Is there a matrix room where community members hang out?
I think there is (was?) a discord, but I’d prefer to avoid that, if possible.
Not at the moment! We currently focus on Discord, purely because it’s easier to access for more people.
I’d be open to making a Matrix if we can easily link it with Discord, though my most recent experience with Matrix is that the UX still isn’t great
There is a matrix discord bridge but I have no experience with that.
It’s true the matrix UX is weird, specially the threads stuff, which no one really seems to nail down 
I regularly interact with the Atuin discord using the mautrix bridge with no issues but that’s for puppeting a single user, and you have to have your own homeserver or join one with the bridge setup.
The matrix-appservice-discord bridge does look like it might work as a more general bridge. I’ll let you know if I setup a bridged room using that but I doubt I’ll be able to anytime soon.
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Hello, first time here 
May I suggest Zulip? They sponsor open source projects and, IMHO, the interface is quite great.
hey! welcome
Zulip does look good! If it can properly relay with Discord then it may be an option. I’m mostly looking to ensure as many people as possible find the community accessible at the moment though, not exactly looking for a replacement to Discord.
Matrix makes sense as we can (potentially) bridge it, Zulip seems like it would be more of a replacement
Thank you! 
I see your point and, IMO, bridges don’t add as much value as one would think because you add another point of friction. Expanding the opportunities to collaborate might not scale when it’s disrupted.
I say that because I’ve never seen a bridge what works well. WeeChat to Matrix, Matrix to Slack, Matrix to IRC, Zulip to IRC. Either they end up abandoned because the upkeep is hard or the developers move to greener pastures.
I’d like to hear what others think.
Sorry if I sound harsh.
Even though I suggested setting up a bridge above, I do agree with you. I’m ok with using a puppeting bridge for myself but I view bridges basically as a separate client for the source location and I’d be concerned if a large percentage of the users were using a separate bridged room.
Hosting a handful of people who are philosophically opposed to Discord for whatever reason and are ok with dealing with breakages from time to time might be ok though.
You did not sound harsh in your message 
Regardless of whether a bridge will be setup or not, take a look at beeper.com’s desktop and mobile client (recently renamed to Beeper Cloud).
They are a for-profit company building a FOSS Matrix backend and currently hosting their solution for free (it will be a paid subscription in the future, probably freemium). They also claim to be pushing their fixes upstream.
So to your point @lasombra - these is a group that has backing right now, and plan to make maintaining these bridges a for-profit thing.
When things break on their infrastructure (because some service’s API changed or some It’s-Always-DNS™️ issue comes up) they usually fix it within hours.
Since I don’t ‘live in discord’, but I do want to track some server-channels, I use it alongside all of my other IM services (Signal, WhatsApp etc.) and of course, it has the benefit of being a native Matrix client that connects to Matrix servers.