I joined lemmy.ml because the join-lemmy site gave me extremely little to go on. It was a coin toss between this and beehaw.org once I realized how few instances were established and not right-wing.
That was only 2 weeks ago and already I've seen the site force 2 server upgrades, even as the admins have strongly encouraged new users to join elsewhere to prevent centralization.
The instance list desperately needs a few columns added, including whether new signups are encouraged or discouraged.