start now :-))

     and i agree why not use this as chat *LoL* least bot free well for now … wish they would fix the bloody thing… after awhile its not * cute* anymore*

     Comment by LS — September 16, 2007 #

244. Finally Yahoo Chat is restored to functionality. Now all rooms are full of something. Capchta really did the trick. What the gives at Yahoo central? Have the hired government employees. IRS agents? It would be funny if no one cared about chat. But it isn’t very funny at all. It is past irritating and frustrating it has enterred the realm of “HAVE YOU NO SHAME AT ALL?”

     Comment by michaellad — September 16, 2007 #

245. hi sarah! might i add a request to add more chatrooms, not just 150 especially at oveseas filipino workers zone: coz we usually meet & stay beyond ofw zone 150; thankx for granting my request & hoope you can fix it as soon as possible! more power!

     Comment by sacre — September 16, 2007 #

246. I hope that Yahoo understands that the latest “fix” has left their chat service unuseable again. Now when you try and enter a room you get a “chat error” because all the rooms are full. My guess is that this relates to the name ghosting problem dicussed by some earlier in the blog. Let’s just hope they get it fixed ASAP and everything will be back to normal soon.

     Comment by BigDawg — September 16, 2007 #

247. The captcha is unsuccessful!!!! The rooms are full of spams and bots again!!!

     The only way here to prevent spams and bots from entering chat rooms is yahoo appointed chatroom moderators!!
     I think yahoo should appoint some mods for each chatroom categories and give them the ability to delete the spam and bots IDs and get rid of them.

     I myslef can be a moderator for ASIA and PERSIAN CHAT rooms.

     what’s ur idea sarah bacon???

     Comment by Hashem — September 16, 2007 #

248. i am unable to get any voice and now your captcha is not even letting me in the rooms,my audio is fine in all other applications.i’m highly dissappointed in this new chat application.

     Comment by weisfan — September 16, 2007 #

249. Thanks for restarting the room servers I can now get in a room

     Comment by Banger — September 16, 2007 #

250. Well the rooms I had fun in this morning are gone. Most of the other categories are back but for some reason yall decided the Seniors 60+ Music rooms aren’t worth bringing back.

     How very sad the youngsters of this world cant find one small corner for those that paved the way

     Shame

     Comment by Donna — September 16, 2007 #

251. thanks for reset rooms:D now rooms work again

     Comment by Poison — September 16, 2007 #

252. First of all for all those that want ”user moderator rooms” that really would spell the end for yahoo chat it would be like paltalk (in my experience) people would get kicked for the most diabolical reasons freedom of speech is the one thing yahoo chat has going for it i for one do not want some power mad idiot ruling the roost thats what will happen look at msn chat lol it was so exploitable it wasn’t funny well i found it funny but thats besides the point lol

     Comment by Karl — September 16, 2007 #

253. Hello people: Been away for a short break.
     Went as Captcha was rolled out and room access improved dramatically.
     Back to find the system is a shambles again and as usual Yahoo/Sarah et al are paying no real notice to the complaints.
     Also noticed that there are still several posters whose only contribution seems to be to pick at other posts, often with comments that are only vaguely linked to the original post, in order to start a bickering session. Pity ignore doesn’t operate in this blog, but there are two things we can do guys to try and stay clear of falling into their little flame-war starting games:
     Firstly don’t rise to the bait by getting involved in a detailed reply because they are simply attention seeking.
     Secondly although we don’t have an ignore we can show them the finger to let them know we are onto their little game. The reply should simply be one word “Coventry”. It’s an old tactic: it means nobody talks to them.

     So back to the real problems of chat and a couple of suggestions:
     (1) Could some of the posters on here try reading previous posts and get some kind of focus before just blasting off with “the rooms are full of “dead frogs”" (I made that one up :-), just so there might be a chance to keep beating Yahoo over the head with a correct and accurate description of the problems in the chat rooms.

     (2) From our own experience, plus reading previous comments, it would seem that in general the problem relates to ids not dying when a user leaves a room rather than being related to bot flooding. Is that correct?

     (3) Several people have suggested other changes that need making, or putting back the way things were before the latest fix broke what wasn’t broke. The current Captcha check before room verify being one big example. Perhaps we could start a “wish/fix” list and each person that wanted to add something new could copy the previous version into their post and append their new suggestion to it. That way MAYBE Yahoo can pick up on most of we user’s suggestions in one go as it’s pretty obvious that don’t trawl through each and everyone of everybody’s posts to pick out and collate the good stuff.

     (4) There have been previous comments and/or suggestions about complaining to the advertisers on here. Well it might work, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. How about trying for a bit more directed complaining:
     (a) As many of us as possible email (nice and short message) to our particular computer magazines to ask why they are not covering this shambles in their news/comments pages. Bet a lot of people in many trades (and some in the position of paying for advertising) associated with this technology would see it then.

     (b) Go up the chain. God only knows what Sarah’s function and duties really are (assuming she’s not just a Yahoo created “Annanova” to con us all) but she’s certainly not delivering on communication and customer care here, never mind the technological mess her coding team are serving up. So does anyone have the email addresses of more senior Yahoo board members? Email them directly and invite them to come read about the shambles we have been lumbered with and the failures to sort it.

     James and Kay

     WISH/FIX LIST:
     (a) Sort out the clogging of rooms due to IDs not dying
     (b) If (a) above is also due to BOTS then get onto flushing them
     (c) Perform Captcha AFTER checking room is available
     (d) Give us back user created rooms so like minded people can find each other for chat
     (e) Sort out the iggy low limit problem
     (f) Allow free choice of room to enter, not having to go to the next one in sequence with space

     Could add a lot more but will leave that for others to have a crack at it too.

     Comment by James and Kay — September 16, 2007 #

254. Ahhh..chat…sweet chat…is back.

     Actually it was back earlier if you invited all your friends to the one room that wasn’t flooded by hackers.

     Comment by Roger — September 16, 2007 #

255. Thanks for doing something, Yahoo, as for now, at least, it seems one can get into the rooms, though the number of them seem to be far lower than before.

     And I do agree with James and Kay… when Captcha originally came up, if a room was full, you gave that designation before making the user waste their time entering a password. Not sure when that changed, but if you could put that back, it would be nice.

     As to the bots vs. ghost ID’s comments… all I know was when I did get into a room, it was 90% or more filled with camera bots. As to whether they were *ghost* camera bots, I couldn’t tell.

     Jo

     Comment by joan26ss — September 16, 2007 #

256. please keep in mind this is free service. yahoo is not owned by your seet father. so be careful when making comments. free things should not be taken granted. if yahoo takes back free chat then what would you do. so again be careful

     Comment by Ikram — September 16, 2007 #

257. ok all you chatters who had chat withdrawl some of the rooms are open, some aren’t…still doing the fill the rooms one by one deal it seems…so have fun and enjoy……..and sarah fire the morons you have working for you and hire people who know what the hell they’re doing! Hmmm maybe sarah needs to be fired tooo!! *LOL*

     Comment by deb — September 16, 2007 #

258. thank you , I see finally the last bit of updates are working rather well now. the room refresh when people entering now shows them with voice as well as there profile status. As with everything just takes time and patience. complaining for something free doesnt make sence, but if you simply point out the bugs so they can “PINPOINT” them they can work to fix them. Thanks Sarah

     Comment by Ring — September 16, 2007 #

259. Sir_kick think about using punctuation and maybe a spellcheck or two BEFORE hitting the submitt button.

     Oh and by the way we don’t WANT you back in the 30s rooms or any of the other rooms you’ve been pissing everyone off in. Just for this reason I applaud Yahoo! lol.

     Comment by Jay — September 16, 2007 #

260. Moderators in chat?? Do you seriously want Yahoo! to go the way of MSN Chat? The last time I checked I was an adult not a 3 year old needing to be disciplined because I cussed in an Adult Chatroom. You’ll also notice that hardly anyone uses MSN Chat anymore. It’s a dinosaur. Get a grip people! Moderators in chat…Yikes!

     Comment by Jay — September 16, 2007 #

261. why waste your time with yahoo chat its been mess up for 5 years, so its going to take 6 years before its fix,just do what other people are doing go make you a free room in paltalk and invite your friends.and you people post the same old b.s some of you people cannot live with out yahoo what a shame.

     Comment by markj — September 16, 2007 #

262. Is there a reason for not having seperete servers for voice and cams, since this seems to be a large part of the problems. I think part of yahoo’s problems are related to having all of the functions (voice,chat & cams)on the same server and it has now created a programing night mare trying to get it all to work together. Just curious.

     Comment by kssnuggle — September 16, 2007 #

263. Oh by the way Sarah, my house is a lot cleaner now that yahoo chats rooms are toasted and ready to be pitched out the door.

     Comment by kssnuggle — September 16, 2007 #

264. I just love how some people jump at the chance to whine and cry about how thier “free speech” will be taken away or how they as an “ADULT” can cuss when they feel the need.

     1. I said nothing about your cussing or your freedom of speech being taken away. Say what you want. I/We have iggy and a profanity filter to filter out what I/we don’t want to see or hear in a room. Iggy and a profanity filter will not stop a booter. Someone with yahoo admin rights can though!!!

     2. I’m just talking about someone “LIVE” in the rooms to REMOVE BOTS and/or PROBLEM USERS. (You know, the ones that boot just because they don’t like what the others in the room have to say about them or thier childish actions. Or, the ones that think it’s cute to boot everyone in the room. REPEATEDLY !!!!)
     Get rid of them I’d say!

     3. Make the “room monitors” accountable for thier actions as I stated above. I’m sure someone with the risk of losing thier 5 year old screen name will make responsible decisions about who they delete/disable and why.

     Maybe, have the “room monitor” pass that information onto a yahoo chatroom abuse department for them to delete or disable someone in violation of yahoo’s chatroom TOS’s.

     4.Yes, there needs to be a system of proving someone was acting up in the room(s). Either from other roomies chat logs and/or room captures. (yahoo can already save your pm logs on thier servers - why not chatroom logs?).

     Comment by termite0035 — September 16, 2007 #

265. wow take a look at what someone on yahoo tech had to say about paltalk.

     http://tech.yahoo.com/blog/raskin/5927;_ylt=AsyHekk_owM.drnSBelKoaERLpA5

     Comment by markj — September 16, 2007 #

266. MY THOUGHTS ABOUT USER CREATED CHAT:

     I’d be more than happy to pay a small annual fee to have the “user created” rooms back. providing they were bot free to some degree.

     Make the “user created” rooms a pay service.
     and let non-paying customers have the yahoo created rooms.

     Maybe bundle the “user created” rooms into other yahoo premium service like yahoo music plus.

     I think people would be more accountable for thier actions. If, a user had to use thier credit card and give up thier indentity to yahoo to create a “user created” room.

     Comment by termite0035 — September 16, 2007 #

267. Thanks for the stop-gap of resetting the servers. It still ain’t right. The bots are back — even good ol’ “pregnant_in_portland” — so stop putting us through the tedium of Captcha. It isn’t achieving its intended purpose.

     Throughout these past days, I NEVER got the the Full Room message. I just got in rooms that had only me and Yahoo Chat Admin. What I DID get, and am STILL getting, is an immediate “not authorized to join the conference” before I could even click the verify link. This locked up the chat window AND Messenger.

     Nice touch.

     Comment by mourning_still — September 16, 2007 #

268. I personally don’t use Paltalk. I have been a yahoo’r since yahoo started and prefer to stick with yahoo. GOOD OR BAD

     But, from what I gather about paltalk monitors. The monitors are selected by the person who created the room? Or, does paltalk say here anyone can be a room monitor?

     If, you don’t like the “clique” in a particular room. Go to another room or create your own. It’s that easy.

