as workaround i can suggest putting all the WhatsApp contacts to dedicated group and then enabling showing offline contacts in that group regardless
I have it this way too. I soon got tired of contacts dancing in and out the list, so I unchecked Contact list > General > Hide offline users. I prefer a static list and organize it in groups that can be expanded or collapsed. I have major groups by protocol (facebook and WhatsApp in my case), and then subgroups based on proximity or relationship. I didn’t like metacontact handling.
By the way, as of 0.1.2.6 I see WhatsApp contacts going online/offline in realtime. Great progress this week, thanks for your work!!
Regarding WhatsApp groups, do you plan to keep handling them like before (like a single user chat, with preceding [nickname]) or will you adapt them to Miranda group chat handling?