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MSC3060: Room labels

Currently, the only allowed way in Matrix to advertise information about a room is through its name, avatar and topic, which can feel a bit limiting (a room's name is usually expected to be very short and isn't always very descriptive, and a room's topic is usually where one would find related social media accounts or the room's rules/code of conduct).

On top of that, room names and topics are expected to be human-readable, which makes it difficult to use them for automation. One example of necessary automation that client developers might want to implement would be to filter out rooms allowing or dedicated to NSFW (Not Safe For Work, i.e. erotic or pornographic) content from the public room directory. Apple actually requires any application to be able to filter out such content in order to be accepted on their App Store.

Proposal

`m.room.labels` state event

A new state event is defined, with the type m.room.labels. Its content includes an array of freeform strings used to describe the room and its discussions:

{
  "type": "m.room.labels",
  "content": {
    "labels": [
      "archlinux",
      "linux",
      "support",
    ]
  },
  [...]
}

A label is expected to be fairly short, and to designate only one concept, therefore each label is limited in size to 35 characters and can contain only one word (a word being defined as a string containing any character except for a space ( )).

As a sidenote for context, the length of 35 characters is based on the allowed length for a topic on a GitHub repository (since the semantics of GitHub topics are very similar to the ones described here).

Room labels appear in responses to /publicRooms requests, alongside other metadata for the room (member count, name, address, etc.).

`m.nsfw` room label

A label is also defined, m.nsfw. Room admins must use this label to express that they're open to NSFW content being shared in the room. Clients can use this label to filter rooms allowing NSFW content out of the room list if needed or desired.

Clients must display all room labels as defined, except for m.nsfw, which can also be displayed as the string nsfw or any case variant.

Alternatives

An alternative to advertise topics could be through a modified MSC1840 (to allow multiple types for a given room), however the semantics for room types (how the room should be used by clients) are fairly different to those of labels (how the room should be used by humans).

Unstable prefix

Until the feature described in this proposal is merged into the Matrix specification, implementations must use the unstable prefix org.matrix.msc3060.labels instead of m.room.labels.

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