     Comment by termite0035 — September 16, 2007 #

269. I am getting harassed on Messenger. Rhe same people (a dozen) keep asking to add me to their lists again and again. I have blocked them, and set Yahoo to only accept contacts from people that are on my list. This does not stop these requests, and abuse@yahoo.com gives canned useless messages back to me about spam e-mail!

     Stopping harassment is critical I think. There is NO link on Yahoo for abuse of chats.

     Comment by TJ — September 16, 2007 #

270. I really enjoy the yahoo rooms too. I have screen names over 10 years old for yahoo. And, I have been a chatter for 20 years now on various other internet progs and bbs’s.

     It just goes to show. It just takes a few bad apples to ruin the barrel.

     The juries of the nation is a “jury of our peers” why not use that theory in our chat rooms. Give the rooms back to the users - not the bots and abusers/zeros (chat room zeros as I like to call them. zeros for short)

     Comment by termite0035 — September 16, 2007 #

271. Someone asked what is an alternative to yahoo chat. I gave them what I see other roomies talking about in the yahoo rooms. People are going to do what they want regardless.

     Comment by termite0035 — September 16, 2007 #

272. As for yahoo tech’s paltalk write up. I applaud yahoo for thier write up. It shows they aren’t worried about competition. People will go where the crowds are. And, yahoo has a pretty impressive member database right now.

     Comment by termite0035 — September 16, 2007 #

273. TJ, I agree with you 100% percent.

     Yahoo needs to put a link in the chatroom to report chatroom abuse.

     Or, if we had a “room monitor” that could report it or do something about it themsleves.

     I think yahoo would do better job responding to “room monitors abuse complaints” than individual complaints. I hate to think how many TOS’s abuse reports yahoo gets daily. I think it would be impossible to address each and every abuse report on a individual basis.

     Comment by termite0035 — September 16, 2007 #

274. Sarah? Were your ears burning? All of a sudden “voila” chat returns to a certain level of normalcy. I still want my pony for Christmas.

     Comment by Waaaahhhh — September 16, 2007 #

275. I’m sick of hearing the “Yahoo chat is free so quit complaining” bull crap.

     Listen up. The Yahoo Chat team were NOT the ones who decided to offer free chat; the YAHOO EXECUTIVES DID. Not the developers.

     Those developers were hired by the executives to implement chat and I’m sure the execs are sick of hearing about complaints due to chat. If Yahoo Chat didn’t make money, then it wouldn’t be free. That simple. So who’s paying for it? The advertisers. That’s who. Who does Yahoo need to satisfy those advertisers.. US. Yahoo needs us to buy the junk pimped in the ads, so if you piss us off, then you piss off the advertisers because nobody will be buying their stuff.

     Our complaints do matter. GOT IT?

     Comment by bots-b-gone — September 16, 2007 #

276. well i told u it will be fixed by Monday…but its not completely fixed yet since most rooms 1-10 are still full by cam bots but anyways at least there are rooms now that is vacant. Still lots of things to be done keep it up yahoo team i know these morons who’s try to blackmail u by locking the rooms won’t succeed!!! show em’ that ur in control!

     Comment by jamesbond — September 16, 2007 #

277. Please can anyone tell me why I only get a blank chat window when I log in a yahoo chatroom. Also I can not see any user left or joined???? I have tried to solve the problem by uninstall en re-install the latest version of yahoo messenger…but it does’nt help. By the way ….voice is ok now. Many thanks.

     Comment by confuzzed — September 17, 2007 #

278. Confused,
     On messenger go to preferences>>>ignore list,,,,tick “ignore only the people below”.That should fix your problem I hope.

     Comment by eezy.ryder — September 17, 2007 #

279. Sorry I got your name wrong “Confuzzed” , lol

     Comment by eezy.ryder — September 17, 2007 #

280. Thanks eezy.ryder for your answer. But how can I now ignore all incoming pm’s…thanks!

     Comment by confuzzed — September 17, 2007 #

281. I don’t know how these folks manage to do this but the room I attend the guy can still allow bots in the room even with the captcha thing although they don’t come in as fast they still get in and have like 95 numbers on the mic when you press talk and its bot names like example Master_1 Master_2 Master_3 etc. I thought disabling voice till capthca key would work but obviously not, now I say since bots need proxies to work won’t you guys take away proxies to log in, I don’t want to compare you guys to paltalk but paltalk don’t have any proxies to log on and multiple names are not in one room. Try Removing proxies that might solve everything and you may not need the captcha. But yes somehow this botter still know how to bring bots in the room on voice….. I know you all are trying hard but keep working at it… Good Job on effort

     Comment by Hi_Just_Blogging — September 17, 2007 #

282. lol thats easy theres a program in fact i have that program right now (but im not using it ok i just download it in order for me to know how it works sorry i wont tell the name) what it basically do is u load several ID say 50 ID’s then just press login button u can login all the ID…BUT when u join room u have to do it manually one by one but this program doesn’t lunch ur browser when u enter the captcha instead it will lunch a small window where u can type ur captcha so it makes it a bit easier to join room. Joing 20 id maybe well take a couple of minutes.

     So what does it mean is yahoo captcha system a failure? hell no! b4 the captcha this program is more notorious since b4 what u do is just press join and all bots join the room automatically until it fills the room lets say u load 50 bots and the available slot in the room is 30 all ur first 30 bots will join the room automatically with just one press of join button! whats more ur other 20 remaining ID is put on hold and will automatically join room whenever someone logged out until such time all ur 50 ID is joined in the room. this can happen even u left ur PC!

     But with captcha this is impossible to do right now if they want to lock room they have to do it manually…Yahoo captcha works im glad they implemented it! yes there are some issues, bugs and everything but they are fixing it give them few weeks and everything will be just fine now is the start.

     Comment by YM user — September 17, 2007 #

283. People that are complaining about no abuse link need to open their eyes. There is a REPORT ABUSE link right above where you type in every chatroom

     Comment by Storm Watcher — September 17, 2007 #

284. ok , so we got the bots and spammers,not as many as before .i for one am just glad i can get in a chat room.think yahell is trying, ” very trying’ lol

     Comment by andy — September 17, 2007 #

285. with regards to voice bots the same principle but yah they are using proxy but still they join their bots manually but unlike b4 where u can join as much as 2000 voice bots with the captcha u they can’t do that anymore! lol…the worm named ROKA a.k.a ASR never knows when to give up he just updated his master of the voice to enable voice bots join chat manually well good luck to ur paying customers ROKA lol anyways if the real chatters in the room decide to ignore the person having the voice bots ur 20 bots with voice will be useless lol. “thats it yahoo bring it on!” show these bastard what u can do!

     pal talk is boring room mod are like the NAZI one mistake and ur out no freedom of expression in that in PAL TALK chat so if u love PAL TALK so much leave this blog and ask ur PAL TALK to make their own blog or are they afraid to make blog coz they can’t exercise their NAZI power! lol

     yahoo rules!!!!

     Comment by YM user — September 17, 2007 #

286. The chatrooms are still screwed up !! As of 845 EST,the 50’s Love rooms all show full, however you can get into some and not others..I get a “user refused join” when I try to enter some of them. A couple allowed me in even though they showed 50 people in them.. Keep trying folks, some progress is better than none !!

     Comment by Yahoo_Frustratee — September 17, 2007 #

287. How about this!!!
     If 10 chatters flag an ID as spam, yahoo would delete that IDs.

     Comment by Hashem — September 17, 2007 #

288. bad idea Hasem they well just login 10 bot ID’s and these ID’s send packets to YM server reporting ur ID as spam and u can kiss ur ID bye bye lol…very bad idea…

     Comment by YM user — September 17, 2007 #

289. I think the only way here to get rid of spams and boots is that yahoo appoint some moderators for each region of chat rooms!

     and the mod should have the ability to suspend any spam IDs, and to avoid mistakes each one of the suspensions should accompany with the screenshot of that id posting spams, nonsenses,…

     Comment by dr_hooman_1979 — September 17, 2007 #

290. lol.. i’ll be darned.. There really is a report abuse button in the chatrooms..

     Comment by termite0035 — September 17, 2007 #

291. and some kind of prog that detects malicious code (booters) running across the room network. We need firm proof someone booted rather than just room captures. something like ytunnel uses.

     Comment by termite0035 — September 17, 2007 #

292. CAPTCHA should be case sensitive.

     Comment by Parry Hotter — September 17, 2007 #

293. My Yahoo Room WANT LIST

     1. Room Moderators

     2. Progs to capture network packets and frames to catch booters and flooders.

     3. Larger iggy bin

     i’ll think of more later.

     Comment by termite0035 — September 17, 2007 #

294. The real problem with Yahoo Chat is not technical, it’s managerial. The executives at Yahoo have obviously chosen for the past 6-8 years to assign zero (or nearly zero) resources to work on maintaining or improving Yahoo Chat.

     The executives at Yahoo are short-sighted and stupid for not seeing the enormous potential that Chat has to create and maintain loyal users of the larger Yahoo brand.

     What Yahoo Chat really needs is more manpower. Hint: there should be more than two people working on it. Try dedicating more like 100 people to it.

     Comment by hotgeek30m — September 17, 2007 #

295. 1. Booting can be stopped completely server side. Several developers here have offered ideas on how to do this.

     2. Chat moderators won’t happen, since there’s too many rooms, and Yahoo would have to pay each moderator (which they don’t seem to be interested in doing).

     3. The captcha needs more improvements, and a new version of Yahoo! Messenger for full integration.

     I’d like to not that YMSG16 is now active (has been for a couple days now) so a new version of Yahoo! Messenger is on the way.

     Comment by Venom — September 17, 2007 #

296. comic shop rooms are down

     Comment by ecpliso — September 17, 2007 #

297. Not sure is this a bug or new yahoo feature.. but, if you go to your iggy list and ignore everyone not on your buddy list.. it also ignores everyone not on your buddy list in the rooms as well…

     Comment by termite0035 — September 17, 2007 #

298. Well, I hang out in the christian chatrooms. There are currently 150 rooms on the list with various amounts of chatters listed in each, but they’re closed.

     We’re crammed into the first 25 rooms and keep tripping over each other. Anyone have a battering ram I can borrow to knock down the doors on the other rooms? lol

     Comment by Storm Watcher — September 17, 2007 #

299. yahoo wouldn’t have to pay for moderators if they used the chat community. i’ll do it for free as well as many other roomies..

     Venom wrote:
     “Several developers here have offered ideas on how to do this.”

     where is here?? you work for yahoo?

     Comment by termite0035 — September 17, 2007 #

300. The only developers offering to help, are only doing so for their own benefits. Just what we all need, people known to exploit chat running things. Forget it.

     Comment by Parry Hotter — September 17, 2007 #

301. Room Monitors…oh Bad Idea!!! What do ya think would happen if one of the room flooders or a booter was a monitor in the room/rooms you enjoy!!!

     If yahoo can figure out how to control the bots, spammers, ….ect. I think you will not see the need for a room monitor. Besides folks there is something call “Ignore”. Yes it is a pain to use it when you have reached your limit and have to “re-ignore” folks, but it does work. If you ignore the trouble makers they eventually move on, but as long as you react to them, they feed on it.

     Comment by kssnuggle — September 17, 2007 #

302. pete , if you go into your account and edit the box that says request verification to never, you wont have that problem

     Comment by Vermin — September 17, 2007 #

303. Cannot install latest version of Messenger using web install. Continually gives a 404 error at about 90% complete. Uninstalled, cleaned registry of all Yahoo entries, rebooted, and reinstalled….same results.

