XEP-0162: Best Practices for Roster and Subscription Management

WARNING: This document has been automatically Deferred after 12 months of inactivity in its previous Experimental state. Implementation of the protocol described herein is not recommended for production systems. However, exploratory implementations are encouraged to resume the standards process.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Removal of Contacts

It is necessary to distinguish two things:

• Removal from the user's roster (does the user's roster include an entry for this JID?) ;
• Removal of presence subscription (cancellation of subscription).

Three problems have to be taken into consideration here:

• Removing an item from your roster (i.e., performing a roster set with subscription='remove') cancels all subscriptions (both from the item and to the item).
• The fact that a user is no longer interested in the contact's presence doesn't mean that the contact is no longer interested in the user's presence.
• This is complex, and should be presented in a simple way to the user.

Therefore, the following behavior is RECOMMENDED for Jabber clients:

1. When the user asks for the removal of an item with subscription='both', the Jabber client SHOULD ask the user whether he wants to revoke the contact's authorization to see the user's presence too. This action SHOULD be called "Remove" since this is the convention used by other IM systems.

2. The Jabber client SHOULD NOT remove the contact from the roster. There are two exceptions:

   1. The Jabber client MAY remove the contact from the roster if the user explicitely asked (so the user has to be informed he might remove both presence subscriptions).

   2. The jabber client MAY transparently remove the contact from the roster if the user asked to, and if subscription='none' or subscription='to'.

In addition to the "Remove" action described above, the client MAY provide a way to revoke the contact's subscription to the user's presence. This action, if provided, SHOULD be called "Block" since this is the convention used by other IM networks.

3. Display of Contacts in the Roster

Defining a sensible roster policy is difficult, because many users have different, special needs. We have to ensure that:

• Most contacts that everybody wants to hide are hidden.
• No contact that someone wants to see is hidden.

The user's roster contains both contacts of interest for the user (contacts with subscription='both' or subscription='to') and contacts which are only interested in receiving the user's presence information. Also, the user might be interested in having some contacts even with subscription='none', because he often send messages to them but isn't interested in their presence.

Therefore, the following types of contacts SHOULD be displayed by clients:

• items with subscription='both' or subscription='to' ;
• items with subscription='none' or subscription='from' and ask='subscribe'. It is ((subscription='none' or subscription='from') and ask='subscribe') ;
• items with subscription='none' or subscription='from' which have a 'name' attribute or a 'group' child set. It is ((subscription='none' or subscription='from') and (name attribute or group child)).

The client MAY display contacts with subscription='from' which don't match one of the above cases in an additional 'Observers' group. If no 'Observers' group is used, the client SHOULD NOT display contacts which don't match one of the above rules.

Some users give nicknames to contacts they do not want to see, to be able to remember who they are when cleaning the roster. An additional 'Hidden' group MAY be used to handle such contacts. The client SHOULD NOT display contacts if one of their groups is the 'Hidden' group. (This mean that if contact 'C' is in groups 'G' and 'Hidden', 'C' should never be displayed, even in group 'G'.)

Appendices

Appendix A: Document Information

Series: XEP
Number: 0162
Publisher: XMPP Standards Foundation
Status: Deferred
Type: Informational
Version: 0.2
Last Updated: 2005-12-06
Approving Body: XMPP Council
Dependencies: None
Supersedes: None
Superseded By: None
Short Name: N/A
Source Control: HTML
This document in other formats: XML  PDF

Appendix B: Author Information

Appendix C: Legal Notices

Appendix D: Relation to XMPP

The Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is defined in the XMPP Core (RFC 6120) and XMPP IM (RFC 6121) specifications contributed by the XMPP Standards Foundation to the Internet Standards Process, which is managed by the Internet Engineering Task Force in accordance with RFC 2026. Any protocol defined in this document has been developed outside the Internet Standards Process and is to be understood as an extension to XMPP rather than as an evolution, development, or modification of XMPP itself.

Appendix E: Discussion Venue

The primary venue for discussion of XMPP Extension Protocols is the <standards@xmpp.org> discussion list.

Discussion on other xmpp.org discussion lists might also be appropriate; see <http://xmpp.org/about/discuss.shtml> for a complete list.

Errata can be sent to <editor@xmpp.org>.

Appendix F: Requirements Conformance

The following requirements keywords as used in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119: "MUST", "SHALL", "REQUIRED"; "MUST NOT", "SHALL NOT"; "SHOULD", "RECOMMENDED"; "SHOULD NOT", "NOT RECOMMENDED"; "MAY", "OPTIONAL".

Appendix G: Notes

Appendix H: Revision History

Note: Older versions of this specification might be available at http://xmpp.org/extensions/attic/

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