I’ve already started seeing a lot of redundant communities being made here that have already existed on other Lemmy instances, and lemmy.ml is at risk of centralization and overload, so now is a great time to raise awareness of other instances.
For science topics, mander.xyz has a lot of good ones set up, and !solarpunk@slrpnk.net on slrpnk.net has been great!
edit: for new users - you can type ! to begin autofilling a community, even for ones on other instances, like I did for the solarpunk community above. It may take a few seconds for the autofill results to show up if you have a slow connection like me.
Oh it’s in your last screenshot, the Subscribe button, it is very hidden away for sure, I may open a request for them to add it to the main screen there next to Sidebar. Glad you found it though! Those are some of the pain points I think they’re working on solving, some of those things you don’t think of until you get some users on your app
Edit: Opened an issue for it, hopefully your pain will make it easier for future users!
The subscribe button just tells me that I am not signed in. Once again thank you for all of your time and effort and help. You rock.