YSK: If you find an interesting topic/rabbit hole, you can get some real engagement here if you share it. It doesn't get drowned out like elsewhere.
I know a lot of lurkers like me out there are browsing, but there's quite a bit of engagement capitol on the federated instances. If you find an interesting topic and the right community, you get a lot of feedback. There's not much hate being thrown out there either.
How is maintaining a community compared to an instance? It would be neat to make one, but what keeps me from making one is having to moderate it or maintain it.
Go for it man! I had never moderated over on Reddit but I wanted to contribute on Lemmy so I started up some communities. Everyone has behaved themselves so far and people have been pretty positive about things. Eventually it might get overwhelming (if Lemmy really takes off), but there's always the option of adding more mods to help.