“active users” are defined by lemmy: posts + comments + votes

The bot is trying to catch upwards trend in the amount of active users. This tends to be communities that were dead or fairly dead, and then one or two posts got some engagement and spiked the number up.

In terms of absolute active numbers, there’s no need for a bot because lemmy can tell you that. The bigger communities tend to swing up and down in terms of activity (cancelling themselves out).

For example, tenforward@lemmy.world had 65 posts this week, but active users ended up pretty much where it was. The table below has 28 entries as the crawler at lemmyverse usually reports 4 times a day, so it’s for about 7 days:

posts	subscribers	active users
903	2466	3233
902	2461	3259
902	2461	3259
895	2453	3194
894	2447	3455
894	2447	3455
888	2443	3392
888	2443	3392
883	2440	3447
883	2440	3447
879	2437	3493
879	2437	3493
875	2434	3467
872	2424	3631
872	2424	3631
868	2426	3588
868	2426	3588
863	2413	3457
863	2413	3457
856	2407	3446
856	2407	3446
854	2402	3247
854	2402	3247
847	2391	3188
847	2391	3188
844	2386	3081
844	2386	3081
838	2384	3235