First I want to say that I love the idea of Lemmy. I think it's very reminiscent of the old days of BBS's and networked message boards (FIDOnet).
With that in mind I'd like to suggest that maybe some thought should go into guiding people to the right instances to sign up on.
I think more instances should try to specialize in certain content and host communities that cater to that. Much like the BBS's of the olden days you could have an instance that is all about sports, or an instance specializing in comic book communities, or an instance that caters to a certain region or state.
With that in mind, it would be great to have a page that indexes instances by interest groups so people could make better decisions about which instance to join rather than just everyone trying to pile up on lemmy.ml.
Thoughts?