How many of us have been caught out by being so involved in IM that we missed someone speaking to us in Chat?
Or vice versa - we have chatted to someone and been ignored, and only later find out that they were in IM all along.
So, just like we have Busy and Away flags, couldn't we also have an optional "IM" flag so that being in IM becomes visible? Something we can switch on in Prefs if we want to use it?
It would only work the instant we start to type in IM so it wouldn't keep going on and off every time we read a group notice for instance.
Then we can see people who are in IM (if they choose to let us see).