Right now the user count Lemmys is comparatively tiny when held up against reddit - but the user count isn’t the thing that makes a social media site, it’s the engagement
So even if you’re used to lurking, try to get a little more active! Post memes, vote on posts, talk in the comments, whatever!
If people come here and see activity, content, and discussions, they’re more likely to stay and contribute their own - if they come and see a ghost town, they’ll just go back to reddit
My experience is that when that happens, there is something wrong, but it seems like there is no proper error handling to tell you so it endlessly spins instead. Try giving it a different name or fill in a field you left empty (don’t change the language one tho).
Even on lemmy.ml creating a community tends to not take too long. I made communities there because my own instance is country based and I don’t want it to look local, but if you add your account on another server (for me the one I’m using now) as moderator you can moderate from there to not use up bandwidth from lemmy.ml.
Yep, this did the trick. Creating a community with a different name was instant.
I also got the spinning circle at the login screen, and figured out it was because I hadn’t verified my email yet.