I need to figure out what Mastodon insances have the good local community I want to be involved with.

Mastodon doesn't form community quite the way I normally experience it. Pitching in and helping is hard here. It's a bunch of individuals, but not quite a community. Some form anyway, but it's not quite right. I wonder how that can be improved.

@aredridel Sounds like what you're looking for is more along the lines of Google+, which is all about community-oriented social networking.
@mmstick I never found any communities there, and it definitely didn't feel organic that way, and its notions of identity really don't work for me. While my own is stable and consistent, my friends' are not.
@aredridel I'm not sure what you mean. There's a community tab where you subscribe to communities that are relevant to you, and then you are free to post relevant content within these communities, while reading what others have posted. Very organized.