Facebook chat no longer stays in "group"

[Erik Max Francis]

David Coulson wrote:
> Yes, i noticed it with a few clients in the last week. Facebook uses 
> XMPP so they can group users however they want server-side.

I've encountered this as well.  I believe it's happening because of 
Facebook's new "lists" feature, which allows people to group their 
friends in lists.  (Though the actual change is fairly recent.)  In the 
chat configuration tool, you tell Facebook Chat to only make you 
available via chat to everyone, only those in a certain list, or 
everyone _except_ those in a certain list.  If you choose the first or 
third options, then the contacts that show up in your XMPP client (as 
was said, this is not Pidgin-specific) will have the group name 
"Facebook Friends" and unfortunately there's nothing you can do about that.

However, I think that if you choose the second method, the group name 
may have the same name as the list you've chosen.  This requires you to 
then have a list with the same name as the group you want in XMPP, and 
also (and this is the problem) manually maintain the list of people you 
want to chat with in a list.  So it's probably not worth it.

In short, without manual intervention each time you add a new friend, 
there's nothing you can do about the group name.

> On Dec 12, 2011, at 6:42 PM, Fannie Gunton wrote:
> 
>> Even though it only just started happening?  It’s been solid for at 
>> least 9 months.
>>
>>  
>>
>> *From:* David Coulson [mailto:david at davidcoulson.net 
>> <mailto:david at davidcoulson.net>] 
>> *Sent:* Monday, December 12, 2011 5:41 PM
>> *To:* Fannie Gunton
>> *Cc:* support at pidgin.im <mailto:support at pidgin.im>
>> *Subject:* Re: Facebook chat no longer stays in "group"
>>
>>  
>>
>> Facebook via XMPP does this with other clients too. It's nothing the 
>> client can influence.
>>
>>  
>>
>>  
>>
>> On Dec 12, 2011, at 6:28 PM, Fannie Gunton wrote:
>>
>>
>> I’ve been using Pidgin to corral all of my chats into one interface 
>> for the last 9 months.  I have general categories (family, work, etc.) 
>> that I sort from all of my chat clients (facebook, AIM, etc.) into.
>>
>>  
>>
>> Within the last 2 weeks, I’ve noticed that my facebook chat friends 
>> are no longer sorting.  There’s a new group called “Facebook Friends” 
>> that they are all in.  If I manually resort into my other groups, the 
>> next time I log in, they are back in the “Facebook Friends” group.
>>
>>  
>>
>> Is there any way to make them stay sorted?  It’s a big enough issue, 
>> that I may have to switch to another chat client.
>>
>>  
>>
>> Thank you!
>>
>>  
>>
>> -Fannie Gunton
>>
>>  
>>
>>  
>>
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>>  
>>
> 
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-- 
Erik Max Francis && max at alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
  San Jose, CA, USA && 37 18 N 121 57 W && AIM/Y!M/Jabber erikmaxfrancis
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