I'm not familiar with Matrix. Is this something needed to match the capabilities of Discord, or is this something you can't do with Discord that would be an improvement if implemented in a Codidact chat?

Matrix is a chatroom/comms protocol (somewhat like IRC or XMPP). I appreciate their primary focus on the spec, but I'm also using it right now to interface with the Codidact Discord. I can't do all the things in Discord from it, but I can also run most of my other communications out of there, like I used to do with Trillian or Pidgin, back when 1-1 chats were the primary mode.

It's also possible to "bridge" Matrix to another service if you're the admin on both (or sometimes even just one) side: CD could spin up a Matrix instance, bridge it to Discord, and keep synchronized conversations between both platforms.

I've just had a glance through the Matrix Wikipedia page and it sounds promising. It sounds like Codidact chat would need to support interfacing with Matrix in order to avoid being a step down from Discord.

It also sounds like Codidact could simply switch to using Matrix directly rather than building its own chat that interfaces with Matrix. Since it's an open standard this might be worth looking into.

I notice that it's developed by an organisation of the same type as the Codidact Foundation:

In October 2018, a Community Interest Company called "The Matrix.org Foundation C.I.C." was incorporated, to serve as a neutral legal entity for further development of the standard.

I haven't read enough to know whether there are free (of charge) implementations of the standard.

It also sounds like Codidact could simply switch to using Matrix directly rather than building its own chat that interfaces with Matrix. Since it's an open standard this might be worth looking into.

There are multiple server implementations out there, and probably some unlisted ones, too.

Matrix is federated, like Mastodon or email. If Codidact stood up a homeserver, we could either enforce local accounts or additionally let people join from their existing homeservers. I think when Matrix was mentioned before, someone said it's full of NSFW spam, but I haven't had that experience in the handful of places I've connected to.

I'm not trying to push really hard for this particular system, but if I were setting up a chat framework, this would be the first thing I'd look at.

Enforcing local accounts sounds like it would solve the spam problem (in the sense that we would get no more spam users than already sign up for Codidact accounts, and could continue to deal with them in the same way).

Good to know that federation is an option, but that it can be avoided if that turns out to be necessary.

You’ve had this discussion before:

• Seeking feedback on experience with open source chat software

You're right. This comment thread overlaps with that Meta question. The purpose of this question is different from that question though. That one was about finding out if there were viable alternatives to Discord. This one is about finding out if there is even a reason to seek an alternative.