XSF Discussion - 2024-03-01

> Hello. Last week, we discussed here about a XEP that i'm going to submit. I have a question: is there any policy concerning author nicknames? I did not find any information about that. John Livingston is actually a nickname, and i don't know if i can submit with this nickname as author, or if i have to use my real name? (and even if nicknames are allowed, i still hesitate... nobody knows my under my real name...) John Livingston: skipping all the discussion that followed, if you say your name is John Livingston then who are we to disagree? I guarantee no one will ask to see your id so it's an entirely moot point, do as you wish ↺

I am the real Satoshi !

(No i'm not. Not that smart.)

John Livingston is such an awesome name. It's both a name and a status of yourself.

> Hello. Last week, we discussed here about a XEP that i'm going to submit. I have a question: is there any policy concerning author nicknames? I did not find any information about that. John Livingston is actually a nickname, and i don't know if i can submit with this nickname as author, or if i have to use my real name? (and even if nicknames are allowed, i still hesitate... nobody knows my under my real name...) You can use your nickname. No problems about it 😀

This was all already discussed in length. Please first read it all before everyone is telling the same thing over again and again. I had the feeling that was already settled.

This what I wrote on Feb the 26th.

> According Italian copyright act states that "The pseudonym, stage name, acronym or conventional sign, which are known to be equivalent to the real name, shall count as a name". So, you can use a nickname. Have to check how is in other jurisdictions. Tomorrow if I have the time I will do a search.

Only an update. 😄

I remember that anything was settled, IIRC the outcome was to bounce to board

which reminds me that I wanted to provide some data points: The Linux kernel initally required you to sign-off using your real name (no pseudonyms) [1] but later decided that using a "known identity" but not anonymous contributions [2], Gentoo Linux has basically the same requirement as the current kernel [3]

1: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.17/process/submitting-patches.html#developer-s-certificate-of-origin-1-1

2: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/submitting-patches.html#developer-s-certificate-of-origin-1-1

3: https://www.gentoo.org/glep/glep-0076.html#certificate-of-origin

the gist is, that you want to have at least a chance to contact and identify the person, but a legal (or real) name is not required to do so

seems sensible

of course, there is wiggle room about when someone uses a "known identity" or not, but IMHO it's the most sensible approach (at leat the most sensible approach I know) and I would hope that we follow it

I don't care much one way or the other, just that it's a policy question, so one for Board to decide rather than Editor making things up.

fwiw, "I *don't* remember that anyting was settled" (above) ✏

Hi. I sent my ProtoXEP, and as requested, i specified that i am using a nickname. Will wait for the board answer.

Yep, thanks John, I received it.

:)

I've sent it on to Board (just now).

thanks Kev!

It's kind of a silly question, have any XEP author's identity ever been verified? If the board "decides" legal names are required then they also have to decide what valid forms of ID are accepted and the right way to verify them

Only thing that makes sense here is "do whatever" or "don't ask don't tell" lol

How many XMPP user in the world? Is it active?

> Only thing that makes sense here is "do whatever" or "don't ask don't tell" lol i shouldn't have asked ;)

(just kidding)

> How many XMPP user in the world? Is it active? bung: billions ↺

Voov :D

John Livingston: you can say this is your name now, you changed it lol

moparisthebest, as i said in my email, the only way to find me online is to use John Livingston.

bung: every Nintendo switch is an xmpp client, many many proprietary systems use it as backend. If you mean how many on open federsting severs, it is less then billions. And also nobody knows since it's not tracked and there are no stats.

A very tiny fraction of the severs (not users) is visible here https://xmppnetwork.goodbytes.im

moparisthebest, requiring that a "real name" is to be used for XEP authorship and validating the authors is who he claims to be are two different pairs of shoes. In certain (many?) cases, it can be perfectly sensible to do the former without the later (not saying that this is the case here)

flow: nah the former and latter are identical, if you "require real name" then you have to validate, if you don't do both, that's the same as not requiring real names

moparisthebest, I can see how it appears identical but it is often not. for example, and sorry for the bad ad-hoc example: you can forbid people with heart diseases to ride your roller coster but you may not have to enforce it

but assuming that both are identical is probably just an argument that we could relax our policy as in the past all the editor did was to send an email to new authors asking for IPR

Right, and who knows how many fake names are in XEPs up to now

I don't think there are many, or I would even hope that there are none (besides the humorous xep), but yes, the point is that we already do not know nor have anything in place to validate authors

whatever validation is supposed to mean, I sure would feel unqualified to authenticate a personal identification card from Kuala Lumpur, heck, I wouldn't even feel qualified to to authenticate a german id card ✏

FWIW most organizations that do that contract another organization to handle it

Since it is indeed a specialized business

Kev: i just discovered an issue with my Slow Mode ProtoXEP. Using roomconfig, only owners can change the feature value. But it could make sense that any moderator/admin can also change it. So, after discussing on the Prosody room, i think i have to change some things (instead of roomconfig and roominfo, i should add a new discoverable feature, and specify a new IQ message to set the value). I will probably not have the time to work on it before at least 10 days. What should i do about the submited ProtoXEP? Let the process run its course, and propose a new version later? Send a mail to ask to wait before discussions the XEP in council?