     Comment by Parry Hotter — September 17, 2007 #

304. the i_need_bots 1- 300 hare filling all the computer lobbies as well as lots of bots containing the Y!mLite name

     Comment by Rob Madden — September 17, 2007 #

305. i_need_bots 1- 300 hare filling all the computer lobbies as well as lots of bots containing the Y!mLite name

     Comment by smoking_endo — September 17, 2007 #

306. the latest yahoo updates didn’t stop yahoo voice bots user in doing their dirty works coz they can still manually login their bots and play with their toys. i guess the only way to stop them is for yahoo to stop proxy support socks4 and socks 5. I wonder y yahoo is keep supporting this feature? i mean no real chatter would opt to use proxy. Proxy are not used by real chatters they are used by abusive yahoo kids i hope yahoo will stop proxy support..

     nyways thanks yahoo for the effort made ur slowly getting things done im still looking for the day that all yahoo user will only be using YM no more clients no more booters no more mass iggy.

     kudos yahoo team!

     Comment by YM user — September 17, 2007 #

307. Sarah,
     Chat seems to be running better now.Still some things to be done though.The problem whereby ID’s are sticking in room needs to be fixed.Also something needs to be done about the mass ignore voice bots.Some morons are also capable of splitting the servers.Just a few fixes to go and all should be fine,so don’t give up now…Thanks

     Comment by eezy.ryder — September 18, 2007 #

308. Okay. Day 2 with 150 rooms on the Christian rooms list and still only 25 rooms open.

     Did somebody lose the keys to the other rooms?We’re falling all over each other trying to get in and out of the handful of rooms. Any chance you can find a locksmith to open the other rooms sometime this week? lol

     Comment by Storm Watcher — September 18, 2007 #

309. I’m getting locked out of rooms now..if not not one thing it’s something else with Yahoo’s system.

     I just tried every UK room and I get ‘User Refused Join’ after getting through Captcha.

     Are they all messed up with bots or something..is anybody else having this problem coz I give up.

     Comment by Colin — September 18, 2007 #

310. What a bunch of morons at YAHOO. Who’s working on these “up grades” anyways? A bunch of cavemen? I’m so done with yahoo….going to PALTALK where problems like this never arise. Thanx for nothing yahoo…not only can’t I get into your chat rooms but I can’t get into my mail either….people are right…it’s time to pass the buck and give someone else a try at your “up grades” becuase you are failing big time.

     Comment by FED_UP_2 — September 18, 2007 #

311. I do hope u will bring back user rooms since u now have this captcha thing working really good…we have a really great group of people who met on 9-11 and we r still together but r finding it hard to keep a steady room now so alot r giving up cause they can’t find where we r..so am pleading with u to make them or to make UNITED WE STAND room a permant one..also have a sugjestion for 3 smilies…1 is wavin the american flag and and the other one is saluting and last one is drinking a beer…ty and love what u have done

     Comment by Glenda — September 18, 2007 #

312. Well, one more christian room finally opened, but others closed, so we’re still crammed into a handful of rooms and tripping over each other. PalTalk is starting to look better and better. But it sucks. lol

     Comment by Storm Watcher — September 18, 2007 #

313. lolz FED_UP_2 u wanna go to pal talk well by all means go ahead Yahoo certainly don’t need a worm like u!!! i think becoz of some issues Yahoo is facing right now with chat rooms PAL TALK owners grab the chance to advertise their product!!! guess what PAL TALK in coming days yahoo well be fixed and ur going to lost lots of ur customers! yeah thats right u just wait!

     I mean what’s good PAL TALK has to offer? those who wanna use pal talk go ahead let us see if u can have ur freedom there just like what u have in yahoo chat. Chat rooms controlled by a NAZI mods are yah kidding me? if the nods don’t like u ur out yeah right! screw u PAL TALK! when yahoo gets fixed ur going down! YMSG 16 is right in the corner and plus some other surprises did i mention yahoo for vista? opssss…lol

     Comment by YM user — September 18, 2007 #

314. I’m still sittin here having to use uahelite because my yahoo wont work right here is the problem again :
     I go into a music room I’m there for 5 to 7 minutes then I lose sound if I refresh my ears it says The Audio Input Cant be Initialized and then I get kick off yahoo with the yahoo needs to shut down error. I have sent two emails to yahoo and not heard back and that was last week anyone got any ideas. I have the newest messenger and I’ve tried the older ones also,

     And let me add we have two other pc’s online with a router and have tested the router and its not it but all three pc’s have done the same thing Is this another yahoo fluke ???

     Comment by Julianna — September 18, 2007 #

315. well now… over 150 Texas rooms, all with 50 users, all of which are bots…. lets do some math.

     128*50=7500

     7500 bots… just in the Texas rooms.

     WTF are you guys doing?

     Comment by Joel — September 18, 2007 #

316. oh yeah, lets not forget the whole issue of not even seeing all the “people” in the chat room. On average, I only see 5 people, bots included.

     so again… WTF are you guys doing?

     Comment by Joel — September 18, 2007 #

317. Why hasn’t anyone brought up the problem with photosharing and how IT DOESNT work nor does file sharing!!! in messenger. It seems to work with some but most people I know it does NOT!! When will yahoo adress this problem!!

     Comment by RYan — September 18, 2007 #

318. why keep making a post about bringing the user rooms back it will never happen.take a look and you will see why yahoo will never bring back the user rooms.
     http://www.news.com/Yahoo+closes+chat+rooms+over+child+sex+concerns/2100-1025_3-5759705.html

     Comment by markj — September 18, 2007 #

319. Well the Kansas rooms are running some better. Still there are bots in the room, but it is a big improvement from a few weeks ago. Keep at it yahoo!

     Would like to see yahoo go back to allowing photo’s on the profiles and not this flickr…..ect. situation. It’s a pain. Used to be real easy to view a profile, now ya have to switch sites??

     Comment by kssnuggle — September 18, 2007 #

320. Please help…why is that when I check ignore anyone who is not on my messenger list in the ignore list I get a blank chat window and i can’t see anyone anymore…is this a bug in the new yahoo messenger or not???

     Comment by confuzzed — September 18, 2007 #

321. quote** Please help…why is that when I check ignore anyone who is not on my messenger list in the ignore list I get a blank chat window and i can’t see anyone anymore…is this a bug in the new yahoo messenger or not???

     Comment by confuzzed — September 18, 2007 #

     just a bug for 8.0 and up which basically ignores anyone not on your list even in chat, conference etc..

     Comment by __ChAnDLeR__ — September 19, 2007 #

322. where as older versions didnt do this, so this left 8.0 users to search alternative means on yahoo messenger 8.0 to help screen out non friends listed IM/PM’s… like .. non friends in single window etc..

     Comment by __ChAnDLeR__ — September 19, 2007 #

323. Amazing! The rooms no longer say 50 occupants and in fact seem to give an accurate count! Very few that I looked at had even 30 names in them. That’s an indication of how many Yahooers have given up on Chat.

     I wonder how many will come back now that it’s (seemingly) working the way it should.

     Comment by mourning_still — September 19, 2007 #

324. So far so good with only few minor issues….thanks for the hard work!

     Comment by Dog Costume — September 19, 2007 #

325. looking good, but NEW ISSUE:

     DING spammers.

     it started a couple days ago.

     because ^G shifts focus, and many users will reply with something nasty, this has the potential to allow spammers to verify yahoo chatters names, and other dictionary type attacks.

     Comment by disco-legend-zeke — September 19, 2007 #

326. While I have been in a chat room and try to ignore one of the bots,it shows I ignore them ,but there name remains in the room as well as in my ignore bin,is this something you are going to fix?

     Comment by Kwazie — September 19, 2007 #

327. The issue with photshare and file send is a valid one. The only way I can make it work is to drop my firewall. Funny thing is I have config’d the firwall to allow yahoo full privileges and I STILL have to drop the ‘wall.

     Next issue…. the unsolicited spammers/// The “ding” attacks are happening with alarming frequency like 20 at a whack WAZZUP with that?

     And finally.. exactly HOW do bots make in in past “Captcha” there are more and more every day. Ignoring them as spam doesn’t appear to make then go away… I’ll assume there is some criteria used to count how many times and ID has been tagged as a spam ID?

     Comment by ANONYmoose — September 19, 2007 #

328. Anoy to answer ur question, bots can still login and join room manually meaning the bot owner log the bot and join rooms by typing the captcha after it is joined the bots do its dirty works e.g. posting website links. But unlike b4 where in bots just join in automatically even if the bot owners leave their PC now its not possible. Captcha does not 100% eliminate the bots what it does is reduced them to a more manageable numbers. And about the criteria count that option if implemented by Yahoo is very dangerous and potential for abuse since what the bot owners and bot users can do is login as much as many bots and all these bots will send packets to yahoo server reporting ur ID as spam and ur ID is history.

     Comment by YM user — September 20, 2007 #

329. These upgrades were almost useless… I still get many PMs from cam bots when I log in, most of the names in the rooms are non-responsive, and most rooms still have cam bots. On a positive note: not all rooms have 50 people in them, so I can actually get in… but what I find is depressing at best. I don’t think you guys are smart enough to defeat the spammers. Sad.

     Comment by randseed — September 20, 2007 #

330. Yahoo never said that having CAPTCHA will eliminate those bots what they said is it will minimize, so please stop crying use the ignore option and you wont see them anymore…….

     Comment by hard_kill — September 20, 2007 #

331. when i tried to accept a friend request , i am unable to submit it and cannot make them add to their list.

     Could anyone let me know, how can i get this problem solved.

     Comment by rahul — September 20, 2007 #

332. hahaha well not even 2 weeks and the bots are back and even worse than before. give up yahoo.take the captcha off its not even slowing the bots down now

     Comment by shawng1420 — September 20, 2007 #

333. The bots are not back in HUGE numbers…..I suspect the folks complaining on this blog are the losers who can sue their mass iggys like the used too.

     Comment by Timothy — September 20, 2007 #

334. shawng1420 r u sure ur talking about Yahoo?huge number of bots are back? r ya dreaming? what room r yah talking? Maybe ur not talking about Yahoo maybe ur talking about PAL TALK lol…These worms always say bots are back in huge number but they won’t say which room! my guess is these morons are the bot owners if not PALTALK stock holders! lol. Listen up u retard! ur dirty tactics won’t work in this blog! people here are not stupid like the members of ur family so drop it! Yahoo is going back to its glory days and theirs nothing u can do about it!

     Comment by YM user — September 20, 2007 #

335. go take a look at the bbw rooms full of spam bots!

     Comment by shawng1420 — September 20, 2007 #

336. I don’t know what some of these people are smoking. The bots are NOT back in huge numbers. There are very few and they are easily ignored. Quit your bitching about the very small number of bots that manage to get through and count your blessings that it’s not like it was before. It’s a free service for crying out loud.

     Comment by Anna — September 20, 2007 #

337. I have not seen huge numbers of bots in the Kansas rooms, not like there were a few weeks ago. I just ignore them, at least for the moment that still works. I have seen an increase in off line spamming on messenger though.

     Comment by kssnuggle — September 20, 2007 #

338. OK, so some people are saying that the bots are NOT back in huge numbers? Just to make sure that it wasnt all in my head - I payed a visit to the Kansas rooms because the poster avobe me said there weren’t many there. Hmmmm…Kansas currently has a total of 17 bots in room 1. It’s you people who cant tell the difference between a bot and a real person who say they aren’t back in large numbers.

     Comment by Parry Hotter — September 20, 2007 #

339. What can i say about the update ? before it i had a completely stabely yahoo, yes it had a few issues, crashed once in awhile but no big deal. and while i realise the update was needed for those using vista i think the implentation was extremely poor. Ever since the update If i join a chat room, its pot long how long i manage to stay before it crashes. and i dont just mean crashes the room but ctahes me completely out of yahoo. its also caused my web browser to become unstable, and various other issues. I can understand the need to be seen to be doing somthing. But to put out an update that was as bug riddden and unstable, that the very next day you had to put out another one to correct some of the fatal flaws is just verry poor.

