Doesn't the minimum requirement for the first point seem a bit too lax? It still results in a largely closed off instance that is listed alongside the others.

I think those requirements make sense. The point of the list is to give people places where they can sign up that will have some activity. 5 active users is something and federated with another active instance means more content. Once they’re on the list, I bet other instances will want to federate with them and then users get even wider reach.

What's intended is probably not "you only allow federation with one other instance" but rather "you have at least one user who actually subscribes to some other instance".

I'm not sure this is user dependent considering this is on the admin docs page. For users to subscribe to a community on another instance, that instances admin has to allow federation with the other instance.

I just feel like the bare minimum is not strict enough; you could theoretically have an almost fully defederated instance while still having a listing and potentially getting user sign-ups from the lemmy home site.

I could in theory create two such instances, federate only with one popular instance, get both listed, then only federate with each other. Completely diminishes the default experience users will have on signing up to my instances
- Sure, but why would someone running a near-isolated instance want to list it there? They would just end up dealing with a lot of annoyed & disappointed users.
  
  It comes across to me as a "your instance must be at least this tall to ride" policy, not a "you must federate with everyone we tell you to" policy.

The screenshot is from this documentation page for administrating a lemmy instance

Unless I’m overlooking it, join-lemmy provides no essential info to choosing an instance. It doesn’t display uptime, location, number of users, age, or number of connected instances.

I used It and ended up on an instance that seemed to be missing many male** communities and was on the other side of the planet from me (though fortunately did not have too many other users). Then I followed a different instance browser and found a much better one for me.

EDIT: ** was supposed to say major communities, not male communities. But I’m leaving it because

I don't think most people are going to take that second step though. Most people will look up the main website and choose something from there
- Which is a problem. The onboarding for the fediverse - especially choosing a lemmy instance if that is the direction you want - is way too obtuse right now. Instances are definitely not all equal, and the icon and description are the least useful data points to rely upon.
What's your take on an optimal instance? I went first for lemmy.world, because I checked a federation map and seemed like a good choice. but it's getting laggy with the influx, so I found a probably nearby server with cool local content, and only a handful of users. But from here subscription to other instances seems weird, often lemmy.world communities don't show up in search even with their direct URL
- A funny feature is that I can't post from the new instance because it would ask for the comment language which can't be selected from wefwef
- Low user numbers
  
  High uptime percentage
  
  Little to no blocked servers and communities
  
  Allows user created communities
  
  Beyond that, I personally don’t care.
What do you mean by missing communities?
- Searching for specific communities and they aren’t present on the server.

I think those requirements make sense. The point of the list is to give people places where they can sign up that will have some activity. 5 active users is something and federated with another active instance means more content. Once they’re on the list, I bet other instances will want to federate with them and then users get even wider reach.