That's funny, because to me it seems like you're the one arguing for the sake of arguing and trying to get the last post in with the melodramatic "/unwatched". Either participate or don't, I don't care either way, but posting and then declaring how you're unwatching the thread is really childish.
Pray tell where the automated bounce handler according to you "tells you explicitly" that it will delete users from the member count. I did not know that, nor could I have guessed, because to me it's illogical.
Regarding "counters are a live representation of the current state" -- that's a bit of a stretch to assume since the word "Members:" in the stats implies nothing of the kind. It doesn't say Active Members, Confirmed Members or Members with Current Email Listed. If it did by default, that would be another matter. But it doesn't.
It's reasonable to me to not list moderated users who haven't posted yet due to being in the approval queue (if enabled). It does not feel reasonable to me to delist users who have posted in the past and those who haven't simply because we've recently detected that their email on record is not working, especially if we don't really require a working email to begin with. There are not so subtle nuances here that do matter.
This fact bears spelling out and emphasizing:
a working email is in no way necessarily a requirement for using XenForo. We all
like it when users have a working email, but the fact is that until I ran the automated bounce handler, thousands of accounts had non-working emails listed and nobody knew, cared or prevented the users from participating in the discussions due to it.
No, that's not my logic, this is your intentional misinterpretation. We were explicitly talking about users with invalid and/or bounced emails. They are dead accounts and not legit users.
That is exactly your logic, to wit: "They are dead accounts and not legit users
if they are not visiting your site and/or don't change their mail."
None of the other inactive users are visiting my site or changing their emails either. How are they any different then? Now, either you have an internal logic that works the same for all the users of a given type, or you have a "logic" that only works for some and not for others because it's inconsistent.
Again, you're free to label your users who don't currently have a working email listed as "dead" and "not legit". I don't happen to agree with that notion and it's not sensible on any forum with registration email verification turned off. If they're considered legit accounts for the purpose of showing in the stats at the time of registration and up to the point when/if the automated bounce handler is run, the same standard should apply later on as well regardless of the fact that their state was changed to "email bounced".