Pretty straight question.
I see Lemm.ee is now the second most populated instance based on https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list, with 3634 monthly active users.
I also know that Lemmy devs said that
lemmy.ml is bigger than beehaw, and only costs 80 euros per month for a dedicated server.
https://lemmy.ml/comment/2372503
As lemmy.ml has 3561 monthly active users, should we consider that around 3,5k-4k users is the sweet spot for an instance population, and stop recommending the ones that reached that threshold?
Imo admins have a responsibility to disable signups to their server if they feel they are unable to fund/crowdsource or lack the ability to expand capacity (lack of time or know-how).
As long as server admins stick to the above it doesn’t matter if it costs €10 or €100000 a month really.
Its impossible to say at which point is the burden too much, because every person has their own threshold and every server can have multiple admins responsible for it, or might have business backing it or whatever really.