I would like to see an option to log all status message and display name changes for people in my contact list, regardless of whether I have tabs open for them or not. Here's the motivation:
1. Many people use their status messages and/or display names to communicate information; for instance, that they're working on something, that they're going out to the movies, etc. The time at which a status message changes can have significant semantic meaning.
2. Since Adium logs status messages and display names only for people with open tabs, I find myself constantly leaving a set of tabs open for the people in my contact list that I know to behave in this way. This has 2 bad effects: first, it causes me to have lots of open tabs, which leaves less room for tabs to be opened when other people actually talk to me, or I talk to them; second, it means I have to re-open those tabs, by hand, every time I launch Adium or status changes won't be logged.
The feature requested in #3293 (OmniWeb- and Camino-like workspace saving for Adium) would alleviate both the bad effects of (2); however, that feature was vetoed long ago (though I would love to see it considered again - being able to save a message window with a set of tabs in a specific order, and having that pop up every time I launch Adium, would be brilliant), and it would not help with (1) in any case.
