Activity measurement · Last updated August 24, 2026

How activity measurement works

The activity indicator (“Recently Active”, “Active”, “Very Active”) tells visitors whether a server actually has conversation happening. Here is exactly how we measure it, what the bot can and cannot see, and how to stop it.

What the bot records

When the ServerSift bot is in a listed server, it counts messages as they happen and keeps, per server and per hour, three numbers: how many messages were sent, how many channels had at least one message, and how many distinct authors posted (used only to spot artificial spikes). Once an hour those totals are written to our database and the in-memory counts are discarded.

What the bot never records

• Message text, attachments, embeds or reactions. The bot does not request Discord’s message-content intent, so it cannot read messages even if it wanted to.
• Who sent a message. Author ids are held in memory only long enough to count distinct authors within the hour, then dropped. Nothing per person is written anywhere.
• Member lists, roles, presence, voice activity, DMs, or private channels the bot cannot see.

Permissions the bot asks for

View Channels and Send Messages (so it can answer /bump). It uses the Guilds and Guild Messages gateway intents only. It never needs Administrator, and you can restrict which channels it can see; hidden channels are simply not counted.

How the status is computed

We look at a rolling window (7 days by default, admin-configurable) of hourly counts and compute a score from: message frequency with time decay (recent hours weigh more), channel breadth (conversation spread across channels beats one busy channel), consistency (activity in many hours beats one burst), and a normalisation for server size so a 50-member server is judged against its own scale, not a 50,000-member one. A single hour that is wildly above the rest is treated as a spike and capped. If we have data for less than half the window, no status is published.

Only Active and Very Active show the prominent indicator. The label reflects measured, aggregate activity — it is not an endorsement of the community.

Staleness

If the bot leaves, loses access, or measurements stop for more than 36 hours, the indicator is removed until fresh data arrives. Hourly measurements are deleted after 90 days.

How to stop measurement

Kick the bot from your server (Server Settings → Integrations, or right-click the bot member → Kick). Measurement stops immediately, the activity indicator disappears at the next health check, and your listing stays live — you simply lose the Verified badge, activity indicator and /bump. You can also remove the listing entirely from your dashboard.