alt Hacker NewsCommunity size and positive community feedback, which is somewhat tangential to progress, which I assume is in the context of development. Also, the rate at which the original freenet community declines.
Number of contributors or pull requests isn't a good metric at the moment since the advent of Claude Code et al. has seen a dramatic uptick in both everywhere.
How is it tangential? Technical success is the primary driver of community growth, adoption, and long-term viability. The more it can do, and the better it does it, the more people will use it.