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For what it’s worth, the thing I find most exciting about Spaces is that they provide a decentralised hierarchical namespace with decentralised access controls

For what it’s worth, the thing I find most exciting about Spaces is that they provide a decentralised hierarchical namespace with decentralised access controls for every room (ie pubsub topic) in Matrix. So it’s like we’ve sprouted an openly federated global hierarchical filing system for freeform realtime data streams of all flavours - where people can go crazy defining their own trees, applying their own curation ideals; perhaps we’ll even see a single global tree emerge (although the implementation may need some more optimisation first). It’s like a multiplayer hybrid of DMOZ and USENET and the read/write Web all rolled together. Once we start storing more interesting data streams than instant messages in it (eg forums, email, bulletin boards, DOMs, scene graphs, ticker data, IOT sensor data...) it really gets interesting :) Plus you can use it to organise your own rooms and have Discord style communities or Slack style workspaces, but that’s the boring obvious bit ;) Edit: for a user-facing rather than developer-facing overview, https://element.io/blog/spaces-the-next-frontier/ https://element.io/blog/spaces-the-next-frontier/ has more details.

nerdponx 5y ago
> Discord style communities Boring and obvious, but this is probably what most people would want. Now that we've seen how good and usable the Discord model is, it's pretty much the baseline now for public chat rooms.
- Arathorn 5y ago
  yup, and to be clear, that’s why we built Spaces. doesn’t stop the “wow we accidentally created the realtime read/write web” thing being cool tho ;P
- spicybright 5y ago
  It sucks there's no open source project that mimics discord well. They all shoot themselves in the foot by over complicating the model. It confuses users, and makes creating stable clients hard. I don't want a tool-box of primitives and a recipe book. I want a decentralized discord clone not owned by a giant company. Let's start there and add the crazy stuff later.
  - Arathorn 5y ago
    To build an open source decentralised Discord alternative you need a tool-box of primitives - that’s what Matrix is. Then clients like Element (https://element.io https://element.io) sit on top to fill in the rest. We don’t think the model for Spaces is overcomplicated. In fact it’s simpler than Discord (no role-based permissions; just power levels).
    - babelfish 5y ago
      Is there any documentation detailing power levels, or that decision was made to only offer power levels but not role-based permissions? FWIW, the reason most major platforms offer role-based permissions is because enterprises demand it, and it’s become the de facto primitive for authorization. User type based permissions also make sense, but are often used in conjunction with (not in lieu of) roles.
      - dieortin 5y ago
        https://matrix.org/docs/guides/moderation#power-levels https://matrix.org/docs/guides/moderation#power-levels
    - xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
      Power levels feels like the most IRC answer possible, and breaks down as soon you want mutually exclusive abilities. Why is this the preferred model?
      - Arathorn 5y ago
        Because the decentralised ACL implementation (state resolution) relies on power levels as a simple comparator for determining merge conflict resolution. State resolution is the academically novel bit of Matrix and hard to get right, and while we can swap it out for role based ACLs in future, this is orthogonal to Spaces. Meanwhile it honestly hasn’t come up as a requirement, even from enterprisey folks, given we push power levels as hard as possible. https://matrix.org/docs/guides/implementing-stateres https://matrix.org/docs/guides/implementing-stateres and https://matrix.org/blog/2020/06/16/matrix-decomposition-an-independent-academic-analysis-of-matrix-state-resolution https://matrix.org/blog/2020/06/16/matrix-decomposition-an-i... give more info on how state res works and why you wouldn’t rush to jump to role based ACLs. It’s nothing whatsoever to do with IRC or chanserv style behaviour, beyond coincidence.
ldarby 5y ago
I wish Matrix would instead focus on fixing all the existing encryption usability issues instead of these new features: https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues?q=label%3AA-E2EE-Key-Backup+sort%3Aupdated-desc+is%3Aopen https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues?q=label%3AA-... I would love to migrate my family to Element (and also friends, and eventually also recommend it to employers if they're ever choosing something other than Teams) but can't until it's reliable as webmail. I also wrote this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25271512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25271512 "Once Element is mature enough (and I'm sorry, but looking at the incoming issues on https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues?q=sort%3Aupd https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues?q=sort%3Aupd..., it doesn't look like it yet), then hopefully more companies will start considering it." I get that E2E means it cannot be as simple as email, and I can handle the extra training that's needed, but not for figuring out all these known issues and attempting to prevent people hitting them, or having to handle the situation if they do.
- anticensor 5y ago
  E2EE is opt-in per-room.
  - ldarby 5y ago
    The entire point of Matrix is that it has E2E. If E2E isn't a requirement then my prefered communication tool is email.
- viccuad 5y ago
  Enabling by default: - cross-signing (so users verify their own devices themselves, and you verify users only once by verifying their public key, regardless of how many times they add or update devices) - and key backup (so moving between devices doesn't need manual polling for other devices' keys the first time for decrypting messages) would be a great step forward. Those are there, but they are disabled by default yet, which is a disservice.
  - Arathorn 5y ago

