IM clients should blacklist system nicks like chanserv / nickserv / server for notifications and messaging menu

[John McHugh]

The IM notifications and messaging menu would be improved by blacklisting system messages, for example from chanserv and nickserv.

Large numbers of notifications and messaging menu entries which do not correspond to real, high-value communications undermine the usefulness and excitement of notifications/messaging menu in general. So we want to eliminate noise from that channel.

The blacklist is an advanced feature so does not need to have user-visible preferences, at least in the first iteration. It would be acceptable for there to be a configuration file or gconf setting which lists the nick's which are blacklisted, so expert users could change the list.

This bug should be targeted to 9.10 for Pidgin, and any other IM clients for which we aim to deliver notifications and messaging menu integration in 9.10.

[Michael Rooney (mrooney)]

Yes, this is indeed overly verbose to see this messages. Personally I'd prefer to not see them at all in pidgin which would fix this as well but fixing it there is a different issue.

[Ted Gould (ted)]

While I completely agree that they shouldn't show up, the question is
how to detect them. If we filter on the name "Nickserv" and someone,
for what ever reason, had that as their handle you wouldn't see messages
from them.

So, I guess while I agree at the intention, I'm unsure of a strategy
that would make this work.

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

Ted Gould wrote:
> While I completely agree that they shouldn't show up, the question is
> how to detect them. If we filter on the name "Nickserv" and someone,
> for what ever reason, had that as their handle you wouldn't see messages
> from them.
>
> So, I guess while I agree at the intention, I'm unsure of a strategy
> that would make this work.
>
Then let me provide clear guidance:

For 9.10, please conceptualise a *blacklist for IM notification* and
implement that in Pidgin and other supported IM clients. We would
include NickServ in that list, as well as other common service names.
Anyone who uses that as a nick on IRC, loses. The blacklist may be
editable, but only through gconf or some other behind the scenes tool,
for the moment.

Mark

[John McHugh (mrmcq2u)]

Well the way I think of it, someone using NickServ as their user name is most likely using it with malicious intent, trying to trick people into sending them login details. So I wouldn't feel bad for them, after all identity theft is bad :D

[Michael Rooney (mrooney)]

Yes, doing it on the pidgin plugin side gives us more than just string
filtering as we would actually have access to nicks. Aren't we already
using a plugin to do the notifications? The "libnotify-popups" plugin
already has a configuration UI (screenshot attached), so why not add a
checkbox there "Ignore system messages" or something similar which
would not show notifications for those, and check it by default. This
way it could be a fairly straightforward Jaunty SRU.

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

Stable Release Update's only fix security or critical data loss bugs, so
this is not appropriate for an SRU. It is targeted for 9.10, though.

Mark

[Ted Gould (ted)]

This should be on pidgin-libnotify. And it's fixed with today's upload. Cleaning up bug.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package pidgin-libnotify - 0.14-1ubuntu10

---------------
pidgin-libnotify (0.14-1ubuntu10) karmic; urgency=low

  * Adding in blacklist support
  * Trying to fix IRC first messages by using an idle function
    to wait for the conversation to get built.
  * Changing black list to be a plugin preference.
  * Adding checking for the server
  * /debian/patches/indicate.patch:
    * Updating to use the libindicate v2 interface (LP: #424487 and
      LP: #424491)
    * Merging in Ken Vandine's patch to make the Pidgin window always
      rise on click from the indicator applet. (LP: #354026)
    * Starting a blacklist for common IRC server nicks. (LP: #362660)
    * Making it so that no append hint is sent on connection status
      messages. (LP: #361800)
    * Setting the default icon to match the notify-osd specification
      if there is no better icon available. (LP: #356979)
    * Making the login timeout 60 seconds instead of 15 so that the
      indicator applet doesn't flicker.
    * Changing the logic slightly so that if we don't have a GUI window
      then we don't check for focus. We only block notifications/indicators
      we we both have a GUI and have focus. (LP: #351545)
  * Adding debian/patches/indicate-autotools.patch changes to built
    files from above patch.
  * debian/control:
    * Increasing libindicate dependency to 0.2.0
    * Adding a build dependency on libindicate-gtk-dev

 -- Ted Gould <email address hidden> Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:10:37 -0500

[Jack Leigh (leighman)]

This is still an issue in 12.04 when using Empathy for IRC