Also, it’s suffering from what programmers call premature optimization. Reddit has hundreds of thousands of subreddits breaking down topics into incredibly niche subtopics. It’s good, because the volume of posts is so high that talk about e.g. a particular indie game would get buried in a general videogames subreddit.
So, it seems like Lemmings want to copy that structure, and create a community for every tiny niche right away. But there aren’t enough of us. It’s like trying to start a nuclear chain reaction with your fuel all spread out. We’ll never reach critical mass that way.
Instead, we need communities for general topics, so people actual see and engage with posts. So, for example, instead of hoping that c/whatisthisthing will get going, post such questions in c/asklemmy. There’re not so many posts that it’ll bury other topics yet, but if requests to identify objects really start taking off, then branch off a new community. That’s how Usenet grew back in the day.
The core concept here is to get people talking to each other. That’s more important than rigid categorization. That comes later, at this stage it’s premature optimization.
(Also, for myself, I’d rather see Lemmy develop its own culture and communities, rather than try to be just a not-Rdddit Reddit.)