Room Directory WG

Activities

This working group's primary purpose is receiving and processing requests about the room directory of the matrix.org homeserver.

Room Directory Policy

The formal policy developed by the Trust & Safety Committee of the Governing Board is below. Interpretation and changes are managed by the Trust & Safety Committee and approved by the Trust & Safety team, while implementation is managed by the Room Directory Working Group.

1. The matrix.org public room directory is highly visible and serves as the main entrypoint into the Matrix ecosystem for many new users. To ensure trust and safety on matrix.org and maintain a good onboarding experience, The Matrix.org Foundation curates the room directory.
2. Rooms or spaces may be included in the room directory if they meet the following criteria.
   1. Rooms must be actively moderated. There must be active users with a moderator role, and spam and abuse should be removed within a reasonable time period.
   2. Room moderators must be reasonably responsive to Foundation staff in the case of questions or concerns.
   3. Rooms must comply with best practices for moderation of large public rooms, as determined by the Trust and Safety Committee of the Governing Board.
   4. Rooms named after a recognisable organisation or project must be sponsored by that project or be clearly marked as unofficial, while still having a positive relationship with the project.
   5. In the case of a space, all rooms under the space must comply with this policy, and the administrators of the space must provide assurance that this will continue to be the case.
3. Approval of rooms for inclusion in the room directory is at the discretion of the Room Directory Working Group. Generally, the Working Group expects to approve rooms that are related to Matrix, other open source projects or communities, or other well-defined topics that are of interest to the Matrix community. Because of the difficulty of reviewing and moderating “general” rooms with no specific focus, they will not generally be approved.
   1. The Room Directory Working Group will consult Foundation Trust & Safety staff prior to approving additions. In some cases, Trust & Safety staff may object to the addition of a room.
4. Administrators of rooms aligned with this policy may request that they be added to the room directory by sending an email to TBD with a general description of the room’s topic and its moderation practices. The Working Group may follow up with additional questions.
5. Staff at The Matrix.org Foundation may remove rooms from the room directory if they are found to be in violation of the code of conduct or this policy, or if removal is required to mitigate an ongoing incident.
6. The Room Directory Working Group will review the directory contents at least annually to determine if rooms should remain listed.

Interpretation notes

• Clause 2's use of "may" permits approval and denial.
• Clause 3 is permissive to "vaguely related to Matrix", but is intended to be kept relatively narrow to "Matrix-related" for now. This may change in the future.
• Clause 4 supports using forms instead of an email address.

Implementation details

• The working group is expected to maintain an appeals process/form.
• The working group is responsible for internal approval/denial processes, including how to get rooms actually (de)listed in the room directory.