Makes more sense to extend config to be allowed or partially allowed by other roles optionally i think

Or make people who should have such control be owners

> Or make people who should have such control be owners i just realized that this has unwanted side effect in my software.

> Makes more sense to extend config to be allowed or partially allowed by other roles optionally i think is there a standard process for that?

singpolyma, my perspective is that this is really a moderator action, rather than something that requires an owner

Anyway, i will be more or less AFK for a week, and i have to sit down and find a good solution. The question for now is: how can i avoid giving the council extra work? Should i ask them to wait to process the ProtoXEP? Or could this just be fixed afterwards (this is my first XEP, i'm not sure to have fully understand the ProtoXEP lifecycle) ✏

Once your xep is accepted council is no longer involved. You can make updates yourself

XEPs don't need to be perfect to get a number. It's normal that they continue to be worked on

Ok Daniel. Thanks. So i will just fix the XEP later on.

John Livingston, I'd recommend the same.

> singpolyma, my perspective is that this is really a moderator action, rather than something that requires an owner To set the rate limit on the room? ↺

If it really is going to be a new form I very much request a well known ad hoc command like onboarding invite xep. That way clients that want custom UI can still easily make it but client with generic support don't need to hard code yet another place to get a form from

the server knows the requesters role, why cant he not simply return whatever config options are available to that role

Exactly

That would be my preference

something about "don't hide UI elements but explain why they're not available", but servers can do that, too.

im fine with the form telling me that only moderators can set this, so i can hide it, but i feel this would need even more standardisation, custom extensions of dataforms etc

but actually, this feature can be solved without a single client code change

if we have this chance, i say lets use it

thanks for your feedbacks! There are still some concept that i am not very familiar with. I'm sure there is an easy solution that will work without any client code change! ✏

the question is, if a server simple strips options depending on the role, why do we even need a XEP for that?

> the question is, if a server simple strips options depending on the role, why do we even need a XEP for that? 👍️ ↺

this is simply a server side plugin, it changes nothing on the wire

(a) so that server implementations know about this (b) so that client implementors know about this.

> the question is, if a server simple strips options depending on the role, why do we even need a XEP for that? Can such filtering be done on roomconfig, or have i to move it to another form?

avoiding tribal knowledge is important.

jonas’, as i said, this can be solved without client implementors need to know about it

thats why we have extensible dataforms

they need to know that they can even request roomconfig if the user has no owner permissions

which is not what '45 says right now

True. Its worth to mention that

Yeah, but thats about it ..

you can try getting this into '45, but a separate document is going to be easier.

Would it be right to keep this settings in room config, but add a specification for a specially crafted IQ message that could allow moderators to also change the config? (this is were my knowledge of xmpp stops for now)

The iq wouldn't need special crafting really ✏

> something about "don't hide UI elements but explain why they're not available", but servers can do that, too. Funny, I agree with this in the context of the call button. But I'm not sure it's a great UI if all clients start showing "Configure room" options to normal participants.

> The iq wouldn't need special crafting really you mean, if the server accepts to modify this field for non-owner participants?

(if that button does nothing but show an error in 99% of cases)

MattJ: i agree

But this is up to the client dev

If we leave things up to client devs to figure out, bad things happen to UX :)

Some guidance is needed, even I wouldn't know what to do here

I think a dedicated form for slow mode would make sense... As it could also contain other settings in the future (for example, which roles are not rate limited)

You don't know unless you query the server whether any configuration is possible

why ? when there is a xep that describes that moderators options exist

(or a custom rate limit info message) ✏

Yes. Unless we also add which roles can access part of config to disco. Which we could but I'm fine to fetch the form and not rhiw the command in error

you can simply add a feature

btw MattJ Gajim already displays to every user

https://share.hoerist.com/philipp/KT0ON61zlaxSL2jv/bd07f3df-d796-4214-98a2-094ffad600e9.png

but there is no "Button"

> btw MattJ Gajim already displays to every user I think ConverseJS has a hardcoded 'is owner' condition.

Other people would argue, this makes it discoverable and tells the user what he needs to do, rather then hiding it

There is a balance between that, and overwhelming the user with a bunch of UI that doesn't work

If i add a new form, and that this form is discoverable, how clients will handle that usually? Will they display all discoverable forms, or only forms that they are aware of?

Yes I also have a hard coded is owner condition, but it should be easy for me to switch it to check first

John Livingston: check out xep 0050

John Livingston, this case does not exist, and thats what we try to avoid here, we dont want to query multiple forms

singpolyma, thanks, XEP-0050 seems interesting.

Im honestly still dubious about giving non owners the rate limit setting in practice, but I'm very on board with what lovetox says here generally about any setting one can imagine

If admins have the ability to remove people and messages from the room, I'm not sure why you wouldn't allow them to enable slow mode

Thanks all for you feedbacks. This really helps. I have to leave, and will be more or less AFK in the coming days.

I will think about that, and try to find a clean solution. And come here again for more feedbacks (in 1 or 2 weeks).

XEP that describes new feature <feature var='http://jabber.org/protocol/muc#roomconfig_admin'> <feature var='http://jabber.org/protocol/muc#roomconfig_moderator'> if you encounter this feature this means there exist config options for users with this role End of XEP

I would also be fine with that version

Seems fine.

Lol, vala language did boost your toots 👍