An important, controversial issue!

[Mark Doliner]

On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 14:48:30 -0400, Nathan Walp wrote
> Sean Egan wrote:
> > On 4/25/07, Dale Worley <dworley at pingtel.com> wrote:
> >> The biggest problem is "How easily can a new user figure out what the
> >> status icons mean?"  I suspect that without prior knowledge, *all* of
> >> the icons are arbitrary.  Are there proper rollover popups or some such
> >> so one can easily discover what the clock icon is supposed to mean?
> >> Once that is taken care of, I expect that 95% of the users won't even
> >> notice that they can't figure out what the metaphor is.
> > 
> > Yes, they are.
> > 
> > Luke (and others, but Luke is the most persistent) and myself, both
> > claim that both a clock (the current Pidgin away icon) and a piece of
> > paper (the Gaim away icon) *can* be identified as 'away,' but Luke (et
> > al) claim that it can be more easily, incorrectly identified as
> > "idle." This may not be an issue for people who come from an MSN or
> > Yahoo background, but the argument is that long-term Gaim users will
> > be confused by this.
> > 
> > Neither Luke and I are seeing much support for that claim here. If you
> > agree that this is potentially confusing, speak up!
> 
> Clock = idle in my head.  Away-ness has never been, to me, time-
> related.   The only time when time comes into the equation is away 
> vs extended-away, where extended-away means you're gonna be gone 
> longer 
> (for some definition of longer).

I agree

-Mark