[SnakeMXIM]

At a specified instance, give or take a few seconds, the statistics on the main page was as follows:



whilst in the Members List, the following statistic was given:



You shall notice that in the first picture, the newest member was indicated as Nadine and if you go the user's profile page the URL looks as follows:



These statistics conflict. The main page statistics indicate 17,434 members, the Members List indicate 15,959 members and the newest member user number indicate 17,705 members. Which one is correct and why the discrepancy?

[Rudy]

Users who never verify their account don't show up on the members list; i'm not sure about the 17434 v. 17705, though. It may be that banned users are not counted in the former number, but that's just a guess.

[antistu]

Banned or deleted accounts? I’m not sure how the forum/system accounts for them all. I know I have run other forums as admin and you can delete user accounts and sometimes thread posts, member counts remain.

[Jezebel]

This is my understanding of the way it works:

The userid number is issued upon registration. This number will count valid members, members who registered multiple accounts and later had accounts merged or deleted, spambot registrations, users who started the registration process but never validated their accounts, any temporary "test accounts" admins create and later delete, and so on. When invalid accounts are removed, the old numbers do not get reused. It only adds +1 to the previous highest number. This is why it's the largest.

The member number displayed on the bottom of the forum index counts the total number of users in the database. Users who were merged (which sometimes happens when users register multiple accounts due to registration issues) or otherwise completely removed from the database are not counted.

The number on the members list only counts the total number of members on the member list. The members list does not show banned users or some of the other invalid accounts that still have entries in our database. For example, we keep all banned users in our database (such as spambots) because our database can store information about them to prevent them from registering again, but we wouldn't want all that garbage on the members list.

The members list number is the most accurate of the three.

[SnakeMXIM]

Thank you. That is very informative.