After spending a few days learning about lemmy and other fediverse websites, I was curious about people's processes for picking a server that is right for them. I've seen most posts say to pick one that is not too big or small and that has similar interests as yourself. But if we are all mostly federated, doesn't it make the most sense to join the biggest or likeliest server to stay around and federated with the most other servers? Then you can just travel to the instances you share interests in. I chose this instance because you could just sign up and be in it, and that was all I needed to check things out. And although I found many communities in other instances, even if let's say all of my subscribed communities are on other instances, doesn't it make sense to just stay here so long as they are federated with sh.itjust.works? It may be too early to know for sure, but it seems like this instance is going to stick around for the foreseeable future, why risk joining the smaller instances that might not be here for long. Also, if you have subscribed communities in several instances, I assume you have to follow all the different server's rules. I'd be curious to hear other people's thoughts in regards to picking a home instance.
Edit: Are there any restrictions to interacting with communities on other instances?
My main worry with smaller servers is that whoever is running them may lose interest and decide to shut down permanently. It does seem that the pros and cons tip in either direction as a server's population grows.
I get that worry, but I honestly can't say that I think a small server with little interest is more likely to shut down than a server with huge interest (and it's associated hosting bills). For ex. I'm panning on deploying my own lemmy instance soon, it's going to have signups turned off, but if I left them on I wouldn't really care how popular my server is. The less the better imo because it becomes cheap enough for me to forget I'm admining it until update time comes around and fewer interpersonal issues to deal with because fewer users. Maybe I'm in the minority here, but becoming a huge server with a lot of users doesn't appeal to me like at all, and having a small user base is only upsides. Once I deploy it's going to be running for a long time.
Edit: I should have asked if you meant user interest or low admin interest
What good does hosting your own instance do if it's closed to signups?
So I can access the fediverse with my own domain and own my user profile. Currently my profile is owned by the sh.itjust.works server; which is fine, the admin knows what he's doing, but if it were to ever go down, my user profile and ability to interact on the fediverse goes with it. I'm an avid selfhoster and enjoy having control over my own infrastructure, so hosting my own lemmy instance is right up my alley. I'm not interested in the headaches that come with hosting for anyone else though, as there are quite a few.