I agree this feature needs further tweaking. I’ve shared your concern internally already. You’ve caught us during a time when many of us are on leave, so please bear with us - we’ll get more eyes on this topic in the next week or so.
Thanks Robin for sharing your use case! It’s not so different from a small private discourse community I manage for my local neighborhood. I invite everyone personally, and as they join they specify their street address and contact phone number. I verify this information personally and correct/add it as needed.
Many of these people don’t ever actually log in again or participate in discussions, but they need to be visible in the directory so their neighbors can get to know them and know how to reach them.
Promoting them to TL2 is an option on my site because badges are not so relevant, but still it’s awkward to promote 100+ existing members without jumping through a bunch of hoops requiring insider knowledge or doing alot of menial clicking through the admin user list.