in /about, one can see the total number of accounts on the forum. Does this number include:
deleted users? I suppose not.
anonymized users? I guess not either but just checking.
suspended users? According to my test, yes.
deactivated users? According to my test, yes.
(but I’m unsure how the counter is updated.)
If it does include suspended & deactivated users as I think it does, is it possible for me to achieve that:
Obsolete users accounts are impossible to login with, but their posts are not deleted;
And they are not counted in the total number of users?
Also, could their posts be preserved, but also their username on each post? (sort of a new option between suspended and anonymized if you see what I mean. It would be great to know who posted something even though the account doesn’t exist anymore.)
Thanks for the pointer to this guide! I am unable to locate the definition you are talking about. As far as I understand, the number of users is the number of real users but the link said to explain what real users are seems to highlight the wrong lines of the file. I browsed the file but I’m still unable to determine this definition, so I suggest it to be explicit in the guide.
But anyway, let’s say it’s true that “suspended, staged and system users are excluded”
When I suspend a user for testing purposes and hard-refresh the about page, the number remains the same. How is that so? Is that page not dynamically updated?
The same thing happens when I deactivate a user. You seem to implicitly say they are not excluded, so I shouldn’t be surprised, but deactivating a user is a more radical action than suspending one (because the latter is supposed to be temporary), so it strikes me as illogical.
There is also the last part of my post that is not covered:
Also, could [obsolete users’] posts be preserved, but also their username on each post? (sort of a new option between suspended and anonymized if you see what I mean. It would be great to know who posted something even though the account doesn’t exist anymore.)
Is that currently possible in any way? If not, what would be the most logical way to go regarding obsolete users:
deactivate them: but they could reactivate their account by simply validating their email address again? Or not? I’m unsure how they would do that.
suspend them: but indefinitely? isn’t that supposed to be temporary and a sanction?
Sorry for nitpicking but I feel that might be useful to me to be extremely clear on this.
I can’t help but think you are putting way more thought into this than you need.
The stats on the about page are updated using a regularly scheduled sidekiq task. You can run it manually by going to /sidekiq/scheduler on your site and selecting the trigger button for Jobs::AboutStats.
You don’t want to deactivate user accounts, unless you want them to reconfirm their email address before logging in again.
This is what you want. We do this on our internal site when people leave the company.
