In some other clients, /away and /status are used to change away and status messages. For example, if I am talking to somebody and need to quickly go away, I just type "/away eating brb" into a conversation window and send it, my away message goes up with "eating brb". If I want to change my status, "/status bored" would change my status to "bored". This would help with quick away and status changes without going through new windows.