     Comment by Deviant Knight — September 20, 2007 #

340. Anybody who says the bots aren’t back must be blind..check out the UK rooms and especialy Global Chat and u’ll find em all over..yesterday in one room a single bot was taking up 15 places!..on top of that i’m getting a hell of a lot of offline cam spam..every time i login i average ten new invites…so the bots ARE getting around Captcha and i wouldn’t mind betting in a month or so Yahoo will be as bad as it was before Captcha..watch this space!

     Comment by Colin_uk_man — September 21, 2007 #

341. Dont tell lies Mr Colin.
     You shouldnt have clicked on that link!
     There are very few bots in the UK rooms.
     Well done Yahoo…..you’ve finally sorted the bot problem out.

     Comment by Timothy — September 21, 2007 #

342. It’s True the bots are back but not those spam bots I haven’t seen them. The voice bots are back though and I asked someone I know that does this crap how did he do it and he said the mass iggy maker now have a captcha where you log in manually thru the program each bot. I tell you even when Yahoo! makes a effort someone try to find away to get around them. Well I say Yahoo should get rid of Proxies cause bots use Proxies and if the bots are doing nothing but coming in a room and taking voice to ignore chatters in the room then they’re not serving a real purpose. This way we don’t have many bots coming in that are not real people controlling the mic pounds cause the programmers found a way to put captcha on their bot programs. This will take care of that. Also Yahoo need to find away to be a stand alone program and stop the uses of chat clients like Yahelite, Y Tunnel, Ytk pro, and Yazak etc. Forgive me for saying this but Paltalk don’t have any paltalk clients that you can still log on to Paltalk using a substitute client, you can only get on one way and that’s through paltalk. Yahoo should change their script so no person can copy them and be a stand alone client. Yes, so this is how the voice bots come on now: take notes: Mass iggy programs updated captcha on their programs so each bot can still control the mic with a manual log in so take away the proxies and let people only be able to log on one name with their regular yahoo messenger. Please Sandra don’t stop trying, Keep working on it for us till you find a way to stop them. I know you can’t please everyone but this is one way I believe you can get closer to solving the problem.

     Comment by Hi_Just_Blogging — September 21, 2007 #

343. i really don’t know why Yahoo supports proxy i mean whats the point? no regular chatter uses proxy not unless ur upto something no good. Yahoo please stop ur support on proxy u wont lost anyting if u do it. It is just being abused…

     Comment by Ym User — September 21, 2007 #

344. everytime i go chat room, i always get the link - captchat……. the problem is i cant click that browser.. pls help

     Comment by maria cabrera — September 21, 2007 #

345. 17 bots out of 50 possible in a room…geee I see that as a huge improvement compared to a few weeks ago when the chatters could not even get into the rooms because all the slots were taken by the bots.
     Keep at it yahoo, your going the right direction.

     Comment by kssnuggle — September 21, 2007 #

346. i’m tired of voice hiogs in the room..especially those who insist on playing “RADio Dj” and playing music through a tape deck…through a microphone….

     in alabama:1 there was a guy named big_booty_feela who was on the mic playing music…then an hour later he stopped and began talking about who he had to seriously injure, maybe even kill someojne and the whole room began laughing…

     yahoo needs chatroom monitors…not automated messaging systems …

     Comment by JD — September 21, 2007 #

347. I haee the newest messenger version. It worked fine for about 2 weeks then fizzled out when it stop allowing me to see text in chatrooms. Have re-installed several times .. done the disk scan/defrag/spyware/virus scan to no avail. Others are having the same trouble and have resorted to using other chat clients but just tired of all the frustration messenger causes anymore. People are starting to have more problems again and not returning to messenger.

     Comment by Max — September 21, 2007 #

348. to: sarah bacon

     goodafternoon… i am april… im a chatter for two years now and i do appreciate so much the upgrades you have done in yahoo messenger… the captcha you have placed helped prevent bots and spammers in the room the thing is for other programs only… at this time their is this new program booters are using to lock rooms once again… it is called the rock destroyer version 5.8 by sowa and it can lock rooms for 24 hours and more… may i ask you guys to please take a look at this program … right now our yahoo room pinoy chat 40 is locked for 3 days now if you can pip in our room for you to find out that bots can enter in rooms again… also may i ask if you can let a single ip address enter atmost 3 id’s only per chat rooms… thank you very much and i’ll wait for your reply… thanks… god bless…

     Comment by aPRiL — September 22, 2007 #

349. and look everyday it gets worse .yea great job

     Comment by shawng420 — September 22, 2007 #

350. they cant limit connections per i.p. there are alot of people like me and my family that own more than one computer at home.

     Comment by shawng420 — September 22, 2007 #

351. Well from what I have been seeing , it appears yahoo staff is more concerned with adding fancy new items to their web sites and to messenger and not really concerned with the problems of the chat rooms. I don’t see fancy avitars as being a high priority. Nor do I see another way of adding friends to your friends list. We already have that. Is it possible yahoo that all these fancy things you keep adding are actually adding to the current problems yahoo is having??

     Lets get back to work on the basic problems in the chat rooms. #1 bots are slowly taking over again. #2 fix chat room login so we know room is full before using password from chapta. #3 chat room room lists folks that have left the room. #4 Have you even considered some of the suggestions some of the folks have posted. Or is your Yahoo pride getting in the way!!!

     Comment by kssnuggle — September 22, 2007 #

352. I guess I was one of the very few who hoped you make this release Panther compatible. Is this a sign that the final version of this program will also require Tiger?

     Comment by Wes — September 23, 2007 #

353. Im not tring to be rude but why would anyone chose a mac when it seems the rest of the world revolves around the IBM type pc? Maybe one of the mac users could enlighten me as i have no clue.

     Comment by Name (required) — September 23, 2007 #

354. Agrees totally with kssnuggle. Add all the new goodies when the chat rooms are in a decent working order. We all like new toys but only if chat is enjoyable. There’s still oogles of bots and some are trying to add others to their friends list.

     Also, why not create a separate “box” for logging in the code instead of having numerous chatlets windows lined up in your task bar. Plus, what this 18 after the hour boot i’m getting every 2 hours? Who’s doing this? Good day

     Comment by petra — September 23, 2007 #

355. Capcha worked briefly, now we’re stuck with verification each time we go to a room and the bots are back! In a room of 25 there are 18 bots plus some names that have been stuck since the last total shutdown.

     We are booted every 2 hours, why aren’t the bots or the stuck names?

     It was a good try Yahoo!,,,,,, back to the drawing board. Chat was really pleasant for a while and nobody minded the Capcha verification if it meant getting rid of bots.

     The bells and whistles mean nothing if the basic chat program WITHOUT the annoying bots isn’t working properly.

     Thanks for your efforts…….sigh

     Comment by It Worked Briefly — September 24, 2007 #

356. I would hope Sarah reads this before deleting it.
     But when they first updated they had all the rooms numbers in all categories open or on the chat join list.
     And after updating other times they don’t .
     Some people like the upper numbered rooms, How hard is it for yahoo to open all the room to 100 in each category and then room name.

     And for the bots it was a nice try yahoo but the smarter people are right there with you all in updating their bot programs to bypass captcha

     Comment by Julianna — September 24, 2007 #

357. yeah… i’m not even downloading that Mac update. adding chat rooms, when apparently they don’t even work the majority of the time is practically useless, as is the rest of the application. thanks, but no thanks. i’ll wait for the version that actually adds useable functionality.

     Comment by mimi — September 24, 2007 #

358. you people think yahoo reads all of this. for one if yahoo cared it would have never gotten this messed up. so the fired one manager and put one in its place that has been messing yahoo. at this rate yahoo will never be fixed.also to chat simpson. he wants yahoo to kill the older versions. why is it because of the money. and you have to buy his newer versions. It wrks the same with yahoo, its where the money is and chat isnt a money maker.one fellow had the right idea if you boy cot what you pay for on yahoo they will listen ( maybe ) also if yahoo reads these posting why dont they answer any of them. so i leave you to think about it. most of the good ppl have left yahoo and the rest that are still will do the same in the future. yahoo is only going to get worce then is.

     Comment by THUNDER — September 24, 2007 #

359. First of all, the man’s name is CHET Simpson. Secondly, he does NOT want Yahoo to kill older versions so he can keep selling new versions of his program.

     I own Ytunnelpro and would never enter a chatroom without it. You buy Ytunnel ONCE. All the upgrades and new versions are then FREE for life.

     We just need to give Yahoo time to get everything worked out. They’re trying to get thousands of chatrooms up and running. Give them a break and let them do their jobs.

     Comment by Storm Watcher — September 25, 2007 #

360. good job on making it blind user friendly again still have bot issues but well we’re getting better

     Comment by tj — September 25, 2007 #

361. Sarah,
     Chatrooms seem to be running well now except for mass ignore voice bots.These are being used to gain voice dominance. Check out Room UK:7, this is going on every day ,nobody can speak on mic,except one person.The id’s he uses are: turkey.shootin and retard.time ,,,, he is abusing people on mic . Please patch this exploit

     Comment by eezy.ryder — September 25, 2007 #

362. The bots do seem to be coming back more now though people must be logging them in manually.
     Sarah Bacon can we have another update or you quit fixing new servers and concentrating on all this new stuff

     Comment by aidy — September 25, 2007 #

363. Sarah.
     Just discovered that Yahoo Chat Help:1 is locked and has been for about a week now.This is not good enough ,could Yahoo please sort this out ,,,,, Thanks

     Comment by eezy.ryder — September 25, 2007 #

364. I’m just wanting to know something, Instead of doing all these updates that don’t work..why don’t you figure out the new booter packets and patch them, as well as find out why tons of names are getting stuck in chat after being booted and wont log back in.

     Comment by Mr.Unhappy — September 25, 2007 #

365. The sticking User ID’s are a problem. Other than that-and a few other minor problems-the rooms are definitely better than a few weeks ago.

     Comment by JC — September 25, 2007 #

366. Yeah I guess, But what i’m talking about is names are getting stuck in rooms, and then they wont log back in… I have had to make 12 new messenger names because of being booted out of rooms by yahoo bullies and then when i go to log back in the names say invalid password, and they have been stuck in the room for about 8 days now…Yahoo! at its best I guess.

     Comment by Mr.Unhappy — September 26, 2007 #

367. Can’t even get in a room now. I pass the el stupido captcha with a “woohoo” congrats you’ve been authorized to join the chatroom.. BFD if the room doesn’t come up. So I close the wee window and try again. Then I’m told, I’m already in the room…Oh Please someone hear our pleas and fix that damn thing once and for all. And Sarah, sorry I called you a bot and asked others to put you on ignore. I see you didn’t like my two sentence missive and sent it packing with a “delete”. You still owe me that damn pony for Christmas.

     Comment by Waaaahhhh — September 26, 2007 #

368. yahoo, how come i keep having to make new names? everytime i make a name..it logs in once and then dont work anymore:| whats the deal? are yall doing anything about this issue? or is it going to be another year and a half before we see a fix?

     Comment by Mr.Unhappy — September 26, 2007 #

369. That must be why my name don’t work,I got in chat under a new name and my name is still there and has been sence friday of last week,when I try to login with it,it says wrong password,is there anyway to fix this?It was my main ID.

     Comment by Kwazie — September 26, 2007 #

370. Apparently not, and apparently Yahoo doesnt care considering they roll out all these untested updates..I mean c’mon! if I ran a big business like Yahoo does I would at least have the sense to test the updates before offering them to the public, I’m about ready to find a new chat service because yahoo is going down the drain.

     Comment by Mr.Unhappy — September 26, 2007 #

371. I get tired of being dedicated to Yahoo. I get excited about the change. But it is not anything other than a disappointment. What is worse? Bots or captcha. Bottom line. I just want to chat with all my freaks. When will 1 of the 5 things wrong be resolved? I wish the Bot would tell me how he does it. I want to be able to log in and just hang out forever. Instead, I will never know. I will never really use Yahoo again. Well maybe not never. I’m sure I will log in again and again trying to chat. The only thing addicting now is trying to find some one real. Bots..You Suck!!

