[southerntofu]

> how much database space Synapse took on my server

Yes this is a common problem, and disk/RAM usage is why many hosting cooperatives have dropped matrix support entirely and come back to Jabber/XMPP ecosystem.

I hope lightweight matrix implementations like dendrite can help improve sysadmin experience and lower hardware requirements. Yet it's unclear so far whether a better implementation will solve all problems, given that the whole decentralized chatroom concept necessarily takes more resources than a federated chatroom alla Jabber/IRC.

To be clear, i'm not advocating against decentralized chatrooms. I believe they are very useful for censorship-resilience (which can also be achieved with eg. nomadic identity though not exactly with the same threat model). I just wish decentralized chatrooms weren't the only option so the matrix protocol would be easier to implement and hosting a server wouldn't need gigabytes of RAM for few users.

> figuring out (...) configuration, (...) XEPs (...), clients and spam

It's not that hard to achieve, but information is sparse and hard to discover. That's one of the reasons we have founded recently the joinjabber.org collective to have a platform centered around the UX of end-users and sysadmins of the Jabber/XMPP network. All feedback/critique/contribution is welcome.