Speed of development. It could take months for a PR to get into Lemmy core and then a new release.

Things that get into Lemmy core have to be well thought out and the core Devs have to want them in there.

Running custom code is a way to make changes without having to get their approval, and if it proves popular enough, then maybe they’ll implement it upstream.

So, don’t learn to code? If you don’t have any reason to and can’t find any motivation, maybe it’s just not for you.

I think this is not really inline with the philosophy of the main Lemmy devs. For this to happen, I think someone else would have to do the work of creating the random selection service. If it was popular enough, maybe they’d put a link on join-lemmy.org

Easy, just create the equivalent of multireddits.

Can your instance not do that as is? Just spin up a bunch of fake users and make them all vote on something?

Sure, I also have been trying to learn about how Lenmy works. I haven’t yet found a comprehensive overview that details everything though.

From https://join-lemmy.org/docs/administration/federation_getting_started.html

If you search for a community first time, 20 posts are fetched initially. Only if a least one user on your instance subscribes to the remote community, will the community send updates to your instance. Updates include:

New posts, comments Votes Post, comment edits and deletions Mod actions

From: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/01-getting-started.html

These previous ways will only show communities that are already known to the instance. Especially if you joined a small or inactive Lemmy instance, there will be few communities to discover.

This issue/post on github has some info: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3062

I would also checkout some discussions on !fediverse@lemmy.world !selfhosted@lemmy.world https://selfhosted.forum

As far as I understand, your instance is only aware of a community on another instance if at least one user on your instance has subscribed to that community on the other instance. Perhaps that’s what you’re experiencing?

So if you’re the only user (let’s assume for ease) then, that represents all the updates (posts, comments, votes) from each community that you are subscribed to?

That seems high when you extrapolate that to 10000 users, like a larger instance might have.