The other data shows that posts and comments are going up linearly (a little suspicious but OK), but I wonder how the modlog affects the data (meaning how is it captured and when). I made one comment to a honest post yesterday (hosted on a remote instance), which then the post was deleted by admins like so:

Removed Post Any app for call recording ? reason: Rule 2: Please use !askandroid@lemdro.id for support questions.

So my comment shows in my history but cannot actually be accessed; was this comment counted? was that post counted? Was I counted as an active user yesterday if that was the only activity I did all day? Was the one person who upvoted my comment before the thread was deleted counted?

Lies, damn lies and statistics. :)

[–] mesamunefire@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Yeah thats another good one. Its almost like it would be useful to see what each tracker would do in the following scenarios:

Create a persona instance with a couple of accounts (like 3)
See what each site says
Create a post/ create comment/ upvote sample post.
Ban an account (How many active users are now being counted? How many comments? Did that comment/post go away retroactively?)
other such experiments....
Let everyone know the results.

Wish I had more time.