nerdponx 5y ago

> Discord style communities Boring and obvious, but this is probably what most people would want. Now that we've seen how good and usable the Discord model is, it's pretty much the baseline now for public chat rooms.

Arathorn 5y ago
yup, and to be clear, that’s why we built Spaces. doesn’t stop the “wow we accidentally created the realtime read/write web” thing being cool tho ;P
spicybright 5y ago
It sucks there's no open source project that mimics discord well. They all shoot themselves in the foot by over complicating the model. It confuses users, and makes creating stable clients hard. I don't want a tool-box of primitives and a recipe book. I want a decentralized discord clone not owned by a giant company. Let's start there and add the crazy stuff later.
- Arathorn 5y ago
  To build an open source decentralised Discord alternative you need a tool-box of primitives - that’s what Matrix is. Then clients like Element (https://element.io https://element.io) sit on top to fill in the rest. We don’t think the model for Spaces is overcomplicated. In fact it’s simpler than Discord (no role-based permissions; just power levels).
  - babelfish 5y ago
    Is there any documentation detailing power levels, or that decision was made to only offer power levels but not role-based permissions? FWIW, the reason most major platforms offer role-based permissions is because enterprises demand it, and it’s become the de facto primitive for authorization. User type based permissions also make sense, but are often used in conjunction with (not in lieu of) roles.
    - dieortin 5y ago
      https://matrix.org/docs/guides/moderation#power-levels https://matrix.org/docs/guides/moderation#power-levels
  - xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
    Power levels feels like the most IRC answer possible, and breaks down as soon you want mutually exclusive abilities. Why is this the preferred model?
    - Arathorn 5y ago
      Because the decentralised ACL implementation (state resolution) relies on power levels as a simple comparator for determining merge conflict resolution. State resolution is the academically novel bit of Matrix and hard to get right, and while we can swap it out for role based ACLs in future, this is orthogonal to Spaces. Meanwhile it honestly hasn’t come up as a requirement, even from enterprisey folks, given we push power levels as hard as possible. https://matrix.org/docs/guides/implementing-stateres https://matrix.org/docs/guides/implementing-stateres and https://matrix.org/blog/2020/06/16/matrix-decomposition-an-independent-academic-analysis-of-matrix-state-resolution https://matrix.org/blog/2020/06/16/matrix-decomposition-an-i... give more info on how state res works and why you wouldn’t rush to jump to role based ACLs. It’s nothing whatsoever to do with IRC or chanserv style behaviour, beyond coincidence.

ldarby 5y ago

I wish Matrix would instead focus on fixing all the existing encryption usability issues instead of these new features: https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues?q=label%3AA-E2EE-Key-Backup+sort%3Aupdated-desc+is%3Aopen https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues?q=label%3AA-... I would love to migrate my family to Element (and also friends, and eventually also recommend it to employers if they're ever choosing something other than Teams) but can't until it's reliable as webmail. I also wrote this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25271512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25271512 "Once Element is mature enough (and I'm sorry, but looking at the incoming issues on https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues?q=sort%3Aupd https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues?q=sort%3Aupd..., it doesn't look like it yet), then hopefully more companies will start considering it." I get that E2E means it cannot be as simple as email, and I can handle the extra training that's needed, but not for figuring out all these known issues and attempting to prevent people hitting them, or having to handle the situation if they do.

anticensor 5y ago
E2EE is opt-in per-room.
- ldarby 5y ago
  The entire point of Matrix is that it has E2E. If E2E isn't a requirement then my prefered communication tool is email.
viccuad 5y ago
Enabling by default: - cross-signing (so users verify their own devices themselves, and you verify users only once by verifying their public key, regardless of how many times they add or update devices) - and key backup (so moving between devices doesn't need manual polling for other devices' keys the first time for decrypting messages) would be a great step forward. Those are there, but they are disabled by default yet, which is a disservice.
- Arathorn 5y ago