matrix-org / matrix-org/matrix-spec

The spec is not clear about who presence events should be sent to

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A-Client-Server clarification
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Description

**Link to problem area**: https://spec.matrix.org/v1.4/client-server-api/#presence

**Issue**
For Presence, the spec states that:

> Presence events are sent to interested parties where users share a room membership.

It's not entirely clear what the spec means by an "interested party". Is this a definition that's up to implementations? Or is every user you share a room with considered an interested party?

I ask as I'd like to experiment with only sending presence updates to subsets of users (i.e. only those I share a DM with) and I'm not sure if the spec requires presence updates to be sent to all users I share a room with, or is simply saying that I can't share presence updates *outside* of those users I share a room with.

The latter makes more practical sense to me (especially in a federated world), but it's not clear.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the Presence section linked in the issue and review the wording around “interested parties” and shared room membership. Done means the specification clearly defines whether recipients are implementation-selected and whether presence updates may be limited to a subset of shared-room users.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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