About two days ago we found a bug with the registration system on lemmy. Because of this we have updated our registration process a few times, and cannot deny any applications as the person registering does not receive any message and cannot re-apply.
We currently have several hundred people that we are waiting to deny, and some unknown amount of people that we denied prior to finding this issue which we would really like to contact and give them a chance to register as they didn't write enough in their registration for us to really evaluate if they were a good fit for this instance.
If you're a developer please take a look at this github issue and please work your magic to help fix this problem.
As an aside, we also have a list we've been working on for enhancements that would make moderating and administering this instance a lot easier, and enhancements we think users would enjoy in terms of UI and UX. We'd love to share these as well as facilitate a discussion to surface more ideas (and we plan to in the future), but right now we need to focus on the most pressing issue to us running this website, whether people can create an account here and participate.
We identified an issue with a few email providers blocking emails from our server, so we bought a new email address with a well-known provider to prevent this from being an issue. For those that registered with an email address, approvals should send an email. If you've registered in the past 24 hours with an email and did not receive one, please let us know on discord or matrix or reply and let us know here.
If you did not register with an email, there is no notification in lemmy that lets you know of approval (also lodged in bug report).
Appreciate the super quick response! As per my edit this was a case of PICNIC and I apologise for wasting your time!