Polari Room Blank State

Contents

Primary Goals

Communicate what the white space is used for (it's a chatroom).
- Provides a good first time experience.
Communicate how the chatrooom should be used (fx. what topic is discussed in this room).
- Useful for users who join a new channel for the first time.
Use the opportunity to communicate relevant conventions and features.
- Highly useful for newcomers to Polari (and IRC) and and an insignificant extra load otherwise.
Communicate that the blank state marks the beginning of history.
- A useful feedback measure when scrolling back and suddenly no more backlog can be fetched.
Insert the first message.
- To give first-time users an idea about how activity on the channel would look.
Handle special room cases:
- Empty chatrooms: Suggest inviting someone to the chatroom.
- Chatrooms without topic: Suggest to set a topic (should you have the privileagues to do so).
- Hidden chatrooms: Inform that the channel may not be intended to be shared with others.
- Chatrooms requiring a key: Inform that the channel may be private, handle public paste services with care.
- Chatrooms on custom networks: Inform that the network may be private so handle public paste services with care.
- Lack of voice privileagues: Inform that you don't have enough privileagues to chat and how to solve that issue.

We could take the "Insert first message" further, but it's hard to do so without implying that whatever is written was written by someone in the room you can actually speak to. --bastianilso