Version:           3.5.6 (1.3.12) (using KDE KDE 3.5.6)
Installed from:    Gentoo Packages
OS:                Linux

After getting yelled at and almost kick/banned for using away messages, I finally figured out why... 

It appears that KSirc defaults to publically announcing to all channels your away status when you set it. After some digging, I see that there is an option to enable/disable this feature from the configuration dialog.

However the problem is that this should be defaulted to off/false and not on/true. I found a similar resolved bug that addressed the original problem, and this feature was added. Bug ID: 43437. The bug was closed and the feature added - but it was defaulted to true, which still announced by default.

To prevent unneccessary chatter and bannings, and to be nice netizens, we really should default this to false.

From what I can tell about the code, this needs to be changed as follows:

--- ksopts.cpp.orig      2007-03-09 15:49:31.000000000 -0330
+++ ksopts.cpp  2007-03-09 15:50:34.000000000 -0330
@@ -33,7 +33,7 @@
     windowLength = 200;
 //    logging = false;
 //    beepOnMsg = false;
-    publicAway = true;
+    publicAway = false;
     //    topicShow = true;
     useColourNickList = false;
     dockPopups = true;