As much as “instance drama” can be a bit tiring, I think it might be an inevitable outcome and shouldn’t necessarily be seen as completely bad. My thinking is that instance drama would not occur if all the instances were similar, and that would be bad. As it is, there are actually differences among the instances and that’s good - some disagreements due to those differences is inevitable.

Now, it would be good if we could agree to disagree and still be friends… but that also moves into the paradox of tolerance. But I would say most instances have nothing strongly against each other, despite any differences in moderation or rules or approach. The Pareto principle applies too… probably 20% of the instances are responsible for 80% of the drama. If you don’t like the drama, try avoiding those 20% of instances 😅.