some of the languages have not been updated in years or have been archived

Or moved to another platform like GitLab or self-hosted. Just because it isn't on GitHub, doesn't mean it has ceased being developed *somewhere*.

I was using the link provided by the website

I think this is measuring '"stars" along a stability scale'. It's possible (but not proven) that stars *might* measure popularity to some degree, but PRs and issues is def a measure of stability -- more issues and PRs means it is changing a lot or has a lot of bugs or new features.

This is not measuring popularity at all.

You also have to factor in the age of the programming language as well. So the PRs and issues would have to be relative to how old the language is.

Well, such could be said about Rust, TypeScript, or Zig in relation to Python. Not just Vlang. It may point to other factors at play, such as user satisfaction or enthusiasm. Python has a large number of critics, as well as fans.

As Python is a older language, its users may tend to go other places and look to GitHub less. There are many sites, not to mention Python's own, where people can download releases or get information.

There are other GitHub metrics to look as well, such as contributors or forks. In both of these, Python has a huge number in comparison to other languages.