Re: Proposed XMPP Extension: Explicit Mentions

On Wed, 11 Mar 2026 02:36:53 +0100
Maxime Buquet <[email protected]> wrote:

> Thanks for taking over and making this a thing :)

No problem, and thanks for letting me use your work as a base :D

> A few notes/nits,
> 
> - The jid attribute
> 
> Same as singpolyma, I would settle on requiring occupant-id I think
> for all types of rooms, makes the whole thing simpler, and rooms
> without it are scarce nowadays (at least in places that matter).
> 
> I also did include a note about this in implementation notes.
> > Anonymous unique occupant identifiers for MUCs (XEP-0421) [3] is
> > being used to mention in Multi-User Chat (XEP-0045) [1] instead of
> > a participant JID or a real JID. This allows us to have a common
> > solution across MUC, and also to use a stable identifier, that is
> > guaranteed to be unique per occupant (bare JID) and prevent
> > usurpation.  
> 
> - The noping modifier
> 
> To me the purpose of the spec is to make mentions explicit. Thus
> changing the status-quo and making the non-usage of this spec "not" a
> mention, which would make the modifier redundant and confusing
> (mentioning not to mention).
> 
> This somewhat conflicts with implementation notes:
> > Implementations SHOULD also allow sending participants to talk
> > about someone without having to mention them.  
> 
> Might be useful as a temporary measure but I certainly wouldn't want
> that to stick around.

The feedback I've gotten thus far has made me realise that what I was
really going for here was a way to explicitly reference various things
(users, groups, rooms, etc), with the whole notification bit being an
addition. I guess if I were to do this from scratch, I'd want to
reframe the entire proposal around that, but I fear it might be a bit
late for that...

I went into more detail with my reply to singpolyma, but one of the
reasons I left in the ability to mention by JID is to allow you to
reference, not mention, other users, even in 1:1 chats and even if the
referenced user isn't present. In such a case, the goal is less the
notification, and more the ability to display a UI element (the pill),
which could be interacted with to provide buttons such as "Add contact"
and "Message user". For rooms, it could be "Go to room" or "Join room".

The <noping /> element exists for similar reasons. If I were to reframe
the XEP from scratch, I suppose it would've made more sense to make
this the default, and then have a <ping /> or <notify /> element for
actually notifying the referenced user(s).

This seems to be a source of confusion; I've already updated my working
draft to try to clarify the goals I was going for more clearly, but
I can also just strip everything not directly meant to notify one
or more users out if no one else cares. Such things could go in a later
proposal, though I suspect the idea of referencing a user is largely
redundant with mentioning them...

Much to think about, but in any case, thank you for the feedback :D
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