Do you use Yahoo! Messenger for chat, IM or both?

[Fanatic]

There are a lot of discussions about how screwed up Yahoo! chat rooms are, overrun by porn/spam bots. But I suspect only a small percentage (<10%) of Yahoo! Messenger users actually visit the Yahoo! chat rooms on a regular basis.

I thought it would be interesting to see what the stats are for Y! Messenger users here on BigBlueBall, so please add your vote!

[Yahooligan]

I've been in yahoo chat rooms before, but I don't visit them regularly. To me, they are a waste of time. I would rather just IM with my friends.

[Ven0m]

Well, it all depends on the room. The rooms I visit are full of real people and not bots, while some others on the other hand are the opposite.

[Philip]

I only use YM for IMing, period. Thanks for the poll, Fanatic.

[Dermot]

I use YM for im's with friends and family and when i go to chat i use a third party chat client that actually allows me to filter out bots and stop malicious attacks.

[Gandalf]

Originally Posted by Dermot

I use YM for im's with friends and family and when i go to chat i use a third party chat client that actually allows me to filter out bots and stop malicious attacks.

Which client do you use, and how does it filter out the bots?

[z_a_1998]

I have used third party chat clients for about 9 years,still use messenger for im's.But messenger doesn't work that good in chat.

[Dermot]

I use YahELite and have done for about near 10 years.

It supports the use of posix 1003.2 regular expressions

Means you can make up combinations of certain filters that effect usernames in chat like so..

regex:^a(.bab|[0-9]{2,}|a[0-9]+)

Which would auto ignore the likes of

a.babe21f
aa1flirrt23
a0000girly

Thats just one regular expression but you can use many to filter out the bots.

You can also do a similar task with basic wildcard like those in YaZak or YmLite and Yahaven

These use the ** form of wildcarding like using the following

a1*
a2*
a.bab*
aa#*
*##f

Having the asterik after the text means starting with and if it's before the text it means ending with, having it both sides means anywhere in the id.

been the equivalent as the above regular expressions but not as broad.

I believe also ALG's like Ytunnel and YTK Pro offer regular expression support also.

Hope that quick explanation helps.

[rafaelemt]

I regularly visit Yahoo Chat Rooms but I only use Yahoo Messenger for IM's. To chat I use Ymlite cause it's more secure than Messenger.

[Ayame_son]

I go to Yahoo! chat rooms everyday because I want to meet people. but most of the time when the chatroom has bots I wont waste time posting.