Keeping the member count true?

How do you keep your member count? I've seen some admins bloat their member count either by editing the template to put in some overblown number or using a hack to do so or even going so far as creating fake members.. I always questions why someone would do that..Any long time forum admin will tell you it's not the quantity but the quality of members.

Anywho, I don't count banned, awaiting email confirmation, or read-only members in our official member count (displayed at the bottom of forum home) nor on our member's list.

It helps just to keep the number true plus gives advertisers a live and true representation of our numbers.

 

I don't modify my member count in any way; I leave it alone. As you said, quantity isn't the most important thing - quality is.

Does disabling the "Show on Member List" option in the usergroup settings also discount them from the total Members Count in the forum statistics? I didn't think it does, nor did I know you can control which members/groups are counted in this value.

 

I also believe in keeping the member count true. I have it set so that you must have 1 post before you are included in the member list. Banned users aren't counted in any way, and users awaiting conformation aren't counted either.

 

I agree with all of you. It's useless to say you have 300 members if only 5 members post.

 

Yes, changing statistics of your forum in any way is silly to me. The number should be true, or else it serves no good at all. Saying you have 1,000 members when you have 500 is just as bad as saying you have 10,000 members when you have 500. It's not true either way, and I doubt someone will want to join your forum merely by the numbers they see, rather than the actual content and appearance.

In addition to that, I have never believed in disabling post count in any sections of a forum. Post count is a number that keeps track of how many posts you've made on a forum. Disabling this is making that number false and highly inaccurate. Maybe the forum you disabled it in is your off-topic forum, but they're still posts, and that is what the post count stat is tracking.

 

I generally disable post counts in staff only forums. Mainly because the general members can't see them, so why should the posts from that forum add to the total?

 

I can see your point there.

 

I've never modified the member count and I never will. No need.