I disagree; it is cluttered as is. cc'ing the Usability people for
their feedback.

This has occurred to me before, I don't think its entirely out of the
question, but I don't think its a disaster if its not there. 

At the current state of panel usability, I think many users will not
really use the "add to panel" functionality as its confusing and not
visible, so we should assume the GNOME environment will be used with
minimal customization. Thus if a significant number of people are
finding the volume applet useful (I certainely do) we should consider
adding it by default. Its also pretty small, so I don't tihnk it would
be too bad a clutter problem. There's also the question of behavior
when there's no sound card present. Dunno.

Nils?

I'm pretty sure that in mac osX and most versions on windows
(excluding maybe xp) include a volume applet on their panels by default.

*** Bug 58705 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Just as note, i think it would be great to place it on the menu panel
next to the clock. This is similar to where the volume control in osX is.

Right, I don't care either way, so I'll go with whatever decision you
Usability people make. Failing that I'll close as WONTFIX

Well, I'll add my vote to have it there by default, then.  I think not
being able to find the volume control was one of the first usability
comments I made when I first logged into GNOME 1.2 nearly two years
ago :)

ANother problem, the volume control applet is in gnome-applets. I'm
not sure its such a good idea to have an applet that doesn't get
installed as part of the gnome-panel package be displayed as default
on the panel.

Hmph, who designed this stuff?  :)  

What would happen if user hadn't installed gnome-applets and panel
tried to load the volume-control applet-- would you get a placeholder
icon on the panel (like you did in 1.4) or nothing at all?  Not that
I'm sure which would be better... maybe a dancing paperclip saying
"why are trying to use the panel if you haven't even bothered
installing any applets"  :)

We'd get a dialog saying 'Could not load Mixer Applet' or some such ..

Eew.  How likely is it really that someone will be running the panel
without gnome-applets installed, do we think?  (Other than hackers
trying to get 2.0 out the door...)

Its possible, probably not GNOME from a distributer like Sun, Ximian,
Redhat ... but I still don't think that makes it right ... if I get
many opinions otherwise then I won't care either

so i guess there's no way that the module with the volume applet can 
add itself to the panel?

Fixed