Are there communities, free software/open source or otherwise, using Lemmy as their forum software?
Nowadays, many use Discourse, some are on Zulip, and I just don’t care about the Discord ones. Would Lenmy not fit the same purposes? It is federated and easier to participate in, like mailing lists - no need to sign up per forum. Matrix is too, but it doesn’t seem to be made for long-form writing.
I believe Discourse was designed based on experience with community dynamics, and Zulip is well-designed too. Would something with federated participation like Lemmy not work as well?
Isn’t that where it’d shine? An organization could host their own Lemmy and anyone who has an account on any other instance can interact
Sure. But from the point of view of most people everyone (especially gamers) has a Discord account and nobody has a Lemmy account. Even a Mastodon account would suffice. But compared to Discord nobody uses these.