Remove all IM fields from core.

[ShaneF]

Due to the Contact Method fields not being used by the majority of themes, and the current list of Contact Methods is lacking many of the networks certain cultures use.

Perhaps it's best that they be removed entirely, and relied upon the Theme and/or Plugins to add the contact methods which suit the Culture group to be added.

Attached patch removes current contact methods from the profile page, Does not affect the underlying database.

From this discussion here: ​http://wordpress.org/support/topic/343567

If I may be so bold as to ask, why? :-)

Or, why not adding identi.ca too? (Or identi.ca only, since we should be supporting open solutions, and identi.ca runs on a platform that supports federated microblogging.)

And what about Facebook?

In my opinion, this is not core material.

The Twitter explosion potentially warrants its inclusion in core, but that filter was added in 2.9 and makes it extremely easy:

function add_twitter_as_contact_method( $user_contactmethods ) {
   return array_merge( $user_contactmethods, array( 'twitter' => 'Twitter' ) );
}
add_filter( 'user_contactmethods', 'add_twitter_as_contact_method' );
...
the_author_meta('twitter');

A lot of people use twitter and from what I am reading on twitter itself is that this should be nativity supported, not have to work because of a plugin.

Again.. not all users can do this and know how even though there is a thing in codex. But people look for that all the time. Why not just add it?

In my opinion, All IM fields should be striped from core. Its impossible to cater for everyone, whilst not over-doing it.

Every culture group and country prefer different networks, in the past, there were a limited selection so it was fine, Today, You might as well include FaceBook, Myspace, Orkut, Tagged, Bebo, Windows Live Spaces (different from MSN AFAIK?).. All those mentioned are supposably more common than Twitter world wide, which i agree with.

Agree. Patch has nothing. Plugins/Themes will have to provide those in the user_contactmethods filter for them to be added.