Shoutbox

To be able to add sorting mechanisms this would have to be hard coded into WLM itself through the likes of patching an would require some hard work.  For something like this you may be best to recommend this idea to the developers of mess patch and a-patch (sorry I can't remember who they are or where to go to talk to them, maybe someone else can help you there) as they are use to patching messenger and this will also have less problems if people decide to use their patches as well.  I must say I would like to have other methods of sorting my contacts but there is no way through scripting and I doubt Patchou would try and do it as he likes Plus! just to add different features to WLM rather than just expanding upon the ones there (an he doesn't patch WLM the way needed to do this if I am right).

With your other idea, do you mean in the contact list rather then the windows taskbar?  if so this is because of Plus! not changing the contact list itself but just using the contact list and the information about the contacts to generate these other features.  I would prefer them to stay in the contact list as I might have some window in fullscreen and might not be able to see them on the desktop so this way I can always look at the contact list and still see them there, I think this is Patchou's reasoning too, as well as not interfering too much with the features of WLM too much.