HELP! We need an online chat room for league owners

[Mike Rubin]

I have two online leagues that used to use MSN chat rooms but MSN recently discontinued that service. Further, our stat service, the lamented TQ Stats, has draft rooms but only for straight drafts but not rooms where we can chat collectively and conduct an auction.

We thought we could move to AOL now that it is free. However, we just found out that it still requires a credit card for private room access "just to verify age" and some owners either don't have credit cards or won't provide a card number to AOL.

Do any of you know of other chat services that work relatively painlessly for guys who can't configure java miniserver applets and that sort of thing? I would try Yahoo, but I use a Mac at work and Yahoo Chat won't work with a Mac, at least not in chat rooms. (IMs seem to work okay.) I have not had luck finding other chat services at all, but I am not sure how to look. (Googling "free private chat room" brings up a ton of porn sites.) All owners have access to PCs, so Mac accessibility is a "nice to have" but not a "gotta have."

I have not tried Fantasy Auctioneer this season, but I heard it crashed out seriously weekend before last. I am not sure it is ready for primetime.

Worse comes to worse, we can set up AllStar Stats leagues and cancel after the draft, but I don't want to abuse a business like that if I don't have to do so. Any suggestions are welcomed. Thank you.

[NICK@HQ]

You can use Yahoo with a Mac if you use http://www.adiumx.com on it. It supposedly lets you interconnect with all the major chat services, not just the AOL chat that iChat gives you. If that works, then you can go with Yahoo for the PC guys and Adium for the Mac.

[Mike Rubin]

You can use Yahoo with a Mac if you use http://www.adiumx.com on it. It supposedly lets you interconnect with all the major chat services, not just the AOL chat that iChat gives you. If that works, then you can go with Yahoo for the PC guys and Adium for the Mac.

Thanks, Nick. I just downloaded this and I am not sure it helps me. It does not appear that Adium lets me get into Yahoo Chat rooms, although it does allow IMing. I can set up chat rooms using an instant messenger client and invite people into a chat room when I set it up, but I am trying to avoid that. It is hard enough to get an auction going without having to track down fourteen owners and co-owners and issue invites to them all. The advantage to a chat room is that everyone just shows up.

Am I failing to use Adium properly, do you think?

[NICK@HQ]

I'm afraid I don't use Adium myself, so I have no answers to your question. I just knew it allowed Yahoo IM access, and now that I look more closely I see that you were specifically asking about access to Yahoo chat rooms (not just IM). I'm not aware of a way to do that, I'm afraid.

For what it's worth, I'm one of those who used Fantasy Auctioneer on that infamous day. I would still recommend it. It was a problem that hit on a peak day. Those peak days are done, they beefed things up at Auctioneer, I suspect you will have no problems whatsoever, and it really does work well. And you can all chat.

[Mike Rubin]

I'm afraid I don't use Adium myself, so I have no answers to your question. I just knew it allowed Yahoo IM access, and now that I look more closely I see that you were specifically asking about access to Yahoo chat rooms (not just IM). I'm not aware of a way to do that, I'm afraid.

For what it's worth, I'm one of those who used Fantasy Auctioneer on that infamous day. I would still recommend it. It was a problem that hit on a peak day. Those peak days are done, they beefed things up at Auctioneer, I suspect you will have no problems whatsoever, and it really does work well. And you can all chat.

Thanks, Nick. I will look into it more.

[helloneumn]

I have not tried Fantasy Auctioneer this season, but I heard it crashed out seriously weekend before last. I am not sure it is ready for primetime.

That was their busiest weekend of the year. I used it earlier in the season without any problems and I haven't heard about any problems since last weekend. Worse comes to worse, you could do worse.

[Gbewing]

I used FA the crash week- but had no problems in the mock drafts before- so give it a shot

the thing about FA is it does pay to be familiar with the site as things go pretty fast but that should be a good alternative

[mdmolyneaux]

Chatzy.com is a place we used for our league during a webdraft.

[Mike Rubin]

Chatzy.com is a place we used for our league during a webdraft.

I am off to check it out! Thank you.

[Markus_ls]

I read your post and wondered if my MSN messenger had been cancelled - haven't logged in in some time. I opened the program (MSN Messenger) from my desktop and everything *seems* to be in working order?

Are you talking about something different? If yes, you might want to try Messenger (linked to a free Hotmail email account) as it seems to be working?



Also, Fantasyauctioneer.com chat room is certainly a good option. I am a big fan of that product in general. But I will say that I have had bug issues on days other than the noted crash. I had a reserve auction lock up, exited, and when I returned the draft restarted with all human player teams unchanged but all computer team rosters cleared. Kept doing this. I think they fixed that bug. I had another draft that worked fine until the reserve draft and the reserve draft crashed. (I think the separate snake draft reserve may be a new feature this year? Maybe not totally up to speed?)

It's a good product. But it does have issues from time to time.

[RobR@HQ]

That was their busiest weekend of the year. I used it earlier in the season without any problems and I haven't heard about any problems since last weekend. Worse comes to worse, you could do worse.

I used it this year, the weekend of 3/23. Draft was decently stable, but not perfect. We're far happier having had an auction draft with them than a straight draft on a more mature platform. We'll be using them again next year.

As commish I found the admin side a bear to use for entering keepers and setting up the league. I particularly dislike that I cannot create all the teams in the league and that there's no support for teams with multiple owner.