I understood your comment perfectly. What I don't understand is why you don't think Nimue's suggestion is worth a try. I've been doing the grey-out of nicks that way since the feature was included in mIRC and if someone isn't talking it is generally an indication that they are not currently watching the screen and therefore are effectively 'away'. I also use the mIRC nick colours for OP, HOP, VOP, UOP, Normal Users, Notify and Ignore.

Beats having thousands of users pounding the bejesus out of the server just for the sake of a pretty GUI. Some scripts out there send a who or whois every time a user joins, though mainly for IRCop scanners, and it is not only labourious on the server (in sufficient numbers) but just plain wasteful. I don't know if this next bit was mentioned before but I'll say it anyway, there is no 100% accurate way to gauge 'away' users. I, like codemastr, often don't bother to change nick or mark myself "/away" - it's a bad habit but that's life. The best way is the way mIRC already does it. Time actual participation on the channels you are in.