From what I can see, “Hot” seems like a boosted “New” — it favors new posts, and ranks them by activity [1.1], whereas, from what I understand, “Active”, is more like the classic forum format where a comment bumps it back up to the top, but ranked also based on score [1.2].
From what I can see, “Hot” seems like a boosted “New” — it favors new posts, and ranks them by activity [1.1], whereas, from what I understand, “Active”, is more like the classic forum format where a comment bumps it back up to the top, but ranked also based on score [1.2].
References