Display a default user pill when the matrixId is unknown

[giomfo]

Steps to reproduce

Send in a room the following permalink : "https://matrix.to/#/@sddfshfjkashfk:matrix.org" with an unknown matrixId

Outcome

What did you expect?

a pill with the user's name and profile picture if any. Like this:
If the matrix id is unknown, the pill should show the default user icon and "User" (the mxId is visible in overlay) :

What happened instead?

A pill with the mxId is displayed:

Operating system

No response

Browser information

No response

URL for webapp

No response

Application version

No response

Homeserver

No response

Will you send logs?

No

[MadLittleMods]

If the matrix id is unknown, the pill should show the default user icon and "User" (the mxId is visible in overlay) :

@giomfo Why is this expected for you? I would much rather prefer to see the MXID pill for someone we can't pull the display name/avatar information for.

It will get hard to disambiguate when there are multiple unknown "User" showing up everywhere.

[t3chguy]

It'd also be impossible to disambiguate from someone in the room called User with that specific avatar

[daniellekirkwood]

We had push back on showing the avatar and display name/ mxid for users that you're not familiar with because what if they're abusive... If someone references a user that's "@explitive:rude.com" the solution you're suggesting would reveal that to all users in the room. Our solution hides it and shows "User" whilst giving folks the ability to click/hover and see the MXID if they choose to.

The reason we're not just rendering the MXID username and avatar is to cover the abuse cases - I want to make sure we're not leaving that same method open with your suggestion.

[MadLittleMods]

We had push back on showing the avatar and display name/ mxid for users that you're not familiar with

How is a user determined to be familiar? Is this just whether they're in the room or not? Ban list for a room?

The community can always ban/block/kick the user if they're using a name that isn't suitable for the community. It might make sense to do some of this obfuscation if someone wants to block a particular user. Even in a moderation setting, I would want to see the offensive language to know who was banned/blocked. An avatar may be more problematic.

And if we're thinking about the good no-abuse case, it would suck not to show the avatar/display name for a good person you're genuinely referencing. Imagine introducing your coworker as @eric:element.io instead of a nice pill. It just looks like something is not working in Element if we don't display a nice pill.

[weeman1337]

@giomfo can you confirm that we now decided to still display the MXID instead of »User« ?

[daniellekirkwood]

@weeman1337 Yes, we're going to stick with the MXID

I think that means we can close this issue

[MadLittleMods]

The discussion being referenced above happened out of band in an internal room and a meeting which I don't have context for.

The conclusion from the discussion was:

Let's go for the mxId with default user icon

Which seems to be how we already handle things today.

Closing the issue ⏩