     Comment by byrdman — September 26, 2007 #

372. Hmm. Yesterday there were only 7 rooms for SF Bay Area, now there are 14 rooms and much more bots than before.

     Comment by JC — September 26, 2007 #

373. Look people i been looking through the comments and everyone is demanding different things why don’t we all complain about one thing at a time so they will change it complaining about 3 things at once is falling on deaf ears i think the best thing we all would want is the ability to turn pms off from non friends fixed that is the most annoying issue one of them the amount of pm Spam is insane and if you selected the ignore anyone not on my list feature then it literally does just that and you see no ones text in chat only friends highly annoying one thing at a time folks who agrees with me? it is to much for yahoo to please everyones demands it is NOT going to happen im sure everyone hates this bug so lets try and stick to one thing at a time the chances of it being fixed will be a LOT more

     Comment by Karl — September 26, 2007 #

374. sara.solution to bots and spammers. just give us a extra iggy bin just for bots and spammers, wen they go in the bot bin, it takes then from all rooms they r in, for a period of 7 days while u chase there ip addy and suspened them.if we the chat people abuse the bot bin u suspend us fr 7 days.least we the people that chat do have a fighting chance , coz at this moment yahoo not winning.

     Comment by andy — September 27, 2007 #

375. Will stop complaining when you finally address the bot issue and stop trying to put bandages on the problems… you continue to claim you log all ip’s … your short of funds and all this other garbage.. well start collecting those ip’s start suing the botters… theres your funds…
     btw the new “updates” did absolutely nothing to stop the bots, they are already back in full force… the only thing it did was really screw up the chatrooms for about a month… thats it… bots are back and gotta enter some ridiculously code to enter a room… great updates O_o

     Comment by bamatstar_30 — September 27, 2007 #

376. do you people realy think logging the chatters i.p is going to do anything? have any of you ever heard of proxy servers? well with the use of proxies it does make it vertualy impossable for yahoo to track down the spam bots because they logon to an anonomous proxy server and yahoo has no idea who it is such can be done with yahoo messenger so a 7 day ban would be pointless as far as the i.p.

     Comment by shawng420 — September 27, 2007 #

377. you can prevent unsecure proxy connections.. banning proxy servers ect.. there are many ways to combat this..

     Comment by bamatstar_30 — September 27, 2007 #

378. I have a complaint about the new log in. You have made it almost impossible for some who is visually impaired to be able to chat now. My husband loved to chat and now finds it hard to get into the room cause of the code that has to be entered. The text is either too distorted for him to read or too small. Try again on this tactic to keep the bots out. The rooms are again flooded with bots and spammers.

     Comment by Rose — September 27, 2007 #

379. Isn’t it true even the bots or what ever you have in your ignore bin count as someone in the room? If this is so why do we need a bigger ignore bin to hold the bots,the room would still be full. Right?

     Comment by Kwazie — September 27, 2007 #

380. Karl wrote:

     “Look people i been looking through the comments and everyone is demanding different things why don’t we all complain about one thing at a time so they will change it complaining about 3 things at once is falling on deaf ears i think the best thing we all would want is the ability to turn pms off from non friends fixed that is the most annoying issue one of them the amount of pm Spam is insane and if you selected the ignore anyone not on my list feature then it literally does just that and you see no ones text in chat only friends highly annoying one thing at a time folks who agrees with me? it is to much for yahoo to please everyones demands it is NOT going to happen im sure everyone hates this bug so lets try and stick to one thing at a time the chances of it being fixed will be a LOT more”

     I agree with your post.

     I’ve never used this particular ignore feature but for those who do it sounds like its broken and might be a priority fix for yahoo chat.

     Comment by JC — September 27, 2007 #

381. Yea jc it depends on your settings in messenger im just trying to be realistic here ppl want TO much at once its not going to happen folks lol i know for one that is a major issue and if one is addressed at a time it will eventually get better not 600 at once lol
     from 400 people

     Comment by Karl — September 27, 2007 #

382. ATTN eezy.ryder
     Ive just checked out UK:7 & there is not a voice bot in sight.
     Why come on a blog & lie about voice bots?…unless you are just trying to get people to fill UK:7 with bots?
     As has been pointed out many times you just have to ignore the bot master & you can speak….unless you are a person in a room no-one wants to speak too.

     Comment by Henri — September 28, 2007 #

383. To everyone: Being a Chicago Cubs fan, I’m sure you know that everyone is entitled to a bad century now and then. Can everyone just lighten up? Yahoo! is just a young company. We’re still in the first decade of the millennium. Can we give them at least another 93 years to get this right?

     Comment by Surfs Down — September 28, 2007 #

384. I’m sure it’s been said a thousand times, but twice today in CC10, two of my friends have been unable to get in the room because they got disconnected but their ID was stuck in the room. From what I’ve read this problem has been going on a long time. I can’t believe it’s that hard to fix that simple of a problem. Also it shouldn’t take much to increase the amount of IDs that can be stored in the ignore list. Finally if you want people to stop using 3rd party clients, it’s simple to do…offer the same features that obviously chatters want. If these other programmers can do it then why can’t you all do it? I’m sure you could decompile their software and see how they did it, how hard can it be for you as programmers? Anyways, you guys are making progress but got a ways to go, keep up the good work.

     Comment by Jon — September 28, 2007 #

385. well Yahoo might have more time to address the problem issues if they would not spend so much time, adding new toys to play with. In the last few weeks I have seen 2 maybe three new items added. So how much time is all this taking up that could have been spent working on existing problems. One has to wonder who is setting the priorities at yahoo and their reasoning.

     Comment by kssnuggle — September 28, 2007 #

386. Why are the rooms turning to crap again? For a few weeks they were fairly enjoyable and now it’s a downward spiral.

     Comment by JC — September 28, 2007 #

387. Can you guys reset the rooms at least? I’ve seen names stuck in them for more than four days now.

     Comment by JC — September 28, 2007 #

388. If you’re tired of yahoo why not just go to paltalk or oohya chat?

     If people start leaving yahoo for other free sites that don’t have these problems maybe yahoo will be forced to actually fix the problems.

     Comment by cynic — September 29, 2007 #

389. Well I wish they would do something,my ID has been stuck in a room for 8 days now,and I can’t get it to login.What seems to be the problem ,I know yahoo could fix that.

     Comment by Kwazie — September 29, 2007 #

390. I’m sure the new stuff probably wont work any better than their chat does. i know its just chat and i can live without it but it is really ridiculous that they cant seem to fix anything right , it wasnt the best but it has been working half way decent here latley still get some bots but could live with a few. now they have went and tried to do something to it again and totally screwed it all up again go figure……… yahoo advertisers are getting raked over the coals as well as the chatters at this moment and time id just soon see yahoo go broke..

     Comment by johnm12666666666666666 — September 29, 2007 #

391. Its getting worse than it was, your bandaid has come off already and the bot cut is leaking all over again. Why don’t you except help from the guys at ytunnel or ytk? The news media needs to get involved to report yahoo promotes porno in chat rooms.

     Comment by logan — September 29, 2007 #

392. Sarah,

     The captcha seemed to work for a while but in case you haven’t noticed the bot producers have figured out how to circumvent the system and now bots fill the rooms. I am grateful for your staff’s efforts and I know it’s tough it is to stay one step ahead of the morons who have nothing better to do than fill the rooms with annoying messages & pop ups but unfortunately the problem has to be addressed again. Maybe I’m being naive but if they’re advertising porn in their pop up instant messages– who in their right mind would be attracted to their sites? And if they just send a blank pop up instant message what purpose does it serve? I guess it’s a rhetorical question but I hope your staff can bring the situation under control again. The other problem that still seems to be prevalent is that people sometimes remain in the rooms even though they have left. I guess the term is ghosts. Additionally, people on the messenger “friends” list are sometimes listed as being online even though they aren’t.

     Comment by jabadoobie — September 30, 2007 #

393. Where can I get support for Messenger Mac? For the last few weeks I’ve discovered that sometimes my friends and I aren’t getting each others’ IM’s. Happened with the previous beta and today discovered it happening with the new beta.

     Comment by Gregory — September 30, 2007 #

394. Way is my ID still stuck in a room? I use another ID to get in the room and my main ID is still there and has been now for 10 days now!! Can’t yahoo do something about this?

     Comment by Kwazie — October 1, 2007 #

395. 38 bots in computers lobby:1

     12 slots left avail for actual users… not to mention the porn bots.. they will take up another 2 or 3 slots…
     so in actuality were down to about 8 available seats in computers lobby:1 for actual chatting users…
     seems rather simpleton that yahoo continues to reply with that helmet statement “use the ignore feature” … you can ignore the bots till your blue in the face it doesn’t help get real users into the room… its still full with ignored bots now…

     any chance for a solution to this? even a simple server reboot or ANYTHING? something to show us your at least trying to pay attention???? can u not flush out all the users so that these room lockers must manually reload these bots? and give us a chance to at least get in there??????????????

     Comment by bamatstar_30 — October 1, 2007 #

396. No new information since supposed sept 13 fix. You have to be just totally ignorin us

     Comment by Dick Corl — October 1, 2007 #

397. come on sarah update pleasssssssssssssssssssssssssse

     Comment by aidy — October 1, 2007 #

398. Hello How is everyone doing…I Hope all are well

     I have a Gripe about Yahoo! Chat.

     I’m Sorry if this has Been posted Before.

     I can understand & I Support Yahoo! Chats Effort to deal with SPAM BOTS in chat. However, why…WHY do we have to use those annoying verification things EVERY TIME we Switch to a Different Room. WHY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

     Why not Build this into Yahoo! Messenger OR The JOIN ROOM Window that Opens with the list of rooms.

     I have not used Yahoo! Chat in a While & I am not Sure its worth it anymore. We Can not Even Creat our Own Rooms…

     Comment by Mike — October 2, 2007 #

399. Yahoo has to do something about the people that are booting,I was in a room last night and some guy was talking on voice and said he was just going down the room list and booting the ones he didn’t want in the room.One by one the people would leave then some come back complaining about him booting them and he would boot them again.How can yahoo allow someone to run a chat room? I can give you all of his IDS that he uses in the room.Fix this Yahoo.

     Comment by Kwazie — October 2, 2007 #

400. hi, sarah

     i luv chating im not complaining anymore so keep
     up the good work !!!!!!!!!!

     Comment by tiara — October 2, 2007 #

401. Hi, Just downloaded the new beta and tried to run it on the most recent Leopard build (9A559). It crashed on launch. I’m happy to send along the crash log, etc., if you want the input. As you know, Leopard is just a few weeks from going on sale.

     Comment by Todd — October 2, 2007 #

402. This is bogus, Sarah. Room after room says Full, even if the list says there’s only 41 names in it.

     It’s time for another Server Reset.

     Comment by mourning_still — October 2, 2007 #

403. Can you reset the LA, New York, SF Bay, and Washington rooms? Thanks.

     Comment by JC — October 2, 2007 #

404. Hey there Sarah Bacon,

     I have been using the chats ever since CAPTCHA was activated and the bots have started to invade the rooms again. There are Duplicate names in the room which are indicated as “Bots” , there is SPAM being posted in the rooms again. Someone must of found a way around this CAPTCHA and are now using programs again to spam rooms. Does all this information indicate that Yahoo Inc have failed their Mantinance and the rooms are going to go back to how they were before?

     I have noticed when i log into Yahoo Messenger now that i get offline messages from bots. I was not getting this the first day CAPTCHA was activated because there was no available programs to get around your CAPTCHA Service at the time.

     I would kindly ask if you can review the Chatrooms and the CAPTCHA Service aswell as the code implimented with it.

