- Top: is based on votes or comments or both?
- What is the difference between Hot, Active, New, Most Comments, New Comments?
There are some details in the docs. I also saw a post somewhere about plans for changes but I saved in on a now defunct lemmy server and now I can't find it.
From my personal experience:
New - Newest first
Hot - New but in a different order
Active - Popular posts from this week (with a few posts from several months back just because)