The goal of c/Quarks has always been to help foster a sense of community for StarTrek.website, but being federated, it is just a generic “offtopic” community and does not really have much of an identity or reason to exist.
StarTrek.website hosts communities for the fediverse, but we also host users. And so while the purpose of Quark’s won’t change, limiting it to local accounts will allow us to better discuss what kind of experience we wish to have (not just provide) without all the dorks on lemmy.world and potter heads on diagonlemmy.social ruining the weather control network.
Apologies if you’re on another instance and have been enjoying the content here. You’re always welcome to join us!
On my home instance, the community !meta@sopuli.xyz is for discussing issues specific to the instance, it’s not really relevant to people not using the instance.
On startrek.website, the Quarks community seems to primarily discuss Star Trek adjacent topics which are of interest to many Trek fans.
I think it’s great that you guys want a private community for discussing things only relevant to the instance. I just wish you hadn’t chosen to close a community with broad external interest.