     Comment by vb_packets — October 3, 2007 #

405. As of this moment I can’t even log into messenger. I can only assume that the system is being reset again.

     Now can someone tell me why yahoo deleted my old userid?

     Comment by Norman P Function — October 3, 2007 #

406. Lol seems y! is set for another server reset this will again achieve nothing i for one am SICK of the offline spam i get thats my pet hate about yahoo at the moment and since the ”ignore anyone not on your friends list” option does not work correctly well actually it works to good it literally ignores EVERYONE there is countless people on power trips who boot everyone knowing there pms will be on otherwise they cant chat… WHY cant you implement and option to turn pms off the CAPTCHA worked well but the bots simpley pm you with spam instead. and as stated abouve you cant turn pms off without chatting i will never enter a yahoo room with messenger until this is fixed its 3rd party clients for me sorry but 40 people buzzing me and asking if im m or f ? does my head in :l i don’t want to use 3rd part clients i would rather use messenger but its unusable in y! chat rooms anymore since this bug came about just my 2 cents one issue at a time folks or NOTHING will ever get done do you not realise that lol….. this being unable to turn pms off is VERY anoying. Just a thought i wonder how much yahoo is loosing in advertisment to people being forced to use 3rd party clients due to this bug .. lol

     Comment by Karl — October 3, 2007 #

407. norman:
     yahoo is good about taking names. i have lost a few myself. if your having trouble getting loged in and try to many times to get in yahoo they will band the name. so norm brace your self yahoo isnt getting any better. what you now see of yahoo will only get worce. the ppl in yahoo dont have a clue of what they are doing. just doing. lmao. i have been on yahoo for about 11 years and it been going down hill ever since.

     Comment by Thunder — October 3, 2007 #

408. these past few weeks on yahoo have been plain awful,first we was thrown into any old rooms,then couldnt get in any at all….then we lost our room,yahoo your getting worse ,its no wonder people are moving to paltalk,,,sort it out please yahoo

     Comment by liz — October 3, 2007 #

409. You can take my posts down, but people using messy still can’t view all the convo in a chat room. The only work around is a client. Doesn’t matter what client - they all work better than messy…

     Comment by Marty — October 3, 2007 #

410. hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm was wondering if yahoo could do us all a favor and just get rid of chat all together doesnt work worth a crap and they are never going to fix it right so lets just do away with it so we can all get it out of our system get our bitching over and done with and move on,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

     Comment by johnm12666666666666666 — October 3, 2007 #

411. Well the bots have taken over the rooms again. last night i could not get into any rooms. all of them were full.

     when i finally got in. I was the only one in a room full of bots. 49 porn peddlers and me.

     Captcha has failed! Which we all knew it would. When you’re a spammer who makes a lot of money spamming people? Your not going let a little thing like CAPTCHA stop you? No Way! Not when there’s money to be made.

     But then spammers are pretty retarded. They fill the rooms full of bots and they end of spamming each other! Talk about the three stooges syndrome here! lol

     Now legitimate users are forced to enter a code to go in the rooms while the porn peddlers created a workaround. Now that’s progress. Thanks again yahoo!!!

     But on a lighter note! All chats are the same. Every single one! I used for Aohell(AOL) to yahoo and all are all the same. Bot ridden!!!

     And if you think Paltalk is better? Just wait until you got into a room and get thrown out by some power mad low life! Who just might not like your profile or name. who just feels like booting you out of a room for the hell of it. When you get bored of that? Then where are you all going to go?

     Comment by Johnny — October 4, 2007 #

412. just a lil fyi for people that cant see all of text if you run ytunnel open your pm’s and it will fix that problem.

     Comment by shawng420 — October 4, 2007 #

413. This very untrue.. the only names yahoo bans are those of legitimate users. They blacklisted my origional name with no reason, asked them for reason they refused and i continued to ask for a reason finally they said they wont tell me why without a court order >

     Comment by bamatstar_30 — October 4, 2007 #

414. This very untrue.. i have emailed abuse about 30 times with lists of the names of bots… HuggyTommy.Rules_You32 and cd_rom_dealer32 (yes both huggy tommy and cdrom are real ppl but no these are not their bots) with the appropriate numbers and they have yet to ban a single bot… i see the EXACT same numbers in the rooms everyday.. great job listening to your users sarah !!!!! love to know that were at some point acknowledged… unfortunately its only when advertisers start to get pissy and threaten to pull their accounts, heres an idea… for every day that passes and sarah and her “team” of trained monkeys dont do anything… we should collectively email their advertisers and indicate the lackluster job being done here.. i wonder how ingdirect or reuters would like to know that its infact automated scripts that are the only ones to see their adverts, and not real people and yet the monkey team doesnt seem to care let alone to put up a simple post such as .. we note the issues and are trying to fix it bare with us… no no much easier to pretend the problems dont exist

     Comment by bamatstar_30 — October 4, 2007 #

415. Sarah,

     I have been supportive of your staff’s efforts in attempting to fix the chat rooms. However, it is obvious from all the messages you’ve received of late that the bots have taken over again and entering a chat room with real live people is becoming difficult if not impossible. Just check some of your chat categories. Im many cases the rooms are filled to capacity but not by humans! What I am now finding almost as upsetting as the chat problem itself is the fact that you have not acknowledged or addressed the chat situation since September 13th! It appeared for a while that there was concern on your staff’s part as you constantly addressed the chat issue. Now it appears as if there is no acknowledgement at all of the problems that have resurfaced. I have to assume someone from your staff reads these comments. It would appear logical that just plain good business sense and basic PR should come into play here as opposed to silence. We have lost chatroom identity as our favorite rooms are no longer accessible. The original bot problems that led to your creating the captcha is now penalizing the yahoo chat faithful as the bot situation is even worse now. And what do we get instead of acknowledgement?…Trivial articles about avatars, status message lengths and smiley’s…and other than that….total silence.

     Comment by jabadoobie — October 4, 2007 #

416. Who do I need to talk to to get my name out of the chat room? It has been stuck in there now for 2 weeks,don’t they ever reset the room to get the names out? I tried to login to it and it keeps telling me .INCORRECT ID OR PASSWORD. I know they are bot right.Whats the deal???Doesn’t anyone ever give answers here?

     Comment by Kwazie — October 5, 2007 #

417. Does anyone notice a pattern here??????? Scroll back to Sarah’s initial posting on Sept 13th and you see literally hundreds of comments describing the same issues, pre and post “the big fix”. The problems remain the same and basically have not changed. Does anyone realize that at this point Yahoo developers can’t even maintain basic functionality? It’s sad to me to see the decline because I remember when Yahoo was cutting edge and one of the stars on the internet horizon. Unfortunately the crest that was the Yahoo wave has long since passed. It was nice while it lasted…but time to move on. If you’ve tried Paltalk and gotten disgusted with being dropped from a room by a moderator, you at least still have the option to create your own user room and invite your friends to join you ……what a concept!!! Also available is Skype…Inspeak…Stickam….in
     other words……..move on! Yahoo died…all it needs now is a decent funeral.

     Comment by ann — October 5, 2007 #

418. I don’t understand why some rooms were reset after the system reboot (if that’s what they do) while others weren’t. For instance, in the Regional/U.S. section, New York is filled to capacity with 150 rooms while Boston only has 5 rooms.

     Comment by JC — October 5, 2007 #

419. Sarah,

     Common business sense would dictate that a company would reply in a timely manner to issues that concern it’s customers the most. Let’s review the number of replies of listeners to your blogs since this chatroom blog was released September the 13th. This is as of 7:20PM DST:
     Fashionable Avatars From India: 14 comments
     Recipe For fun: Add More Friends: 6 comments
     Yahoo Messenger For The Web: New Release: 15 comments
     Smiley Has A Party: 29 Comments
     Keeping Up With Your E-Bay: 3 comments
     Status Message Length: 16 comments
     What’s In A Name: 1 comment (negative comment)

     Now let’s add it up: Total Comments: 84 I won’t even go into how many were negative.

     Compare that with the September 13th Chatroom Upgrade Blog: 418 comments

     Sarah, maybe I’m missing something here but if you’re running a business don’t you want to address the most pressing concerns of the customer first? I think it’s statistically clear beyond the shadow of a doubt that yahoo messenger users want this issue adressed above all others.

     Yet we continue to get nothing but silence on the topic.

     I wonder what the next inane blog will be. Let me guess: “Yahoo Messenger: New Avatars & Smileys from Jailed Terrorists”

     Comment by jabadoobie — October 5, 2007 #

420. Did it ever occur to any of you that perhaps no one at Yahoo is reading these messages? Perhaps Ms. Brown is just a placebo - just another poor attempt on Yahoo’s part to make the users “think” they are actively seeking resolution to the chat problems.

     Go read a book, make love to your significant other, walk the dog, take a nap…in other words, there is more to life than Yahoo and chat.

     My 2 cents

     Comment by Waaaahhhh — October 6, 2007 #

421. Ok here is a question for everyone….why is it that all the room are allowed to have 50 ppl per room but you head over to the fight rooms where it is more fun to have 50 ppl and all you are allowed to have is 15 per room. Hello ……… what is the deal with that…. I really wish yahoo would just do a system restore and take us back to before they started with all of the updates. I would much rather have bots and ppl booting me and have yahoo fun again then to have it this way!!
     And before ya all say that i am one of the ppl using the bots and booters,,,, i am going to tell you your wrong. I don’t even fight in the fight rooms but i think it is fun to listen to everyone get out there frustration. Things just are not like they use to be. Now the fight rooms have turned into the Oprah show ……. ppl getting along all complaining about what yahoo has become and reliving the “good ol days”
     Not that anyone at yahoo reads this but whay the hay!!!

     Comment by it's meee — October 7, 2007 #

422. So, the bots are slowly creeping back. Someone has obviously found a way to negate the user verification system!!! How many years will it take yahoo to correct this i wonder???
     Oh Happy Days!!!!!!!!!!

     Comment by mark — October 7, 2007 #

423. HELLO? Can someone please tell me how to get my ID unstuck out of the chat room! It has been there for 16 days now. Is anyone from yahoo even here? I would like to get my ID back!!

     Comment by Kwazie — October 7, 2007 #

424. Well I have finally done what I can to avoid Yahoo. After much discussion in our offices we have banned Yahoo Mail and Yahoo chat from our systems. The Attitude at Yahoo leaves a lot to be desired. One thing I found Interesting was one of the Financial Analysts was listening to our discussions and took note. Seems Yahoo neglects to mention issues at their analyst briefings.

     Comment by Harvey — October 7, 2007 #

425. Well it’s been 4 days since I have been on yahoo and attempted chat. After trying several times I managed to get into the room I regularly go into when I get on yahoo.

     Again I was alone in a room full of bots. 49 to be exact.

     My last post here was on the 4th about the same issue that happened to me on the night of the 3rd. That night same problem I got into my regular room and 49 bots and just me.

     4 days have passed and yet nothing has been done! I even reported the problem to yahoo abuse and got no reply whatsoever! I even tried the “reporting a problem to yahoo” option and still my complaints have gone without even as much as a generic reply.

     What’s going on here? Dose yahoo even care about it’s users? I pay for full service for yahoo and they never told me that I had to deal with bots trying to sell me porn. It’s bad enough I get those idiotic Emails for Viagra and male enhancement. I can’t even use the chat room occasionally without being porned to death!

     The users are not the only ones that are being hurt here! I wonder if the advertisers know that the only ones seeing their ads are the mindless bots in these rooms. I think people should get together and write the advertisers and tell them that their advertising dollars are going to waste with yahoo.

     I am also pretty sure there are a lot of online news services who would love to report a porn problem on yahoo. I think everyone should pick a internet news service and tell them what’s really on yahoo and how yahoo treats their user base.

     It’s no longer a chat problem it’s yahoo all around. From Email to chat. All full of spam. Porn spam that has got completely out of control. My question is dose yahoo get any money from these spammers who create these bots?

