What is the point of storing Here/Gone in the IAL if one isn't going to keep it updated? And what other way but to /who the channel every 30 seconds?
I think the ISAWAY command would be an interesting method, but like ISON it would have to be issued every 30 seconds to be useful. It was my understanding servers wanted to get away from ISON and adopt the WATCH list instead. Perhaps instead of an ISAWAY command that would be issued more times than actual /away commands, why not make a User Flag that will notify the user when someone they share a channel with goes /away. This would certainly use less bandwidth.
Personally, I don't see why it's so necessary to see when someone is /away. It's a moot point, and not everyone even goes /away. I think someone's channel idle time speaks for itself... if they haven't spoken for 30 minutes, chances are they aren't currently participating in the conversation. mIRC already has an auto-nickcolor feature for this built in!
In Fact, more people set themselves /away and forget all about it for the entire day while they continue to participate in conversations. Some even use their /away field to store Quotes-Of-The-Day. The information is totally useless.
- Raccoon
