Comment 6 for bug 273220

I think minimizing to the notification area is much better for programs you run all the time (fe IM, e-mail, music) because it makes them easily accessible from any desktop (if you use more than one) and the program is completely out of your way, which is much nicer than having it minimized on one (or all) of the desktops. This way you get to the program in one click on a small icon (if possible showing some extra information, like "new mail", "paused", "new message" or whatever) from any desktop and it doesn't clutter the taskbar... It's also nice to have only one icon to think about for any of these programs, when it has anything to do with Pidgin, I look at the Pidgin icon, when it has anything to do with the music player, ... The Pidgin icon fe shows both my status and a notification whenever I receive a new message.
Imo it would be a step back to avoid this behaviour.
If it is really needed to follow Gnome's guidelines strictly, maybe there should be made a new 'area' just for such programs to *fix* the current situation? (which I personally find unneeded, although I do believe guidelines are made to be followed)