Well... I'm not a big fan of public ages, I tend to stay in my private instances or (private hood instances) most of the time so I cannot really tell if "Stranger's Hood" is always showing up in public links or not...
I have invite to the hood so I can go there anytime. The best way to see if a hood is active or not is to actually go there physically and look at the Age Visitors List. If you see a lot of recent activities then the hood is active. If the last guy that showed up in a particular hood did it 4 weeks ago and the one before him was 7-8 weeks ago, it might be a good tell that the hood is inactive.
If he has sent you a pm you can always ask him in pm. He should be able to tell best.
For the hood members themselves, I don't know who they might be as this info is unavailable for outsiders or visitors like me. If I can make a comparison here... with my avatar Annabelle, I'm member of a hood of nearly 70 members and beside one of my french skydiver buddies (2 of them lately), I didn't see anyone else of that hood since months. I think that's the reality for 99% of the hoods. The only real active hoods are DMoA and the new hood founded by ex-Jaruku's members. The others can be active for an event.
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On MOULa shard:
Annabelle 03632553 & Sophie (aka STA1) 15112736 - main public avatars
Annabot 209XXXXX - the bot