Member count settings: count bounced state users as members

[Alpha1]

XF does not count all users as members. Users which do not have a valid user state are not counted as members. There is some logic to this, because it makes no sense to count users that have never completed registration or those who were rejected or disabled or awaiting approval. But it does not even count bounced prominent users who have contributed tens of thousands of posts nor those who have been recently posted.

A major factor is that email has changed a lot over the years and bounce handling in XenForo is not optimal. See these bug reports and suggestions:

bounce handling

xenforo.com

But even if XF bounce handling would be optimal then some valid email accounts would still bounce and valid accounts would be in bounced state.
I have members who get their account set to bounced regularly, so they need to re-validate their account over and over. The issue lies with providers like Yahoo.
To ensure good email delivery you need to be overzealous with bounce processing, which sets valid users to bounced state.

I'm emailing a lot of members per day and the number of members displayed on my homepage goes up and down like crazy. It makes no sense. I've spoken to other big board owners who opt to simply disable the display of total members completely.

Long story short: it would be nice to have settings to set whether or not to count bounced state users as members.

 

[frm]

I've spoken to other big board owners who opt to simply disable the display of total members completely.

I've seen a couple big boards show total number, even of those not confirmed and even banned. I suppose this one is an admin's preference.

But, back to your members dropping after a bounce: They should come back to the count once they reverify. So, is it really an issue?

If 1000s drop because of this problem, but only 10s come back because they reverify, I would say it's more accurate to drop everyone and display those that do come back as members because, in my opinion, I'd want to show active members and not inactive ones.

 

[Alpha1]

I'm validating and processing email bounces quite rigorously. This is not about a mere 1000 more or less. I have 60k members with yahoo addresses, pretty much all of which get deactivated as they always return a hard bounce. users do receive the email and some do login to re-enable their account again and again. There's nothing XF can do about it because its an email provider issue.

But yes, its admin preference. I used to preference to not display bounced accounts, but now I'm seeing a significant drop for real members. It would be nice to have some settings. Also for consistency: an affiliate program manager asked me how many members I had. He read my reply and checked 2 days later and saw a number that was 10k lower. Which made me seem dishonest. Not much later it went up by 4k and it makes it seem really untrustworthy.

 

[Dragonfruit]

They're still 'members' you have, just because they haven't been back to update an email. How would this be different to anyone that's been inactive, but the email account is still valid, but they either forgot about your board or even forgot the password entirely and just doesn't bother to reset it?

I feel what you want more, is a way to display active members, people who's been online in the last 30 days or so. A count like that would be a lot more accurate.

 

[frm]

Also for consistency: an affiliate program manager asked me how many members I had.

I'd argue the most transparent — for this situation — would've been screenshots of stats from the ACP and/or from Analytics. That's because every board can count the public display of members differently, even if this is implemented.