Just a random data point. This is my first time logging back into my beehaw account in a long time. Beehaw was my original lemmy instance and I really enjoyed the foundational ideals and communities the founders envisioned. I logged back in today because even on my main account on another instance, I'm so tired of all the terrible bigotry that I see in my all feed.
I personally really like the Lemmy interface as a user especially in an app, mobile browsing or desktop with certain browser add-ons. I know as a someone with their own instance (not my main account ref earlier) that the mod,sysadmin and dev work to keep it running is a lot. I too have database issues that I am super frustrated by. The mod tools are pretty much non existent.
With that said, I think that the whitelist may a viable option. The content needing moderated is likely mostly from federated instances. If beehaw were to isolate it's community or whitelist to a few trusted instances one would imagine the mod work would be lesser even with the minimal tools available. Purge the old content and continue forward as a community isolated but together in their goal to create a kind and friendly community.
Just my thoughts. I appreciate you beehaw admins.
4th gen I7 was like what? 9 years ago... How dare they!