It is probably due to a number of people stopping using their alts after some instance hopping.
Also a few people who came to see how it was, and weren’t attracted enough to become regular visitors.
Curious to see at which number we’ll stabilize.
Next peak will probably happen after either major features release (e.g. exhaustive mod tools allowing reluctant communities to move from Reddit) or the next Reddit fuck up (e.g. removing old.reddit)
Stats on each server: https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list
Oh i wouldnt say its worse at all. I prefer nested replies all the way. Regardless, i still wouldnt say lemmy fits the forum format, again due to the way you access the most recent replies.
In a forum thread, you go to the last page and youve found the latest comment. In a Lemmy post, even if the nested comments arent hidden, its not obvious at first glance which one is the latest comment.
Also, if you “bookmark” a forum thread, youll get notified of any new replies in said thread. On Lemmy, you can check the latest comments from an entire instance or community. But not for a specific post.
Again, id never phrase lemmys format as worse, for i greatly prefer it. But i wouldnt consider it a forum. It simply displays the information diferently