Was this something of a hindsight is 20/20 situation, wherein with more consideration, something else may have been adopted?
We considered many other problems when in the inception phases and had initially decided to make our own - this did not turn out as we had wanted and so we came back to the drawing board.
Or has it been banking on some optimism in federated communities becoming the new norm?
I would certainly say that some of us have rose tinted glasses for federated communities but it's certainly not unanimous.
As for whether or not we made the right choice, I don't know. I do genuinely think there are big problems when it comes to Lemmy's lack of focus on moderation and some of these are compounded by broken federation.
We'll likely never know, honestly.