Element-web: Custom tags should not filter rooms out of the main LeftPanel by default

Created on 14 Feb 2019 · 3Comments · Source: vector-im/element-web

I believe @turt2live's feedback on making matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk#2575 more usable for actual custom tag powerusers is:

Show all rooms by default in the RoomList
As you select custom tags, they "pull rooms" out of the overall roomlist in order to file them in a dedicated section for that tag. The rest of the list is still present.
- (or should we filter the whole list to just be that tag?)

feature p1 tags

Source

ara4n

👍1

All 3 comments

that's pretty much what I wanted, yes. I do like the idea of treating tags similar to communities though: the tags you select end up filtering Rooms instead of being pulled.

turt2live on 14 Feb 2019

👎1

I'm much in favor of "tags as filters" as well, ideally with full support of multiple tags.

In short : a room can have as many tags as the user wishes, and selecting multiple tags in the UI would be an "intersection" filter, so only the rooms having all of the selected tags would be displayed.

vberger on 14 Feb 2019

👎1 👍1

that's pretty much what I wanted, yes. I do like the idea of treating tags similar to communities though: the tags you select end up filtering Rooms instead of being pulled.

I'm much in favor of "tags as filters" as well, ideally with full support of multiple tags.

In short : a room can have as many tags as the user wishes, and selecting multiple tags in the UI would be an "intersection" filter, so only the rooms having all of the selected tags would be displayed.

Please do not invert the room user-tags paradigm this way. I don't want to have to repeatedly select and de-select tags to find the rooms I'm looking for. That requires lots of clicking, and it hides rooms that I want to see. It would not be as useful.

The way the "old" Riot used to work was great: each room user-tag created a group in the UI, and all of the tag groups were visible, so I could see all of my rooms at once, and I could collapse groups I wasn't interested in. No rooms were actually hidden, just in collapsed, still-visible groups. (Yes, I had to set those tags outside of Riot; that's beside the point.)

Boolean filtering is powerful, but I don't think it's what most users would need or want. I can't think of a common UI that does such a thing. Neither, e.g. filesystem hierarchies nor tagging systems like Gmail's work that way.

And, in fact, it would less powerful in one aspect: only one tag/filter-intersection could be seen at a time. I have plenty of room on my screen to display multiple tag groups, just like I have plenty of room to see lists of directories and lists of email tags.