I saw that this instance had a large number of users so I thought “more users->more content->more fun”. Apparently, I had to prove my value by answering 3 questions that showed my interest in their community and my value as a potential future member.
What could possibly be my value to a general purpose instance besides money? I’m a software/cloud engineer so I guess there are things I could help with, but my guess is they were expecting me to say “I can donate”.
I get it, they need donations to exist, but this upfront? And to a community I don’t even know? Maybe I’m imagining things and they were looking for something else?
Do all instances rely on donations? I’d like to contribute to the instances I enjoy at some point. But only if I feel at home with them, not as a prerequisite to join.
What in this message made you think your rejection had anything to do with donations? Seems like you’re jumping to that conclusion without any evidence.
Seemed like the only rational explanation for gatekeeping with 3 questions. People can lie and bots can use GPT.
I thought the questions were just a formality, not an actual filter. Like my answers clearly showed I wasn’t a bot. So I guess they didn’t like I didn’t say much about myself, or how nice and polite I am…
Plus, I’m literally asking in the question because I really wasn’t sure, it just seemed like the logical thing. But everyone is pointing out it’s a real filters… So the real conclusion is that they aren’t very good with filters.
The instance I joined had a boilerplate form asking why to rate-limit sign-ups. It said that almost all applicants would be approved, but this helped to control the growth. Got in with a very simple request that used humor related to the instance itself. I would expect this is similar in motivation.