No I wasnt flooded at all... I sent my message, got your away message and didnt see any point of typing out another message before you return. Sort of what my initial point was, you are away so I dont chat with you while you are not around to answer me
1) Hide MOTD. Frankly I dont understand why mIRC even does that. It's displayed only once when you connect to the server, so I don't really consider that flooding.
2) Hide names. This is "technical information". You probably don't have any use for that in the presented form anyway so its okay to hide it. Afterall the names will be displayed in the nicklist.
3) Hide Join Part Quit Kick Nick Mode Topic. Thank god those are optional. Frankly thats another part of the information I dont quite get why you would want to hide. (I have seen more then once people addressing channel messages to people who have already left the channel. And later saying oh yea I have the joins and parts turned off).
4) Hide Ping? Pong! Thats again "technical info" it serves no purpose for the general user (unless you have very unstable connection and you use it to inform you of potential lost connection).
5) Hide excessive Bold Underline Color Reverse formatting. I suppose that is primarly a defence feature? Or yes perhaps also an aesthetic preference.
6) Hide user addresses. Again for majority of users that info doesn't really serve a purpose. Apparently for most people IP address is equivalent for voodoo magic.
Away message however serves a very specific purpose. The person you are messaging is not around and cannot answer you right now. This is an info you need to see.
Also a lot can happen within 2 hours. A person can return and go away many times and possibly use same away reason. Supressing the messages after you receive it first time will take away that information from you.
Why you didnt answer me? But didnt you see I was away. Yes but that was almost two hours ago. Oh but I came back and went away an hour later again after we chatted a while.
Oh sorry I didnt even see it as my chat program automatically hides this information from me.Now don't take me wrong I have nothing against introducing new features when they benefit majority of users. Its just my personal opinion that this feature is just not one of those.
Considering that most of the "fullscripts" have away systems built in that let people set themselwes away when they are idle and so on I would say that utilizing away messages is actually something that most people like. (You could also consider the fact that lot of scripts send out away message as a standard message instead of relying on server sending it. In which case mIRC wouldnt block those anyway.)
Bottom line is. If such thing is implemented it absolutely needs to be optional.
