Talk:Comparison of cross-platform instant messaging clients

VFD - Comparison of instant messengers

This article WAS listed for VFD... but saved by a group of brave supporters to KEEP this article. See: Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Comparison_of_instant_messengers. Because of this I've removed the VFD message from the article.

asynchronous message relaying (on client offline)

a subject that is rarly covered on instant messangers as there are emails for real async communication. but imho its important for conveniance as one might not check email that often ..

in my experiance only yabber, icq, and irc (with memoserv) support this feature where aim, msn, yahoo fall short ..

thought of this eventually as another feature line!! ..

Unicode Support?

Would like to see if Unicode support (Multiple languages, e.g. Japanese, English, Korean, support without changing locale.) mentioned, thanks!

Hello?

Hi everyone.

I use a Mac, so I have not tried Google's "Hello" program. That program which they bundle with Picasa 2 for easy photo sharing/discussion etc.

Does Hello use it's own IM protocol, or does it piggy back one of the other major protocols? From the www.hello.com site, it seems to use it's own. Would that mean that it deserves an entry in this page?

Looking through this page, I wonder if the entries look oddly classified.

Userbase?

Any ideas what the estimated or know usersbases for each of these networks/protocols/programs are?

I second that. A really important piece of information for a good comparison is how many users each network supports.
Here's what I was able to find by poking around on wikipedia's various pages for some of the chat clients.
AIM: 195 million
Skype: 70 million
QQ: 150 million
Coversant's SoapBox: 2 million

AIM/TOC differences

I would like to point out that most of the AIM clients written actually go through the TOC network, which is compatible, but more limited than Oscar. (can't view an oscar user's away message, etc.) For example, the official AIM client and gaim use Oscar, but CenterICQ and naim use TOC. Does anyone want to look into the rest of the clients?

GPLv2?

Why does mICQ's license listed as GPL v2 versus simply GPL (simply GPL implys GPL version 2)? I am removing it. If the person who put that there wants it back, please explain here. — SirNuke (talk)

first, please sign your messages. second, there are earlier versions of GPL, so "GPL" by itself does not imply GPL version 2. I shall go put that back now, and also add it for Adium (which is also GPL version 2). — boredzo (✍) July 7, 2005 07:26 (UTC)

Scripting Languages

Another column on the Features table that would be useful information would be which scripting languages are supported by each client (though I suspect "None" would be the answer for most of them).

Edit - A quick homepage search of each client shows only the following ones with scripting languages:

Adium: AppleScript

Gaim: Perl

mICQ: TCL

Miranda - PHP via plugin

Tkabber - TCL

Pandion: JavaScript

All Jabber Clients get SMS support via SMS transport

so I guess Partial with note is needed in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_instant_messengers#Advanced_conferencing as done above for AIM/MSN/ICQ support for Jabber clients etc

Jabber clients can also connect to xfire and Sametime

There are Jabber transports for xfire and Sametime, so you can connect to these networks also using any Jabber client.

Spam

The appkadomain thing looks like disguised spam. It should be removed.

Yahoo! Messenger release date

Surely Yahoo! Messenger was released prior to June of 1999? I believe I used it as early as December of 1998.

google talk has webcam support with festoon support atleast last time i checked.

http://www.festooninc.com/

Cleanup

I removed all the software that doesn't have its own article. Still a lot of clutter remains:

• Bombus
• Brosix
• Carrier
• Digsby
• eBuddy
• eM Client
• emesene
• EQO
• Fire
• GCN
• GOIM
• Goofey
• Gyachi
• imo.im
• IMVU
• InSpeak Communicator
• JClaim
• Kadu
• Konnekt
• LiveProfile
• meebo
• Meetro
• Naim
• Palringo
• Paltalk
• Pandion
• Proteus
• Qnext
• Spark
• talk
• VZOchat
• Xfire

I believe those should get removed too, and may be even sent to AfD process. Any feedback? — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 14:11, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. Why do you think these should be removed? What are the criteria to determine which clients should be listed? size of userbase? features? uniqueness? or... — Siriushoward (talk) 23:59, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

The criterion is WP:WTAF. And WP:GNG helps with cleanup. At the time of posting there were no red links in the list. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 10:17, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree that we should remove the red link from the list items. But only the link, not the list items themselves, at least not all of them. The notability guidelines applies to standalone lists and articles, not individual item within list (or content in article).

In contrary, items that are not notable enough to have their own article have more reason to be listed. And if those items are expected to have their own article soon, red link is acceptable. see WP:LSC#Selection_criteria — 46.208.91.225 (talk) 14:44, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

I would agree that non-notable items should be included in other articles, but not to the list and comparisons, but instead to the class articles. Here no single red link is a good choice, specifically given the amount of already present IM articles and the obscurity of "expected to have their own article" term regarding software. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 14:49, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

At least we agree on the obscurity of the amount of IM articles that should not be there. I guess we disagree on notability of the clients. For example, I do not understand why you would consider to remove ebuddy, meebo, and imo. But keeping Gajim — Siriushoward (talk) 20:51, 7 February 2012 (UTC)