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 think the difficulty with a place that has such a low userbase that then grows rapidly is not having a lot of established active moderators. There’s a lag time to some extent to getting active and responsible moderators. Plus not being a moderator nor an admin on Lemmy, I don’t know the capabilities they have at hand, but I know with reddit the moderator tools were built up over time. All of the automodding capabilities they have now didn’t exist at the beginning, and the automod tools are what allow them to handle such high numbers of users. I suspect Lemmy probably doesn’t have extensive automated moderating tools at their disposal at the moment if I consider other deficits that Lemmy has at the moment.
How do you feel about a simple tag/indicator on the join-lemmy.org site that indicates whether a server has open registration or is invite only?
You are completely right. Disabling the approval feature equals unmoderatable instance (when the bots come), because a human (a moderator) simply cannot compete with a Python script posting spam every few milliseconds. Such instances are therefore instantly defederated by others in order to protect themselves.
Would automod functionality and keyword ban list for usernames serve to alleviate those concerns you have? If not, is there any solution you would propose that you think may work to solve that issue?
Sure, they would. But for that, you would need to implement them first, and implement them right, which is a highly challenging endeavour. I could imagine that this is on a backlog for Lemmy development, but it will take a while before any usable implementation is applicable.
Cool, then we’re in agreement! I’ve opened a github issue per your suggestion here: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2899