     They must because it’s been 4 days and the problem is still there! I never dealt with any service that dose absolutely nothing to improve. At least with Aohell (AOL) I got a generic e-mail back!!!

     Comment by Johnny — October 7, 2007 #

426. 3 weeks since the 9/13 update, and you still cannot see all the text in a room… & I cannot download clients on my work computer. When will this get fixed?

     Also, everyone can report the bots as spam, but yahell does nothing. Why not block someone from the rooms for 24 hours after, say 25 reports in one day? If someone is getting ignored by 1/2 the “users” in a room they’re probably a bot or spamer (& the other 1/2 of the “users” are other bots & spamers). If someone gets reported more than say 100 times in 30 days erase the account. The bots are still getting in through CAPTCHA, but if their owners need to create an entirely new account every few days it should slow them down.

     Comment by Marty — October 8, 2007 #

427. I take exception to yahoo censoring my ON TOPIC post. If you think I can’t get the same word out without using your blog, you are wrong. If I want to go to three other places I post and list Yahoo’s advertisers and accuse Yahoo! of corporate fraud, I WILL. If you think I won’t let people know to contact Yahoo! advertisers and let them know who or WHAT their advertising dollars are reaching (bots not people)…you are wrong. All I did was GOOGLE Yahoo + advertisers and picked the top PAID spot (lol) and posted there, then I went to Yahoo home and wrote down the advertisers I saw there. You can sweep your servers to placate the illiterate masses every four weeks, but eventually someone will figure out what Yahoo! is doing and start pulling their ads. I can only assume that my on topic post hit a nerve since you reacted like China and censored me. I’m going to stick around just to watch people wake up and to see Yahoo! take the final self inflicted blow. If no one is there to type, does Yahoo! make a noise as it tumbles?

     Comment by comfortably_yum — October 9, 2007 #

428. Hi,
     I just stumbled upon this site and wanted to post a couple of suggestions.

     1. User created chat rooms - I understand the problems you have had in the past regarding this, but really wish you would do something to give us that capability. There are many group meetings we would like to have in a user created chat room and wish everyday you would give us that facility.
     2. User created Emoticons - While over all I prefer using YM for chat, I do miss the user created emoticons feature in MSN chat. Please add that to YM, which will make the YM experience even more virtually real!

     Thank you

     Comment by Uma — October 9, 2007 #

429. HuggyTommy_Will_Rule.YOU14

     36 of these in computers lobby :1
     CHOP CHOP only requested this be fixed 4 weeks ago… sure as hell glad i dont pay for anything from yahoo… or id be one mighty pissed off client right now…..

     #

     I take exception to yahoo censoring my ON TOPIC post. If you think I can’t get the same word out without using your blog, you are wrong. If I want to go to three other places I post and list Yahoo’s advertisers and accuse Yahoo! of corporate fraud, I WILL. If you think I won’t let people know to contact Yahoo! advertisers and let them know who or WHAT their advertising dollars are reaching (bots not people)…you are wrong. All I did was GOOGLE Yahoo + advertisers and picked the top PAID spot (lol) and posted there, then I went to Yahoo home and wrote down the advertisers I saw there. You can sweep your servers to placate the illiterate masses every four weeks, but eventually someone will figure out what Yahoo! is doing and start pulling their ads. I can only assume that my on topic post hit a nerve since you reacted like China and censored me. I’m going to stick around just to watch people wake up and to see Yahoo! take the final self inflicted blow. If no one is there to type, does Yahoo! make a noise as it tumbles?

     Comment by comfortably_yum — October 9, 2007 #
     ^^ exactly what im going to do alone with a handful of regs from our rooms will start emailing/bloggin on advertisers sites

     Comment by bamatstar_30 — October 9, 2007 #

430. HuggyTommy_Will_Rule.YOU14

     36 of these in computers lobby :1

     Funny. I noticed this morning while room hopping that I had to keep ignoring the SAME capped bots in each room I went to. Cheese, pure cheese. On the PLUS side, I’m sure Yahoo! will get right on those user created emotes, since they are big on temporary fixes. Watch out that when they ALLOW these user created emotes, it doesn’t unleash 430285702847602876024867 new bugs or cause your toaster to blow up. Imagine, life without toast.

     Comment by comfortably_yum — October 9, 2007 #

431. Ok now chat has got compleatly out of hand!!! When will yahoo notice that they are losing a lot of faithfull users!! Or maybe this is just what they want. It seems to be that yahoo has made the bot problem worse then it was before!! at least before there was a few humans per rooms, and you were able to pick what room you would like to hang with and what friends you would like to keep company with!!! Now some moron at yahoo thought it would be a good idea to take the rooms to a min and when they become full roll to another room. This has not been working!!!! What happened to ” hey i have an idea lets test this out in a lab first ” I think that maybe it is time for the users of yahoo to band together. Let the yahoo know what we like what we want and what they stand to loose. I compleatly agree with the person who had the idea of contacting all the sponsers. The people who make free chat possiable for us users. But there are other steps that can also be taken. Yahoo It is time that you just take us back a couple months and put things back the way they use to be. At least then people were actually able to use chat!!!!!
     NOT THAT SARA BACON OR ANYONE AT YAHOO ACTUALLY READS THIS !!!!!!!!
     Have a peachy yahoo day !!!!

     Comment by chat_user — October 9, 2007 #

432. Well I’m glad Yahoo! finally reset the rooms that needed resetting. I don’t know if stuck ID’s are still a problem but the rooms are definitely better than they were. BTW, I’d vote against adding more rooms.
     If sticking ID’s are still a problem with this software I hope they will fix that problem.

     Comment by JC — October 9, 2007 #

433. ids ‘’sticking” are still an issue wth is yahoo just going to keep reseting the servers everytime they become unusable lmao how retarded.

     Comment by Karl — October 10, 2007 #

434. So I reported someone with 36 similar IDs clogging a room, and guess what yahoo has done about it.

     Comment by mourning_still — October 11, 2007 #

435. Dammit why doesnt yahoo ever work properly i got the newest version and im not sure if its just pissy on vista but it wont let me sign into any chat rooms every time i try to it says this request has been refused, is this happenin to ne one else i need help cause for some reason yahoo has no real tech staff just a automated system that doest even help…some one please help!!!!!!!!!!!

     Comment by talena — October 11, 2007 #

436. talena
     At least you got a automated message. i got nothing at all! worse part is i pay for yahoo premium!

     Comment by Johnny — October 11, 2007 #

437. Talena: does this tell you some thing? yahoo isnt good even if you pay for it. they keep making new version and the last one never worked. you will no help from yahoo. they need to dump the ones who is running chat and get new ones who know what there doing, because yahoo dont.

     Comment by Thunder — October 12, 2007 #

438. Updating of Yahoo chat rooms? Did that include letting the booters back in? ID’s sticking are still a problem and overall chat isn’t any better than BEFORE the update. Please for the love of all that’s Holy. Sort the damn rooms. I think we’ve been pretty patient during the whole saga that was changing the servers. We WERE hoping that things would be better, but as of now I’ve yet to see concrete evidence of this!

     Comment by Michelle — October 13, 2007 #

439. great job with the update…wow sure got the bots under control….come on there are more than ever.you have to do something to get rid of them

     Comment by mike — October 13, 2007 #

440. I see that Yahell is ignoring most, if not all, of the comments here. (Granted, given the acidity of some of the comments, there might be a little bit of reason.) However, the comments and complaints point to a problem that Yahoo is ignoring at its own peril.

     The business with Captcha isn’t working as planned. There are still a number of bots in the rooms, generally around a half-dozen or so. The number gets well over a dozen in the Romance/Location rooms.

     The biggest problem that I encounter (in my opinion) is in transferring from one room to another. In the past, we would be informed that our destination chat room was full before being pulled from our current chat room. Now with Captcha, we get pulled from our current room and wait in chat limbo while going through the verification process yet again only to find out that the destination room is full. That leaves us floating in cyber hell. Furthermore, for some reason when I hit a brick wall in the form of a full chat room, I cannot pull up the chat room list without completing shutting down chat and starting over from the Yahoo Messenger window. It seems that Captcha is interfering with legitimate chatters more than the bots/spammers.

     Someone earlier (only a few messages back) suggested that we contact the companies that advertise on Yahoo chat to complain. I don’t know about the rest of you, but about 90% to 95% of the adverts seem to be for other Yahoo products, especially the Personals section.

     This really hasn’t been a banner period for Yahoo chat. Hopefully SOMEONE will decide to correct these issues that are brought up in the blog.

     Comment by Rick — October 13, 2007 #

441. It’s been 4 days since I reported 36 similar IDs flooding a room and Yahoo still has done NOTHING, proving that their concern about the quality of our “chat experience” is just ALOT OF HOT AIR.

     Comment by mourning_still — October 14, 2007 #

442. Welllllllllllll that TEMPORARY bot fix was fun while it lasted. WEEE.

     Comment by Kozmik — October 14, 2007 #

443. I’m going to delete Yahoo! Messenger from my desktop. If a million dollar company can’t or doesnt feel the need to fix the obvious blaring problems for their users then screw them. Who needs the lousy service really?

     Comment by JC — October 15, 2007 #

444. Rick’s findings were right on the mark. The captcha, an inconvenience most of us would tolerate if it succeeded in eliminating bots is instead making it more difficult for the legitimate chat user. I have read feedback saying yahoo doesn’t seem to care anymore and other feedback saying that some of us should get a life. That there’s more to the world than yahoo chat. As far as the latter view is concerned, what about those that are confined to their homes due to illness or disabilty and relied on yahoo chat and the friends they made in certain rooms that now either don’t exist or are filled with bots? For that matter, what about the many of us who liked yahoo chat in its earlier incarnations and are legitimately disappointed that our concerns are no longer addressed by the powers that be? Not even a comment by Sarah Pastrami..oops Bacon saying in effect that “we hear you”. So if this messenger blog is merely a cathartic venue to vent frustrations without any action being taken…so be it.

     Comment by jabadoobie — October 16, 2007 #

445. Well the CAPTCHA in theory was a good idea and the only attempt i have EVER seen from yahoo to prevent spam however it clearly has not worked it was a nice try and i praise yahoos efforts but there are a LOT better ways to prevent spam its such a shame that a kid with visual basic 6 can create a better chat client that a multi billion dollar company that in itself is laughable in fact its pathetic why doesn’t yahoo look at the ideas implemented in 3rd party clients and realize they WORK options such as voice ignore (while you can still see there text) would be greatly appreciated by everyone,user created filters (the current ”filters” do not do anything only replace words with ***** hardly a filter.) there is so many things that can and should be done new bugs pop up all the time in yahoo the latest one i have realized (might have been around a while) is when you right click an id in chat to view profile it opens up your browser and views the nicknames profile LOL however if you right click on the room list it works fine how Sarah Bacon comes up with such tripe to talk about i will never know when yahoos users are depleting rapidly people have had enough i hardly ever use chat anymore it seems with every new version of yahoo there is more bugs for instance the ”you cannot ignore yourself” error when auto ignore kicks in this is NOT present in 7.0 however in 8.1 it is lol as well as the ability to turn pms off works fine in 7.0 i suggest you lot downgrade to 7.0 get it from my site if you want 8.1 sucks major balls and no im not spamming lol up to you. anyways yea Sarah if you read this what i highly doubt fix the current problems before adding usless features etc and creating more bugs!

     Comment by Karl — October 17, 2007 #

446. jeeeze…take a breath and use some punctuation. (, ; ., etc.)

     Comment by mourning_still — October 17, 2007 #

447. hmmmmmmmmmmm, bots every wer. now get pop up boxes by the dozen ,conference invatation, frm porn bots , any one tell me can u turn the confrence thing off coz u cant iggy them.
     by the way yahell grt job yr doing , i dont think.

