Pretty straight question.
I see Lemm.ee is now the second most populated instance based on https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list, with 3634 monthly active users.
I also know that Lemmy devs said that
lemmy.ml is bigger than beehaw, and only costs 80 euros per month for a dedicated server.
https://lemmy.ml/comment/2372503
As lemmy.ml has 3561 monthly active users, should we consider that around 3,5k-4k users is the sweet spot for an instance population, and stop recommending the ones that reached that threshold?
You might get the same problem that exist in FOSS people won’t get paid and quality will decline (like heartbleed etc), Also you want to allow big communities without splitting them which is bad UX.
You are basically asking people to work for free for you (no point in sugar coating it), and honestly if people want to volunteer there are more important goals , we should have full time people working on managing instance IMO .
No, the point I’m making is that it’s easier to have a 3k instance requiring 80€ donations from its member, who would feel closer to the rest of the members and their administration team, than a 21k instance requiring 560€ per month.
To be honest, I also think that we should move away from the donations model to an open subscription model. 80€ per month for 3k users is 0,32€ per user, you can implement a system where users pay 0,5€ for their cost, and can even pay more and offer to cover the subscriptions costs for other users. That way you give a real sense of community among members, and allow the instance admins to have more financial stability.