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.
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.