I’d like to help out with decentralization, with users not all gathering in one place, so I don’t want to go to kbin.social or fedia.io. I did look at fedidb.org and the list of instances there, but it doesn’t tell me if the admin is active. I could just visit every instance listed there and check the admin’s profile for activity, but I figure putting this message out and seeing who replies is a pretty good test of which kbin instances have an active admin that takes me less time.
EDIT: Also saw this from Ernest, he’s eventually going to make sure abandoned instances have admins, so that’s good news.
Based on what I’ve heard from kbin instance admins (especially jerry, the owner of fedia.io, where I usually post from when not dealing with errors), it’s not an easy thing to keep running in its current state. I imagine if you instance hop sub-100 user kbin instances many of them will end up shutting down or having inactive owners.
For example, feddit.online is kbin instance #6 by user count (yet it’s still <100!) and has announced they’re shutting down in a couple of months: https://feddit.online/m/feddit/t/66403/SERVER-GOING-AWAY-ON-NOV-26th
To have a stable instance experience without going with a large instance you might have better luck with another AP platform as your home base, whether Lemmy or something else entirely.