The Grizzly Gazette

Ranked Choice Voting and Matrix

Article written by Moose.

photo of the Matrix logo which just says the word matrix with square brackets around it

This blog post has been on my to do list for a while now - as far as I can tell, this started back in February of this year (2026). Simple Chats, a Discord channel largely made up of folks from Bear Blog, wanted to open a discussion about if we should move off of Discord, or stay. This conversation started because of Discord's announcement to roll out age verification. We also had plenty of alternatives to try out, thanks to Kami. I wanted to talk about this process a bit.

Getting Started

First, we had to figure out where to possibly go to. As I mentioned, thanks to Kami we had a few alternatives already set up to try, but we also tried a few others people suggested. I put together a list of the pros and cons I could see for each one, with the idea that if people didn't want to try them all themselves, they could read the pros and cons list. You can view below the list I put together, if you're interested. The suggestions we had were an IRC Server, Matrix, Stoat, Fluxer, Kloak, or staying on Discord. We also discussed if we should bridge channels from Discord to the new location, or not.

Pro / Con List

Simple Chats is (Possibly) Moving

What's happening?

As you may have heard, Discord is rolling out it's age verification. We here at Simple Chats do not like the look of that, and it's prompted us to begin looking elsewhere for these chats to be had. This is on top of the fact Discord seems to be slowly making worse and worse decisions as of late.

We will be making our final decision on TBD

What are our Options?

Well we have a few, and we'd like your input on where we should move to, and how.

IRC

Kami has had an ircserver up for a little while now. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a standard that was created for communicating online. It supports things like channels, individual chats, and file sharing. However, it's pretty basic all things considered - closer to something like an instant messenger than Discord.

Pros

  • Self Hosted
  • Has Threads
  • Seems to support video calling?

Cons

  • Simplistic - it lacks basically anything outside of normal text chatting
  • Self hosted - if something happens to Kami we're in trouble

Matrix

We've also had a matrix server for a while now. It's also self hosted by Kami, and you can read more about Matrix itself here. Basically, it's a decentralized platform (similar to how Mastodon is decentralized). This means you do need to use some other app or program to access the server (Like Element.io)

Pros

  • Self Hosted
  • Has Threads
  • Has emoji's / Stickers
  • Has Polls
  • Supports Video Calls

Cons

  • Simplistic looking UI
  • Because it's decentralized, and you use different apps to access it, there's no guarantee features and experience will be the same for everyone
  • Self hosted - if something happens to Kami we're in trouble

Stoat

Previously Revolt, Stoat is the newest option we're exploring. You can join the server here. It seems like Stoat's servers are getting clobbered, and so our testing remains limited at time of writing.

Pros

  • Looks the most similar to Discord
  • Centralized - how it looks in one place is how it's going to look / work elsewhere
  • Has emoji's / custom emoji's
  • Supports Voice communication

Cons

  • Centralized - if Stoat disappears one day, so does our server
  • Does not seem to support Polls or threads
  • Because it's centralized, could very well end up implementing its own age verification, or other features we don't like

Fluxer

Suggested by Kryst4line and Xaya, it looks like a Free, Open Source, and Self Hosted alternative to Discord. You can read about it here. The person making Fluxer also hopes to make parts of it be browseable through unauthenticated sessions, which could be indexed. If you'd like to test it, Join our Server Here

Pros

  • Looks just like discord
  • Free, Open Source, Self Hostable
  • Allows Voice / Video Chatting
  • Premium is cheaper than Discord Nitro ($5/ month currently)

Cons

  • Made by just one dude - could simply disappear
  • No Threads yet, but supports "link channels"
  • If we stick with the official instance, instead of self hosting, you need a premium subscription for cross-server emotes
  • The person who made it is just some guy

Kloak

Suggested by Pirate, this messaging app has a focus on privacy. You can learn more about it from its site here .

Pros

  • Sign up using only a username and authentication key - no email required

Cons

Discord

We could stay with Discord. It's what most people are used to, and as more people want to join it's what most people are likely to have, especially since there's no clear winner on the internet on where to go after Discord right now.

Pros

  • Discord - you know it, you use it, you know what you like about it
  • Known brand a lot of people already use

Cons

  • Centralized - As Discord continues to make decisions, we will simply have to put up with them

Other Voting Issues

Bridging

The other issue up for vote at the moment is if we should Bridge Matrix / IRC/ Stoat to the Discord server.

What is Bridging?

Bridging allows our messages to sync across platforms. It's already been enabled with both our IRC and Matrix instances, allowing users to use those platforms rather than Discord. The biggest downside is it makes things messy, and it doesn't sync things like profile pictures, so depending on how you use chat services, it may be hard to tell who said what.

