Hot damn, in just over a week. Data from https://the-federation.info/node/details/25274. Made in GIMP.
Thank you Chris, alyaza, Gaywallet again for making such a nice place and managing this explosion in popularity, to the mods and other people keeping it operating, and lastly to everyone joining, contributing, posting and commenting and be(e)ing friendly!
yeah. we're trying to really curb who we're adding at this point to "people who actually want to be here that align with our goals" so it's not completely overwhelming (our backlog of admissions is about 100)
Good luck with that, it's no easy feat, and I expect it to get especially crazy when many sub-reddits shut down on the 12th. Be as ready as you can, I'll try to help guide new users best I can as well.
as we've noted a couple times, an extreme option we can leverage is just not approving anyone and if it gets too crazy i'm pretty confident that's what we'll do (or we'll limit our approvals to a general number per day, and what happens happens. i think we might also be able to make the instance private, dunno.
I worry about how this is going to get handled. There are going to be a lot of people looking to check out Lemmy, and this could be a true pivotal moment for the platform. Like it or not, Beehaw is one of the instances that lots of people have been hearing about, and so you're going to play a part in that pivotal moment. Not allowing people to participate could drive them away. It's a tough situation. I don't envy you.
I've got an idea. Since during the sign up phase we answer questions, so why not add a question that poses a hypothetical scenario where the prospective member can answer in their own words what they would do in that scenario.
The scenario can be crafted to gauge someone's kindness, even if there are no right or wrong answers. For example, we can have the question be:
"Can you share an example of a recent action you took to make someone's day better?"
Or:
"Tell me about a time when you offered assistance or support to someone in need."
Or:
"Could you describe a situation where you went out of your way to show empathy or understanding to someone?"
Trolls and ne'er-do-wells are not as likely to give detailed, thoughtful answers to these sorts of questions.
This way it provides an additional way to screen applications so nice people migrate here.
While it will tend to exclude them, it's also highly likely to exclude others as well. As an example, I have ADHD, so often it is difficult to amass enough spoons to provide detailed answers to things like this.