Privacy Rewrite GSoC Project

[Mark Doliner]

On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 10:51 PM, Ethan Blanton<elb at pidgin.im> wrote:
> Mark Doliner spake unto us the following wisdom:
>> One problem with our current privacy system is that for AIM the block
>> list is only active when your state is "block only the users below,"
>> but for MSN the block list is always in effect regardless of your
>> state.  For this difference in behavior there is no difference in UI.
>> It is impossible to infer the behavior of these lists from our UI, and
>> that offers a confusing experience to the user.
>>
>> Does the new system attempt to correct this?
>
> I believe the plan is that, for the new system, if that list contains
> *anything*, whatever is in that list is blocked.  If you don't want to
> block any users, don't put anything in that list.  We are explicitly
> moving away from protocol-specific semantics, and to a single,
> coherent interface which is mapped onto the protocols as needed by the
> core and prpls in tandem.

I guess that works flawlessly for blocking messages.  There is still
ambiguity about whether the blocked buddy will be able to see if
you're online.

-Mark