Fair points. That being said, I'd value the participants more so than the run-of-the-mill lurker. One creates the content for the lurkers to consume.
Reddit makes money on the lurkers, but the NEED the commenters and mods to maintain the website as a whole. A straight count of users does not at all reflect who contributes the most value to the website.
If Reddit wants to return to "business as usual" the moderators of the considerable numbers of blacked-out subreddits need to be replaced with a fresh crop of moderators as good or better than the current crop, but who also swear fealty to the administration and are willing to overlook the dire state of the moderation suite.
I don't know about you, but I think the odds of that happening without significant bumps in the road are pretty slim, and are likely going to alienate even more users in the process.
The mods merely have to meet a minimum threshold of quality, they don't have to be as good or better than the current ones. The original mods were also regular users, with all of the averageness that comes with that.
Reddit makes money on the lurkers, but the NEED the commenters and mods to maintain the website as a whole. A straight count of users does not at all reflect who contributes the most value to the website.