XMPP Service Operators - 2020-09-07

I notice that all the users using Conversations are misreporting their presence and saying they are online 100% of the time. Conversations is the only client I have noticed this behavior and other clients users use set their presence to AWAY (auto-idle) after ~15 minutes or so. Is this a bug in conversations or perhaps a bad default? How can I as a server operator and muc owner enforce proper auto-away presence behavior for the Conversations users besides asking every single on to check their settings which is a logistics nightmare besides auto-kicking 100% online users with a help message? Is this a bug on Conversations that can be fixed in an update?

believe it or not, most Conversations users are indeed online 100% of time ✏

it's a mobile client

tom: why should users be forced to report their activity? my client also says I'm always available because I ask it to.

Ftr though, it's easy enough to guess activity looking at Conversations presence spam

a, the users in my muc are not

I'll say something and it could be hours before i get a response

what's is "online" is up to debate

» <pep.> tom: why should users be forced to report their activity? my client also says I'm always available because I ask it to. I don't think all these users have opted specificity into spoofing their presence.

And I own the muc. It's a policy decision.

what policy?

"you shall reveal your true activity!"

?

Another part is that for a acronym where half the name stands for 'presence protocol'

The presence side seems broken

pep.: policy is don't idle in the chat all the time without reporting away status

Can I always be away then?

It's misleading to users who want to talk

Why does it matter ?

Just send message people will answer if they wanna

I shouldn't have to do that manually

In a presence protocol

Or is it ok if I away right after writing every single time :)

tom: you do what you want with your client

And if users are actively seeking conversation there's free-for-chat

Ok pep under you model for XMPP » <stvn> Just send message people will answer if they wanna this is literally what I have to do if I want to find out who's participating in chat

A

AGENT 47:

alex:

alien:

argon3771:

So and and so forth

For XM-Presence-Protocol this is absurd and distracting

maybe you're more of a synchronous person. some do asynchronous chat and are just fine with it :)

I'm asking if there's a way to signal people on Conversations client since that's where these users with all broken presence come from

They're not broken the way you hear it though

And if that's a policy decision in your chatroom, maybe just tell these users clearly

That's what I'm asking

Is there a better way to do this than paging all users

Something programmtic

I'm not sure you have power to control other people's clients

disco identity might help

As much as I find this policy weird

a: not but as the muc owner he choses who gets in

Besides this

if people aren't happy with the policy they can leave

I'm thinking an XMPP bot that mentions a user of they are with a Conversations UserAgent, presence is ONLINE and hasn't said anything in x hours asking them if they are really online

that will be very annoying

Helps them fix their setting or kicks them if no response

Yeah a that's why I'm trying to figure out a better solution

personally, I do not want to participate in a chatroom, where I'm obliged to reply something on other people messages

but if you got really popular MUCs...

tom: why not just accept the fact that some clients don't want to be leaking presence

because a protocol has feature X and Y doesn't mean I have to be using them all

^

there's actually a setting in Conversations which marks you away if you lock your screen

pep.: I'm totally fine if some users want to spoof presence. But the problem comes when a client spoofs BY DEFAULT. So you have a room reporting several hundred participants but only a small portion of them are actually active. That's misleading

why does it matter?

but I didn't enable it, since I'm available even when my screen is locked ✏

again, "online" and "away" on mobile are very blurry concepts

if your phone is on, I'd say you're online

Note that I'm actually curious about why it matters because I do like seeing presence as well and I can't put words on the why. I won't go as far though as forcing people to set their status properly. I guess I just like knowing if I'm answering to a support question to somebody who's left already and is never coming back.

online/offline became blurry concepts when multiple devices became the norm, and we're not dialling up from a single computer any more.

if you don't participate in a discussion, especially in a group discussion, you're not "away" automatically

maybe you don't like this chat that much

yeah you're just not participating in this chat :)

It's about response time expectation

who sets this expectation?

I'm away most of the time, but if someone mentions me in a chat, I pull my phone out and check.

The moderator

who gave this person such power? ✏

is it in rules of conference room? "you have to react to reach message?" ✏

is it in rules of conference room? "you have to react to each message?" ✏

I’ve had to teach some friends that being online doesn’t mean I’m necessarily on the computer atm, nor ready to chat with them.

I havn't needed to make it a rule yet

Because turns out, I happen to sometimes be doing other things than answering right away!

Then your away

I'm sorry Tom, I don't want to sound offensive and such, but I think that you want to try to enforce excessive things. maybe it's not worth it. people don't like this stuff.

That's why I am discussing this

Looking for a better solution that having a bot page people

To bring conversations's behavior into what other clients are doing

If this bug won't get fixed upstream I've no choice but to put a workaround server side

Weather that work around is checking useragents and paging users and kicking idlers or re-writing their presence for them I don't know yet

That's why we have useragent headers in protocols in the first place. SO to change behavior of the server for misbehaving clients or clients with defects

this doesn't feel like a bug, I'd say it's rather a feature. for me it's very convenient

I'd like to have a proper client fix

> tom: It's about response time expectation tbh I get this, but as many people said here, status doesn't mean much. Also I won't go enforcing whatever weird idea you're talking about on people :x ✏

A my way or the highway approach doesn't lead to as good of outcomes as having some kind of policy approach either

And without a XEP, toggle, or something I'm forced to put useragent specific metigations in

It also doesn't feel like a bug to me, but that's up to whoever sets design guidelines for Conversations anyway :)

Even Teamspeak had a Suggest PTT function

Tom, don't waste your time on trying to "fix this upstream", this will probably never happen, and if you insist on "fixing" it somehow — save your time and go ahead. ✏

but how to do this, you probably know best...

I don't know off hand what my presence settings are across multiple devices: phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, and all the various XMPP clients and accounts integrated/bridged in via Matrix. I'd say, I'm often around one device or another and if mentioned, and it's something I can and am willing to deal with near-immediately I'd think of myself as being "available" at that moment. As for MUCs, those are for lurking anyway.

It looks like on my phone / Pix-Art Messenger, I have it set to manage my availability manually but I almost never bother to change statuses. Lol. I think originally I wanted to manually adjust the priority…

I do have to wonder why that behavior was never defined properly in a XEP

If it's not here is how I would define it: set to AWAY with message auto-away if the user has not interacted with a human interface device in the last 15 minutes

This would also match the behavior of most popular XMPP clients already in the wild