Not sure if this helps you, but there are some really good mods that reduce or eliminate some of the irritating gimmicks in the game. I played with a double weapon durability mod that makes the game feel way better.

What is the incentive for instance owners to push people toward the local feed vs the all feed?

I think that was steam and this is some other metric, maybe browser stats?

Docker-compose and a terminal is how I do it. Its simple and effective. I’m able to manage ~20 services that way.

It exists already! And its actually a mastodon bot. Check out this post:

https://reddthat.com/post/300625

Media handling is a big one for me too!

Unciv! Remake of civV for desktop and Android.

I’d recommend it! Feels better than a web app imo. Especially if your have a couple different addresses.