Richard Dobson typeth: | The biggest issue with simply directing presence stanzas to the remote | domain and then letting that fan it out by itself (rather than using | something like the repeaters here) is that it means privacy lists (or | anything which works in a similar way to them, i.e. being able to | selectively stop presence going to roster items without changing your | subscription) stop working at entirely, and I can't really see a way | around that without using a concept such as repeaters where you are | specifically telling the remote server who you want it fanned out to.
It's a very XMPP-as-it-is point of view, but from an outsider's point of view I'd like to mention that the XMPP notion of polite presence silence might feel morally hypocritical: Why can't I have the honesty towards my non-friend to let him know that I no longer intend to send him presence? Why do I asymmetrically keep on accepting his presence, instead? A technological step that makes it harder to implement such asymmetry, seems to be a leap towards fairness. | Of course an evil server could still forward it to people you have not | told it to but that will always be so as as you say its out of your | hands, but at least with repeaters non-evil servers actually have an | idea of where you want the presence stanzas to go. I wouldn't call a server "evil" that undermines hypocrisy by letting its users know when they are being presence-abused. Repeaters are a technological improvement, although the XEP should mention the people who made such type of suggestions in the first place - and dropping the morally doubtful concept of privacy lists for a more fair and efficient strategy, would be even better. But XMPP is no arena for drastic measures. Let's wait a few more years... until repeaters are too expensive for scalability. Meow.