What are our options?

  • Bridge Everything
    • All channels get bridged. This allows anyone to use any platform they like, and still participate
      • This is by far the most inclusive option, however also the most messy
  • Bridge only 1 or two channels
    • This allows a dedicated space for people to talk cross platform
      • However, this would mean people miss out on a certain things, happening in the other channels
  • Bridge Nothing
    • People on each platform only talk with those on the same platform
      • This is the cleanest option, but least inclusive. People either need to migrate, or be left behind
        Our current thoughts are to either Bridge Nothing or only bridge one or two channels at most.

We want to hear from you

Please comment in this thread with your thoughts, opinions, suggestions on this move. Also please make sure to vote! We want to try to take as many peoples opinions into account as possible.

Discussion and Voting

We discussed what to do for a while, and eventually decided to put up a vote for the channel. We decided to use Ranked Choice Voting, as we felt that would be the most fair, and allow people to express their preferences past their first choice.

What is ranked choice voting?

Ranked Choice Voting allows you to vote for multiple options in a vote, rather than just one option. This is useful for a decision like this (or for voting in general), because it eliminates the mind game of "oh, well I prefer option x, but I think options y or z are more likely to win, so I better vote for one of them". We used a site called rcv123.org for the vote, and I think it went pretty well! With Ranked Choice Voting, you rank your preferences, and if your first option gets eliminated, your vote moves to your second option, and so on until a winner is elected.

How'd it go for Simple Chats?

I found the process of ranked choice voting really interesting, especially as time went on. The vote stayed up for a while, and you can see the results online here. Some pretty interesting things happened though -

The first was who was in the lead early vs late in the vote. Early on in the vote, the only people who voted were those very active on the server, and specifically active the discussion on where to go. During that, Matrix and Fluxer were the top options by far. Eventually, an announcement was made to the whole server, to get the attention of those who may not be as active. Once those votes started coming in, votes to stay on Discord sky rocketed, ultimately making it so at the end of the first round of voting, Matrix, Discord, and Fluxer were all tied for first.

Let's talk about each round:

Round 1

Screenshot from the voting for where simple chats should go. Matrix, Discord, and Fluxer are all tied with 8 votes, with Stoat and IRC at 1 each, and then Kloak and Valour have none

With Ranked Choice Voting, generally if a candidate reaches the 50% mark or higher (for when there's one position open) the race is over, and that's the winner. When that doesn't happen, you move on to round 2.

Round 2

Screenshot from the voting for where simple chats should go. It shows Valour, Kloak, and IRC getting eliminated

Here, you can see Kloak and Valour were eliminated, because they were no one's first choice. Because Stoat and IRC were tied, rcv123 uses some algorithm to decide which one gets eliminated, based on how many people voted for them as 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. options. According to RCV123, in more official systems it's random chance.

Round 3

Screenshot from the voting for where simple chats should go. It shows that whoever voted for IRC, voted for Stoat as their second option

With IRC eliminated, the person who voted for them voted for Stoat as their next option (or, next non-eliminated option), so Stoat gets their vote. With still no winner, we go to the next round.

Round 4

Screenshot from the voting for where simple chats should go. It shows that the votes from Stoat went to Matrix and Discord

Stoat is the next to be eliminated with the least amount of votes. One vote from Stoat went to Matrix, the other to Discord.

Round 5

Screenshot from the voting for where simple chats should go. it shows that most people wanted to go to Matrix with Fluxer eliminated

Fluxer, with the next lowest, is eliminated. A majority of people who had voted for Fluxer had Matrix as their second option (or, their next still available option), and so Matrix takes the win.

Life on Matrix

Matrix is a open source, decentralised, communication platform. Kami currently hosts for us, and it's been great so far! Matrix has a few oddities - for example, permissions are done on the room level (akin to a channel on Discord) rather than at a space level (akin to a server on Discord). It also has a bit more limited functionality than Discord. That said, everything else with it has been great, and we've just gotten around to disabling most of the bridging (the vote ended up wanting a few channels to remain bridged). The other thing I've noticed is the experience is different for folks depending on what app you use to access Matrix, and so some features may not work for some people.

But, overall, I think everyone who has started using it has continued to enjoy it. I know personally I've even started using it for some personal projects.

Wrap Up

I wanted to put this post out there for two reasons: One, to show people how you can use things like Ranked Choice Voting in day to day life. And two, to hype up Matrix a bit. It's honestly been really great, and I think more people should give it a shot!

#Moose