A while ago I was thinking about my internet usage and trying to understand how I use it. Honestly, I wanted to justify to myself that the internet and computers where a good.  Though I new that stance wasn't completely correct I had seen myself loose night to Youtube and Reddit. I would be board and lazy just clicking the related links and trying to find a rabbit hole to dive into for a bit or merely waist time bingeing on old TV shows online. This is when i started to come up that idea of Active and Passive. It was the contrast between my usage and what I saw being done on the internet. 
I make the distinction that Active usage is when you engage and seek out new information and content. While Passive usage when one uses vague search and lets the website guide them where the website wants them to go. They have little agency and so are at them whims of boredom and web design. They find what is easy and known not the difficult unknown. 
Active user are willing to put in the time and effort to find out many things on the internet. 

Most communities whether on the internet or in real life have active and passive members or users. The content comes for a small number of source and most of the time is excepted. The passive members offer an audience but not an interlocutor or an active member. So the dilemma should be to you try to convert the passive members in the group to more active ones or do you try to grow the community and hopeful gain more active users from other places. Does the community seek depth of berth. Do they want quality or quantity. It seem to me that most try and strive for the latter. It is a much easier to get and measure. 
People are willing to follow the problem whether it is active or passive. Whether there is engagement or disinterest, whether there is discussion or desolation. Community that the beginning focus on growth in term of berth and not depth will grow then fizzle out if there end up being little depth. But a deep community can work slower and be more powerful because they will start to become sought out for their depth. 

It is a weird World out their.