The thread discusses the confusion caused by the “New Users” page in the Discourse admin interface, which appears to list all users rather than just recent sign-ups. The original poster, watchmanmonitor, noted that their list of 996 users included staff and long-standing members, leading them to suspect a configuration error.
Olivia clarified that this is expected behavior: the page displays all users, sorted by registration date (newest first), rather than filtering for a specific time frame. Asa (in German) suggested renaming the tab to “All” or “All Users” to avoid misunderstanding, a point watchmanmonitor echoed, noting they wasted time investigating trust levels due to the misleading label.
The discussion expanded into a broader critique of the UI. RGJ argued that the “New” tab is redundant and confusing because it functions as a sort order (by created date) rather than a filter, whereas adjacent tabs act as filters. They suggested removing the tab entirely, as the same view can be achieved by sorting the “Active” users list by creation date. Ed_S proposed alternative labels like “By Age” and “By Activity”, but RGJ disagreed, associating “age” with the user’s actual age rather than account creation date. Ed_S pointed out the fundamental inconsistency: the first two tabs are sort orders, while the rest are filters.
Heliosurge suggested using Site Texts to rename the tab if desired, but argued the current name makes sense if interpreted as a chronological list. However, watchmanmonitor and others concluded that labels like “Created” would be clearer and more concise than “New” or “Age”.
Our self hosted discourse is quite old (started Jan 2014) and when I click on “new users”
/admin/users/list/new all 996 users show up (even staff)
What settings might I have altered over the years which would cause discourse to think everyone is new?
Hi Allen,
This is expected behaviour. The New Users page lists all users, including staff, sorted by registration date (newest first). It doesn’t filter by how recently they registered.
So this doesn’t appear to be a settings issue.
Could we then consider renaming it to “All” or “All users”? The label “New users” would be somewhat misleading in that case.
Yeah, I was really confused, spent a lot of time reviewing trust levels, etc.
The “Active” tab also has every activated user, so having a “New” tab made sense.
All this in the context of: I’m trying to battle the wave of newly created users (see New users that have never been Seen or Activated )
After 13.5 years of using Discourse, I never realized this.
The same list can be obtained by sorting the Active users list on the Created column (/admin/users/list/active?order=created) so I suggest we get rid of that New tab? It is confusing and redundant, and I expect tabs to filter, not to sort.
Edit if it is removed then there should be a proper way to sort that list on mobile. There currently is not.
Perhaps these labels should be “By Age” and “By Activity”
In my head, “age” means the actual age of the person.
mm. I suppose the UX confusion arises because these two tabs are sort orders - the ones to the right are filters. Except the end one which is a different list. And the first, which is Settings.
Exactly, that is very counterintuitive
Mm. And I see there is already ability to sort on columns, and to show an ordering. So, if Active is actually sorted by Seen, and New is sorted by Created, we only need All, and to show the ordering in all cases. And pick a default, either sorted by Seen or by Created. (Another preference!)
(Apologies if this is precisely something previously suggested - I haven’t read back over the thread)
You could edit the Site Tests to achieve that. However imho it makes sense as it lists users from newest to oldest. Renaming it may also create some confusion as well. If not mistaken active users also lists all users but prioritizes list by rec3bt activity
Perhaps then like Reddit “Account age” maybe. Though to keep things tidy maybe an info tip vs a lot text in a label
“Created” vs “Age” and is still nice & short, and gets the point across iMO
