EDIT: as one of the admins explained below, they plan to migrate to something whitch uses ActivityPub, which means that my concerns are gone. I liked the interactions between servers who are equally wholesome compared to beehaw, which will be possible after the migration because of ActivityPub. So therefore, my sadness is canceled.)
The internet has already some queer forums similar to beehaw. For instance raddle.me and i am sure there are more that i don't know. Both have their unique flair and that's fine. I think lemmy (or more precisely, the ActivityPub powered fediverse that is at the core of lemmy) presents the unique oportunity to avoid isolated corners of the internet. I like raddle and beehaw, but i notice that i seldom read raddle and i think if beehaw goes to a similar isolated platform, i will probably read beehaw less.
I know that the mods tried to talk to the devs and their desinterest is equally sad.
However, i think you as a big instance still have one unused tool to fix lemmy's moderation issues within the "near short timeframe": talk to nlnet, the initial sponsor and explain to them your moderation issues. I think https://nlnet.nl/ would be interested given that lemmy is quite popular.
i think this could lead to two solutions:
- nlnet understands the issue and comes back to the lemmy devs and integrates the moderation tools into the next milestone so that the lemmy devs are more forced to develop those things.
- nlnet understands the issue and hires independent developers who fix the moderation tools which could either be integrated into lemmy (i think the devs wouldn't say no to this) - or it could lead to a fork.
Cool, thanks for sharing!