I suppose this may make sense in the case of something like Mastodon. But something as versatile and customizable as lemmy, which allows for the existence of separate topic-based communities, makes topic-based instances of lemmy not necessary.
Instead of making a new instance for a certain topic, it is usually a much better approach to just create a new community on my current lemmy instance. At least from my perspective as a user.
I find the only exception to this is censorship and moderation. If I, for any reason am unhappy with an instance’s moderation and censorship, then that is the only potential reason I can see to change and make my own.
What does everyone else think of this?
Communities (like subreddits) typically get better with more active users. This promotes at least per-topic centralization.
I don’t think there’s a great deal of value in having 10 instances each hosting a “Retro Gaming” community. Users will naturally cluster to 1 or 2 of these. But I see no problem with the main Retro Gaming community being on instance A while the Halo Games community is on instance B.
@anji @cyclohexane I agree that it would be better to have one or two instances hosting a retro games community and all other instances encouraging their users to post on those instances.
Ideally, popular communities on other instances should appear on the main communities page/list of each instance.