IMO, Lemmy would gain far more users if you were able to create a user account without having to be approved by a server first.
If communities want to remain invite only that’s fine. But I really, really think you guys should decouple account creation from the requirement of being approved by a server. It’s a barrier to entry that imo will prevent many users from registering.
Edit: If not global auto-approving of user account creation, I think what would be a more reasonable request is an indicator of whether a server auto-approves account creation or whether it is invite only.
I disagree. That would not solve the issue with spam bots. Furthermore, the word centralization is forbidden in conjunction with Lemmy in a single sentence :) You cannot create a decentralized self-hosted federated platform and have a centralized account approval server. That goes againts everything decentralization stands for.
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First, moderation is not censorship. Second, it’s up to whoever is hosting the instance to moderate as they see fit. I’m sure there are or very shortly will be plenty of unmoderated instances
We are in total agreement on that! I think a better solution to what I’m suggesting would be a simple indicator on the join-lemmy.org site on whether a server allows automatic account registration to join the server or if it is invite only. Would that be agreeable to you? I think that would obviate the need for any other solution I’ve mentioned here.
That is possible, implementable a clear in its functionality. You can try to open an issue im the websites GitHub repository and see what the developers and others think. Alternatively, you can try to implement this functionality yourself and create a PR for it.
Thank you for the suggestion, I’ll go ahead and do so. I sincerely appreciate the input, that is actionable.