I don't know what gave you that idea?

I'm fine with using the activity comparison to declare a winner.

But valkey was created a few weeks ago, obviously it's going to have a burst of activity. However most forks die off rather quickly after the initial burst of enthusiasm. That one might be different, because it has corporate sponsors.

So, in 6 months, do the exact same comparison (recent activity, # of recent contributors) and it'll be good enough for me.

And that’s also true insofar as it’ll never be a perfect measure and in some cases (such as comparing a mature project to a brand new fork), it’s a bad measure.