demon, I can go on for hours about thousands of events that happen everyday in real life where someone stupid caused a rule/law to be created prohibiting an innocent act. If you don't believe me, try boarding an airplane with a gallon of glass cleaner in your hand. So yes, there are times that choosing not to code something is the better solution.
/whois has NEVER meant someone needs help. /whois is for viewing publicly available information about a specific user. It's not an invitation for you to /msg them for any reason. It's just not needed. Think of it like having a sliding glass window on a submarine. If a user needs help they will join the help channel! I don't know who told you that you are supposed to offer help when a person /whois' you .. but I promise, they are mistaken. More times than not the user doesn't need help. I'd imagine the "go and help" thing was some excuse created as to why umode +W was needed in the first place. Believe me, I've been around as a NetAdmin for a long long time. QuakeNet is currently the largest IRC network in the world and I was an IRCop before they existed. Don't get me wrong, I'm not boasting in any kind of "I know everything" or "I'm better than you" fashoin. I'm just saying I know ALOT about IRC and common practices and /whois being a help system is definately false.
Not to mention that /whois requests do not directly affect the person being whois'ed. All that data is stored on the ircd and given when requested. Infact, having the ircd tell you who/when you was whoised wastes more of your bandwidth that the user that whoised you in the first place.
If you are worried about the fabled "whois flood" ... don't. A user that makes multiple whois requests will activate their sendQ LONG before they have any type of remotely damaging effect on the ircd.
If you are so paranoid that you *must* know when someone /whois'ed you, get off the internet and go seek professional counceling. Beyond that, there is not *real* reason for umode +W and this cs/ns spy request is in the exact same position.
IF you want it coded so badly, then I suggest you learn how and code it yourself. I doubt anyone of sound mind will use it but you. Not to mention that you'd likely get it faster.
I also feel obligated to say that we are under a feature freeze to start with, nothing new is being added or deleted from the core until after 1.8 is declared as the stable branch, so these requests, regardless of how useful or earthmoving will not be added anyway and some of your requests require core changes.
I'm done here.
[Edited on 20-12-2006 by katsklaw]