If you see messages directly from `@matrixbot` in the chat area, then that means that the room is still plumbed using the old Gitter bridge. We're working on a plan to migrate rooms using the old bridge over to the new one, https://gitlab.com/gitterHQ/webapp/-/issues/2674
There isn't really a plan for private/invite-only rooms but we could possibly support `virtualUsers` in the `sd.extraMembers`(security descriptor) field to allow inviting Matrix people to a private Gitter room.
If you use the "Announcements" settings, you will see this behavior but is also described in the notification modal as an oddity. This is tracked by https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/-/issues/1205 which is a huge pain in our notifications that I want to address.
If you use the "Mute" notification setting, you will only get emails for messages the mention you which sounds like you're after.
But the real problem is that unread item count is coupled to the emails being sent out, https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/webapp/issues/1205. So if you have notifications set to "All" or "Announcements" which track unreads, you will get emails for any unread messages in the room which isn't desirable.
You can track https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitter/irc-bridge/issues/52 for seeing more users in the member list/roster. There is a proposal there to trickle in new users to the list every time a new message comes through the bridge with relevant code linked (merge request welcome).
One of the goals this quarter is to open source the Android/iOS apps, https://about.gitlab.com/okrs/2018-q3/ but there isn't a plan to keep improving them with new features. We are focusing on fixing the rough edges of the webapp and are happy to review your Merge Requests for any project.
`@matrixbot` does show in the browser notification but we do plan to fix that up: https://gitlab.com/gitterHQ/webapp/-/issues/2695
If you see messages directly from `@matrixbot` in the chat area, then that means that the room is still plumbed using the old Gitter bridge. We're working on a plan to migrate rooms using the old bridge over to the new one, https://gitlab.com/gitterHQ/webapp/-/issues/2674