Just timeouts, slrpnk isn't alone many lemmy instances have issues with loads. While writing the following list I had to wait about 5 seconds for a page load and often refresh or wait a long time for images to load. Users won't do this.
Let's go through the list:
- Low effort image screenshot from user track_shovel, 3 comments
- news from major news outlet nytimes, user silence7, 3 comments
- Link to a pdf download about "ai" (presumably llms) sucking, user foxymochakitten, 2 comment
- news from major news outlet, user Haraldvonblauzahn, 64 comments
- news from niche news site, user schizoidman, 0 comments
- news from major news outlet, user silence7, 11 comments
- news from major news outlet, user schizoidman, 0 comments
- Low effort image screenshot from user track_shovel, 2 comments
- A video link about finding cheap hardware for hosting, user prodigal frog, 14 comments
- news specific to a small area of the world, user silence7, 4 comments
- A contextless photograph of a plant and a lament about the lack thereof, user durian, 2 comments
- post about some very specific product, user xcel, 1 comment
- A not topical film on youtube, user cm0002, 0 comments
- A photo of food not bombs, user prodigalfrog, 0 comments
- news from major news outlet, user silence7, 0 comments
- link to a youtube video about a new kind of powerplant, user povoq, 7 comments
- A photo of a river, user jacobcoffinwrites, 2 comments
- A video link about no lawns, user greatwhitebuffalo41, 4 comments
- A post about foraging nettles, user korhaka, 3 comments
Many of these posts are hours or days old, niche, and all the news has probably already been seen by a potential new user.
This doesn't look like a place someone could jump in or post their own stuff, it looks like a place that people post news and nobody reacts to it.
I don't know how to do better but a lot of lemmy looks like this. Just reposts from other more popular social media sites and US news (often sad).
I like slrpnk, after the reddit flood it was one of the most chill places on lemmy with a lot of exposure to niche news/hobbies/resources. The problems aren't unique to slrpnk, but you've gotta understand why when seeing something like that and already worried about technical burden a user is just going to bounce off because it looks like a worse reddit.