     Comment by andy — October 20, 2007 #

448. zarabyte
     You can ignore chat invitations by going to your yahoo IM and selecting MESSENGER then PREFERENCES then CHAT and check the box that says IGNORE CHAT INVITATIONS.

     hope this helps.

     Comment by Johnny — October 20, 2007 #

449. 10-22-07
     I know that no one at yahoo is going to see this, much less read it. I may as well be talking to a fence post or a tree. So just think of it as me venting a little.

     The last time yahoo posted anything on this blog about the chat rooms was at the start of this thread on 9-13-07. Apparently that was the last time they even thought about chat.

     In the mean time they have posted on several other subjects.

     10-17-07 Messenger for Vista, 50 comments, 5 days, average 10 per day
     Good luck Vista users, don’t hold your breath.

     10-11-07 keyboard shortcut, 8 comments, 11 days, average 0.72 per day
     Out of 609 comments to this blog only one in this thread was deemed worthy of a reply. This must be a pet project for Sarah. Anyone wanna bet that she knows the key codes for all of the smiley faces?

     10-10-07 Live chat help voice is down, 2 comments, 12 days, average 0.17 per day
     Is it still down?
     The post is still here so I guess it is.
     Only 2 people noticed.

     10-05-07 What’s in a name, 7 comments, 17 days, average 0.41 per day
     Handy little tip that I MAY use one time during my life.

     10-04-07 Status message length, 20 comments, 18 days, average 1.11 per day
     Is someone wanting to put their life history in their status?

     10-02-07 Keeping up with eBay, 6 comments, 20 days, 0.30 per day
     Yes i know what eBay is.
     Yes i know how to get to their site.
     Do I need your help getting there … NO

     09-27-07 Smiley party, 32 comments, 25 days, average 1.28 per day
     I’m sure the people at yahoo need something to party about
     OK … The party is over, get your butt back to work and fix the chat rooms.

     09-24-07 Messenger for the web, 16 comments, 28 days, average 0.57 per day
     About 90% of the on line messages get threw.
     Only about 10% of the off line messages make it.
     Nothing new here.

     09-21-07 add more friends, 6 comments, 31 days, average 0.19 per day
     I had friends on yahoo
     YOU chased them away
     They are NOT coming back

     09-18-07 Avatars from India, 14 comments, 34 days, average 0.41 per day
     There are so many things i could say about this one.
     Ill just leave it at “Golly gee wiz, thanks so much”

     09-13-07 Chat room upgrade (this thread), 440 comments, 39 days, average 11.48 per day
     Lip service and then NO service

     TOTALS: 11 postings, 610 comments, 1 (one) reply from yahoo to a comment

     When I first found this blog I thought it would be a form of two way communication between yahoo and the users..WRONG
     They throw out little postings now and then and say take it or leave it. I understand that they can’t make everyone happy but they don’t even try for some. I take that back, right now the botters, booters and hackers in yahoo have more control of the chat rooms than yahoo does so they are very happy.

     Comment by old man — October 22, 2007 #

450. You can ignore chat invitations by going to your yahoo IM and selecting MESSENGER then PREFERENCES then CHAT and check the box that says IGNORE CHAT INVITATIONS.
     thks for the help,but either yahell turned it off or the bots have found a way round it.still getting chat invatations by the dozen.

     Comment by andy — October 23, 2007 #

451. The “Ignore Chat Invitations” option is definitely broken and has been for quite some time. Before only a few bots were able to get around the block, now it appears the secret is out. The really irritating thing about this is you receive the bot invites before you can get into a room.
     I would ask how long before this bug gets fixed, but I know there won’t be an answer. Instead we’ll get another useless “feature” or an equally useless “update status” posting.

     Comment by Gary — October 23, 2007 #

452. there’s a new exploit out there, it will knock chatters out of the room. this has been going on for a few days now..its a code boot. i hope u guys will patch this quick..u can check on this site >>http://www.viprasys.com/cnuke/index.php

     Comment by romwell — October 23, 2007 #

453. do you guys think mybe u could impliment a way to turn off conference invites these bots are going crazy i am getting invites at the rate of about 2 a minute and it’s pissing me offand get rid of the damn captcha cause it isn’t working anyway

     Comment by yahoo user — October 24, 2007 #

454. I find it encouraging that, after more than a month, this post hasn’t been closed to comments yet. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Yahoo is paying any attention to the complaints or considering any of the suggestions.

     Is it time to reset the servers, yet?

     Comment by mourning_still — October 25, 2007 #

455. well dont know bout anyone else but it seems alot of peeps r now getting * chat errors* … wonder what they r up to this time ..never ceases to amaze me …yahoo listen ??? i have yet seen them even bother ….

     Comment by lynncee — October 26, 2007 #

456. Here we go again. We’ve been dumped out of the chatrooms and the rooms closed down twice in 2 days. Now, we’re getting chat errors all the time and text isn’t posting. Also, names are sticking in the chatters list as much or more than they did before. Enough already. We’ve been waiting more than a year for the mess to get straightened out. We’re trying to be patient, but we have our limits.

     Comment by Storm Chaser — October 26, 2007 #

457. We can send a man to the Moon. Help build a Space Station. Blast into space at a rate that has become commonplace. But for some reason, beyond anyone’s comprehension, Yahoo is unable to ensure its Messenger program is not only robust, but stable. Things that makes you go hmmmmm…….

     Comment by Waaaahhhh — October 26, 2007 #

458. To help prevent spam and bots from disrupting your Yahoo! chat experience, please click here to verify your account (this link will open a new web browser window). This step is required before you can begin chatting Ok so when exactly is this supposed to start working the spam is outta control again

     Comment by yahoo user — October 28, 2007 #

459. Guess since this is eve of holloween yahell decided to do a trick and not give us a *treat* once again the chat eorrors are back ..worse then before…. WHEN n ell will they GET ANYTHING RIGHT??? messenger is not a robust program but makes me wanna ….. * puke* no wonder so many of me friends have left it…. for n the past 11 yrs they have yet done anything right ….

     Comment by lynnnceeee — October 31, 2007 #

460. Well I haven’t deleted the messenger from my desktop (although I probably should). For a few years Yahoo chat room users have dealt with multitudes of rooms full of porno ads. The situations is definitely better with the Captcha system, but they are far from being user freindly. User IDS are still sticking in the rooms day after day… Also, they seemed to have dropped the handy flashing desktop tab in the taskbar that flashed when users in the room entered a message.
     I don’t know if they are working on these problems but I’d rather they fix them than adding more new stuff.

     Comment by JC — November 5, 2007 #

461. well here we go once again now the sound is all messed up in chat…… wonders when yahell will get anything right or if? I think they should have techs who know wtf they r doing and STOP MAKING IT WORSE!! then again when has yahell been working right for the past 10 yrs..it hasnt since it was 5.4 or so… wot a bunch of crap… once again will spend the time…. going to another chat client and have fun……

     Comment by lynncee — November 6, 2007 #

462. Just get rid of the booters. i can handle the bots in the room but yahoo messenger is weak against booters. oh and yet rid of spammers as well Dont worry wat every1 else says lol. i use it day in day out and trust me, its them that ruin it for every1 else. one more thing, im glad yahoo is out there, if it wasnt for yahoo id be still single….cheers

     Comment by me — November 19, 2007 #

463. well Looks like even though Thanksgiving is over yahoo is still a * turkey* now cant even get voice in rooms… wonder what is gonna happen next

     Comment by lynncee — November 23, 2007 #

464. WHEN IS YAHOO GONNA DUMP THE BLOODY BOTS N VOICE BOTS N ROOMS??? no one can chat let alone play music…. COME ON GET IT TOGETHER N GET REAL TECHIES WHO KNOW WHAT TO DO

     Comment by lynncee — November 23, 2007 #

465. only losers play music in chat…why dont you crybabies stfu yahoo is fine

     Comment by dominator — November 23, 2007 #

466. well dom… can see why ur nic..anyways all rooms had sound but ours… geee would luv to thank the bloody voice boot bots fer that one…. u have ur room u go to n i have mine wot is called.. freedom of choice : -) you do remember freedoms dont u ? END OF STORY have a good one eh

     Comment by lynncee — November 24, 2007 #

467. Has anyone noticed how often the captcha code includes the combination “FU”?

     Comment by mourning_still — November 25, 2007 #

468. look lynncee only losers just hang out in one room..omg just tell your nerd friends to pick a new boring room to hang that has voice

     Comment by dominator — November 28, 2007 #

469. OH well iffn no one likes music then THEY can go somewheres else … oh and by way.
     THANK U YAHOO for the nice holiday pressie… i see the room i go to someone has flooded it with bots… geeeeeeeeeeee so much for yahoo’s aka yahells technology on preventing bots ….
     wonders what yahoo will be handing out or not preventin for new years …

     Comment by lynncee — December 29, 2007 #

470. Hello sir/ madam. The problem with laptop pc is just 2 days ago, I did formatting of my laptop. Before formatting, your yahoo messenger was working like a wonder. But that captcha image is now not getting to me. Yeah I am getting that link. But after clicking on that, I am not getting that image. Thats why i cant go to chat rooms. What could be the solution ??…
     please mail me…

     Comment by Rahul Gore — January 28, 2008 #

471. Get rid of the security layer. It isn’t stopping the bots one bit. I have to enter in a security code for each chat room, and now, I find out after entering the code, that the room is full. Waste!!! and all he rooms have lots of spammers and botts. this chatpat is meking problem to the real users

     The rooms still don’t accurately reflect the number of chatters in the room. Seems the upgrade didn’t help at all.

     still think a “report as bot” link in the message window, coupled with deleting IDs of confirmed bots will be of use. If the runners have to keep taking time to create new IDs for their bots every few hours, sooner or later they should give up, like a lot of humans are doing now in dealing with the rooms full of bots.

     Comment by Bluemoon — March 5, 2008 #

472. Ok yahoo. I understand you wanting to try and make chat better…but in reality the changes just made it worse. Now some rooms you can only get 16 people in to which wouldn’t be a problem except for the fact that most of the name in the rooms have been stuck there for weeks.that never use to happen before all the changes started happening in the summer.Also ppl in the us can olny get 16 ppl in the rooms but yet people in other countries can get 20 even 30 at times in the rooms. Honstly it seems as though since the code has started there seems to be more porn bots then before. At least before the same bots would be in the same room and if you iggied them it wasn’t a problem. Now some rooms have more porn bots then humans.
     I really honstly wish you would put chat back the way it was!!!!!!!!! Thank You

     Comment by rebel — March 12, 2008 #

473. hi i just want to know when you have to put voice in the yahoo chat rooms for mac,i’ll be glad if can make,thnks a lot

     Comment by reynaldo — June 15, 2008 #

474. The bot thing is out of control maybe a scan of all profiles for known spam links and freezing the accounts would help just a thought and black listing known spam ip’s might to.

     Comment by Darken — September 17, 2008 #

475. I cannot get into yahoo chat rooms anymore inspite of what I do………Please give me approval status again………..

     Comment by Randy Senn — November 22, 2008 #

476. I cannot find anywhere to click to get onto the Yahoo Chat via my Yahoo Messenger 3.0 Mac. Where is it? I do not have any menu, or menu options at all.

     Comment by Alana — December 10, 2008 #

477. it’s annoying getting booted by immature people we need something to get rid of them once and for all, they kick us out of the room cus they want ownership of the chatworld cus they have no control in their personal lives. grow up people this is adult chat stay out of chat if your gonna act like children with your toys. and they also try to dictate who can be friends with who and if they dislike someone they expect everyone else to dislike the same people that’s childish. own yourselves and your own behavior , stop trying to control everyone, grow up.the captcha is a joke it doesnt keep the bots out that chatters create. its a waste of time.

     Comment by carla — December 30, 2008 #

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.