REVERT TO CONSOLE

The only thing I wanted to add to this,

It’s nice to filter you list of users based on their status. If someone is offline, for example, I don’t want to see them in my list. Likewise if they’re away.

from inside mcabber, type:
/roster hide_offline

or, set an entry in your configuration. From the sample mcabber config:

# You can set up a mask to filter buddies and display them according to
# their status. The mask should contain the shortcut letters of the
# status you want to see ([o]nline, [f]ree_for_chat, [d]o_not_disturb,
# [n]ot_available, [a]way, [_]offline).
# For example, to display everybody the filter should be “ofdna_” (default).
# To display only the connected buddies, use “ofdna”.
# Please note that this option is only used at startup (once mcabber is
# running you can use “/roster display”).
#set roster_display_filter = ofdna_