Comments on: Why I hate IM contact groups

By: Johnson Rice

Johnson Rice — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 02:38:13 +0000

I was googling for a pidgin plugin to do exactly what you are suggesting. I saw some project notes about the development of such a plugin to allow a label system as opposed to a group system for contacts in pidgin, but it has since seems to have faded into the ether. I hope someone picks it up and tries again to develop this. I agree with you wholeheartedly.

By: Chris

Chris — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 20:15:36 +0000

@Diego: Pidgin (http://www.pidgin.im) is one of the best F/LOSS IM clients around. I suspect that introducing tagging to the core would require quite a bit of work though.

By: DiegoFiore

DiegoFiore — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 19:25:32 +0000

I also think that tagging is THE way of sorting contacts.
am soooo frustrated that I’ll probably will develop my own IM.

does any of you know an open source IM ?

By: James

James — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:07:31 +0000

Oh, you’d also have automatic Service >> AIM, Service >> Facebook, etc.

By: James

James — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:06:29 +0000

The way I solved this in a game editor I made was to have each art piece (IM contact in your case) have a tag, but allow tags to have a category. When you go to add a tag, they are sorted by category and the categories also have an All option during filter (but not when assigning).

So in your case you’d have tags that look like

Work >> X Company
Open Source >> Project Name

I find you never really need more than one grouping layer for the tags, and it also allows adding filtering tags Work >> All, Open Source >> All, etc.

By: silk

silk — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 09:38:03 +0000

Kadu – an open source client for polish IM network GaduGadu has this feature exactly. Groups are like labels and contact can have multiple groups.
It totally rocks.

By: jba

jba — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 07:03:19 +0000

I understand where you are coming from. I tend to take the approach of, what is the contact first and foremost, that’s what group they go in.

Or, in what capacity do you most interact with them as, then that’s the group they go in.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 19:47:27 +0000

@Nathaniel:

Pidgin can sort buddies “by recent log activity.” This doesn’t put them in the tray popup menu, but it will move them to the top of your list. Pidgin can also group accounts into one contact (I use this feature extensively) but it’s not automatic.

By: Nathaniel McCallum

Nathaniel McCallum — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 19:30:34 +0000

I personally think that they should be automatically sorted based upon usage. The people I chat with most should be available from the drop down menu in the tray. The next most should be visible when I open a buddy list of some sort. The last groups should be available only via search. Basically, the computer should tell me who my best friends are. The other relationships are interesting, but it should optimize for usage (also, usage is easy to implement; wc -l on the logs).

Oh, also annoying… A single person listed once per protocol. Why should I care what protocol is being used. I should be able to say “this person has the following accounts” and it should merge them automatically. It should also suggest merges to me.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 18:07:50 +0000

A friend of mine uses a similar “priority-based” grouping system. The model I present could be extended by allowing tag values, or tag forms such as “priority:5″ and then allowing a sort based on the presence/value of a tag.