We get lots of feature requests from people who want more control over who can chat in their channel.  Today we started releasing new capabilities to address this.

• Ignore: Don’t want to see someone’s messages?  Ignore them.
• Mute: Don’t want anyone to see someone’s messages in your channel?  Mute them.

You can ignore or mute people by clicking on their name in the Who’s Here list, using the menu that pops up.  You can ignore anyone you want at any time (if you’re logged in); muting is only for channel owners, in your channel.  

You can manage your muted and ignored people just like Favorites: hit the Settings link in the top menu bar.
  
We also added a new way of using chat that only lets the people you pick chat in your channel. We’re calling these people VIPs.  You can add or remove VIPs from inside your channel, or from Settings.

All new Yahoo! Live channels will be in VIP-only mode by default.  If you want to make your chat room open to all, VIP-only, or close it entirely, you can do it in Settings.

For more info about VIPs, check the cheatsheet.

Just for the the record, we also added some more colors to chat messages, and made chat scrollback less infuriating. We’ll be refining these features over the next few weeks; let us know what you think in the comments.