Ask Lemmy

That's honestly not very helpful.

• It's not exactly at a place where someone joins lemmy. Most people likely join via downloading an app, and if they are lucky that app links them to join-lemmy.org, and more often than not, it doesn't link them anywhere and just asks them to either select an instance from a dropdown without further information or it asks them to enter an instance name from memory.
• The advice is very questionable and not really helpful without context.

• Lemmy.world is too big

There are Lemmy-reasons for why that's a problem, but in any other context, the biggest is the best. And even in regards to lemmy, bigger instances have a higher chance to remain, to be decently moderated and to be decently stable. Before joining Lemmy.world, I was on Feddit.de, and we all know how that ended. And even before they vanished without a warning or an explanation, Feddit.de servers were always outdated, slow and unreliable, and moderation was arbitrary at best and non-existent at worst.

Lemmy.world is stable and works just as expected.

• Lemm.ee is federated with hexbear and lemmygrad, something that is not very welcoming to new users (see this thread: https://sh.itjust.works/post/28798607/15305964 )

That's a somewhat decent reasoning, though not immediately understandable as a new user. And not relevant anymore because Lemm.ee will shutdown within a week or so from now.

• sh.itjust.works names contains “shit”, which can deter users

Thanks, I'm adult enough to know whether I'm offended by the word "shit".

lemmy.ca is Canadian-centric feddit.org, is German-centric, but technically English speaking too programming.dev is topic-centric blahaj is queer-focused infosec.pub is topic-centric aussie.zone is country-centric midwest.social is region-centric

None of that really matters thanks to federation.

dbzer0 federates hexbear

Like Lemm.ee, apart from the fact that it still exists

beehaw is way outdated

That's some relevant reasoning.

sopuli.xyz (neutral name

See also:

discuss.tchncs.de has a difficult name

Sopuli.xyz isn't any easier than discuss.tchnics.de, and jet discuss.tchnics.de was excluded for the name only.

While down in the comments it says

Sopuli doesn’t support gifs

Which is a really hard reason to avoid that instance, much more so than "has a difficult name". That's got much more practical implications.

But what's left regardless is: Even that link that is supposed to make instance selection easier isn't exactly easy to understand for a newcomer.

Relevant XKCD: