Attributes in user profiles

[homebeach]

Users could be able to define attributes in their profiles. The attributes could be key-value pairs such as gender: male, nationality: german, age: 30. Values could be also lists: languages: English, German, Interests: cycling, fishing. There could be also special attributes like geotag that could be updated based on navigator coordinates (GPS, GLONASS). Then there could be searchable: (true|false).

The people who have set searchable to true could be searchable from Matrix. You could then make search like "Find all people within 30km distance who like cycling and speak English". You could then make room "Cycling club for English speaking people" and invite people you find to this room.

[dbkr]

dup of https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/issues/489?

[homebeach]

One good attribute would also network: (IRC | XMPP | Telegram etc). Based on this standardized value clients could show network logo on user.

[t3chguy]

That's something groups and flair are currently being used for.

[homebeach]

By the way Tencent QQ has Look Around feature for seeking nearby users. Just if you want to see one implementation of "Search users near me".

[t3chguy]

@homebeach keep in mind you won't be able to search all users near you, only those on the same homeserver as yourself, or maybe also those which are in common rooms to you

[homebeach]

Why not to let users to choose how they can be found? There could be three options: 1. Visible only for room members, 2. Visible only for users on same server, 3. Visible to whole Matrix network.

[t3chguy]

@homebeach, because there is no "The whole Matrix network".
Servers communicate on a minimal intersection basis, so two servers will only ever communicate if they have users in a common room.

[homebeach]

Why not to have a feature that servers have lists of such users who have given permission? Then you can make searches over the Matrix and the servers answer with this list.

[t3chguy]

Because even if server XYZ has such a list, how do I know to reach out to server XYZ, there's no central list of servers, servers interact with other servers when they see them inside rooms. So if you're not in common rooms you don't know other servers even exist.

[homebeach]

Add a feature that servers can forward search requests to servers that they know.

[t3chguy]

It becomes a very expensive operation, O(n^2)
(Assuming you limit at one pass, if you don't have such a limit its O(n^n) which is insane.)

[homebeach]

This feature could be turned on or off. As matrix grows there could be searchable servers and non-searchable servers. Besides having user lists the searchable servers could also have list what people share and they could be used for file sharing. Whether you are on searchable server or not you are still able to join the same Matrix rooms.

[turt2live]

I'm closing this as a duplicate of https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/issues/489 - if anyone feels strongly otherwise, please comment here. There are a couple different concerns in the comment thread that would be best split off into their own requests, however.

[Evidlo]

One good attribute would also network: (IRC | XMPP | Telegram etc). Based on this standardized value clients could show network logo on user.

Should this information even be in the extensible attributes (once they're added)? This might be something that should go into the spec itself.

[Half-Shot]

@Evidlo The idea behind ex-profiles is to allow us to spec more keys rather than hardcoding/specialcasing more than display name/avatar. So the spec would contain a extensible profile key for network :).

In other words, we'd likely be putting common profile items into the spec.