When I go to a community page (not signed in) I see thousands of subscribers, but when I access the community from within my account, I am shown dramatically less subscribers. I am a new convert from Reddit and don't understand what is going on.
Another community I wanted to join with 1.5k subscribers and lots of posts, came up as zero subscribers and no posts when I searched for and went when signed in. It showed that it was the correct community page, but nothing there.
Am I on a bad server?
yes, that is likely the explanation and why people get confused. if you are on a popular server, it is unlikely you are the very first and it can appear that it is automatic.
Yes, which I actually consider a bug, not a feature ;) It under-represents the community and makes it look unpopular.
So is there a place I can see the total subscribers for a community over all servers? Is that the number that shows when I visit a community on the server it was created on?
yes. The "home instance" of a community has the total subscribers list. But replication has been imperfect, especially in 0.18.1 and earlier. There were a lot of problems with stuck subscribe "pending" and lists not being accurate. And just a few days ago I was testing Lemmy's latest server code and found that a user deleting their account does not unsubscribe from the communities they follow... so the number can also be inflated.
Got it. Thanx