The instance list has a couple of recommended sites at the top. They are defined in this file and seperated by language. For most languages there is only one recommendation or none at all, so you can simply add yours by making a pull request.
In case of English, the situation is a bit different. The current recommended instances (beehaw.org and sopuli.xyz) are already quite large and would be shown near the top of the list anyway. So it makes sense to recommend smaller instances instead.
To be recommended, an instance should meet these requirements:
- It should be a general purpose instance
- At least one member of the admin team needs to be in the Instance admin chat to coordinate with other admins
- The admin team needs to be prepared for a large influx of users, both in terms of hardware and moderation
We can use this thread to discuss which instances should be recommended. There is no maximum number of recommendations, but it should be an even number to work with the desktop layout.
On a side note, the instance list itself could use many improvements such as showing more details about instances or using different sorting methods. If you are a programmer or web designer, you can contribute to improve the website.
Edit: If you are a Lemmy admin and want your instance to be recommended, go ahead and open a pull request for this file. Developers can also contribute in the same repo to improve join-lemmy.org.
Reddit has almost half a billion users, so until there is horizontal scaling I would argue no instance is ready.
One criterion i would add is economic viability, Lets look at beehaw, it has about 1000 monthly active users and according to opencollective got about 1000$ this month (for some reason the opencollective page of lemmy can't show this stat), that puts him at the ARPU (active revenue per user) of about 1$ a user which is similar to reddit that has ARPU of about $1.02 (and was much lower in 2021, about 0.5$).
There is horizontal scaling through federation. Even if lemmy.ml, beehaw.org and lemmy.one go down, users can still join instances like sh.itjust.works. The instance list on join-lemmy.org works as a load balancer.
This just the emphasizes how crucial it is for join-lemmy to succeed. If your load balancing hinges on the onboarding experience then it must at the top of priorities, though I'm sure you're aware and would like ideas instead.
I wonder if the site could simply offer one at random from the list of recommended ones, offer it in a big frame with a "sign up" button.
Below it could something along the lines of "Any of these will also do: they all connect to eachother anyway." And list the rest of recommended instances.
Below that it would have a "show more" button that would reveal the rest of the instances.
I also feel like the site could start with this dumbed down instance picker. First with an introduction and then the recommended instances. The vast majority joins and the ones who want to run an instance will likely join one first anyway. Skip the two buttons step.
Is it possible to have users automatically distributed to different places to help with scaling and load, and at the same time be able to select which "rules/content of that instance" they'd like to be part of without it having to be dependent as it is now on which instance they join?
Right now everything appears to be entirely tied to the instance joined when it comes to accounts, rules, and most importantly load. Wonder if it is possible to have the rules/content portion separated from all that in the future.
So to try it put more simply have in the future specific instances behaving more like joining a subreddit that have different topics and moderation instead of having everything tied the instance where the account was created.
That just creates a problem of choice overload, I use to manage a forum, managing a community is hard, If there is a instance that is really good (possibly one that is "democratic") Most people would like it to scale, Just figuring out the rules for every instance and what other instances it blocks is hard, I already saw complaints on reddit about having to pick a server.
I also think it is a good idea to have paid moderators, what happens when some gets pissed decides to post some terrible picture to punish the mods? on facebook they have a therapist for the people reviewing reports .
Regarding sh.itjust.works , in my culture i think swearing is considered more of a bad behavior compared to the US, are we sure that is not cultural blindness having that listed as a recommended instance?