Default active showed too many old posts in the feed that never disappeared.
Hot was a little better, but still put too much weight on upvotes and comments leading to several day old posts showing up consistently despite all the communities I had subscribed to.
So what I’ve settled on for now has been new and top day, which has now been showing more new content instead of posts being buried.
I have my instance on 18.0 and it seems like that may not happen anymore. Beehaw hasn’t updated yet, maybe due to the captcha issues being fixed in 18.1.
Oh that is exciting. It’s amazing how much progress is being made since I’ve joined.