Out of interest, why not take inspiration from extensible events and include some sort of "ping these people" list? It would probably need some sanity checking like the user consenting to random keywords and ensuring that someone doesn't list the entire room in there.

The approach could be (not fully thought out, just a very rough idea):

"body": "Hello AReallyLo!",
"m.mentions": {
  "AReallyLo": "@areallylongname:matrix.org"
}

Also gives the opportunity for fancier pills, etc in clients.

Yeah, that's not a bad option. We could include a "m.mentions" in regular messages and then mod synapse/riot-(web|android|ios) to support it.

FYI, in IRC we decided to use pills in the end to ping people. I don't currently have a use for this proposal but won't close it as I don't know if other people are trying to scratch the same itch.

The author has expressed interest in having this be closed (please correct me if I'm wrong).

@mscbot fcp close

Team member @turt2live has proposed to close this. The next step is review by the rest of the tagged teams:

• @KitsuneRal
• @anoadragon453
• @ara4n
• @dbkr
• @erikjohnston
• @richvdh
• @turt2live
• @uhoreg

No concerns currently listed.

Once a majority of reviewers approve (and none object), this will enter its final comment period. If you spot a major issue that hasn't been raised at any point in this process, please speak up!

See this document for info about what commands tagged team members can give me.

@turt2live has informed me that I can close this without a formal review if I wish. Without further ado, closing :)

For context: there's no point in us forcing people through a gauntlet if they want to abandon/close/reject their own work.