Display of Member Count

[shanebp]

Following up on #4235

boonebgorges sez:
"The idea is this: The "total members" number that you were formerly seeing is actually not very meaningful."

It's very meaningful to site owners and any devs who are touting a site (example jjj re buddypress.org ). Valid or not, the total count is used as a measure of success. Display of that number is important.

So, while the change makes sense in 1.6, it will elicit howls upon upgrading. And result in ~184 repeats of the same question in the forums.

I think there are only two places where the displayed count will be an issue:
The 'All Members' tab count in Activity and Members.

So why not provide an option re what number ( active vs. all ) to display there?

I can't create a patch, but here are the snippets for creating the option in admin.php?page=bp-settings
​https://gist.github.com/3105405

I'm not sure how best to use this option in the code... Just in bp-default templates ?

[boonebgorges]

Valid or not, the total count is used as a measure of success. Display of that number is important.

It's a downright misleading measure of success. If you have 1,000 active members but 1,100 total members, it means that 100 people signed up but never logged in. Why is that something you'd want to trumpet?

Adding an admin option for this seems like overkill. Most site admins will not even understand the distinction being made, much less have a strong enough opinion about it to warrant an option in the UI. I would not be opposed to adding a filter, though even that is overkill, given that there's already a filter in place.

I personally feel like the old behavior was a *bug* that was fixed by r5987. But if the general consensus is that fixing this bug will piss off a lot of people, then I'm willing to be overruled. Seeking feedback from the other devs.

[shanebp]

So the active members count will include all members who have logged-in at least once ?
If so, then this enhancement is overkill.

I thought perhaps it was excluding some members based on the age of last_activity.
( which I suspected was part of the #4348 issue )

[boonebgorges]

So the active members count will include all members who have logged-in at least once ?

Yes, that's right. A 'last_activity' value is set once a user logs in for the first time, and that value is never deleted as long as the user is still registered - it never expires. "Has logged in at least once" is, for what it's worth, BP's definition of "active". If you'd been interpreting last_activity differently, I can understand why you'd be anxious about the change.

Your issue at #4348 does not appear to be related to this. I'll leave a comment there with some thoughts. Is it OK to close this ticket then, or do you still want to see what the other devs have to say about the issue?

[shanebp]

Close, please!