Loss of User Count in Users section

We’ve started to get a number of people reacting to the “missing” user data that was removed from the users page. Most think it’s an error on our end and all are disappointed to learn that this was a deliberate move, despite my explaining that the way it was working was not sustainable for larger communities.

While I understand that this was one of the things we did in order to help lighten database load for those with larger communities, and that it's only in effect for communities over 10k users, perhaps we can still offer a user count somewhere else in the Dashboard — maybe even in its own tab, maybe not allowed to refresh more than once every 12 or 24 hours or something along those lines. I’m not sure what a good, workable solution might be, but the clients really rely on the data from us to be in a user-friendly format for a variety of reasons, including:

• continued budget from their superiors (they must prove it’s worth spending $X/month)
• advertiser revenue (they must be able to prove growth and such in order to raise rates)
• more easily accessible knowledge of the community’s health (one click and you know what your user count is)

Our stats, even the advanced ones, are not amazing, so making it more difficult for someone to get something as basic as a total user count is a pain point.

Here are some of the comments from the clients as to why this user data is necessary for them.

1) Harmonix:

Initial question:

We generally go to the Users section of the dashboard to see how many total users we have on our forums. The number used to appear next to the search box. However, the number is gone, and there are no users listed on the page, as shown in the screenshot below. If we search for users they show up, though.
 
Could you let us know if there’s an issue with our system?

Follow-up:

Thanks so much for getting back to me. We pull the total users count every week as part of our general stats roundup. It’s less of a “how many did we gain this week” and more of a historical keeping track of the growth. I’ll let the woman that pulls stats know that she can grab the new users from the dashboard and add it to the old number, but being able to see that total number somewhere has always been really important for us.

2) Heating Help:

Initial question:

When I go into our Vanilla dashboard and click on Users, I see an empty page (see screenshot attached). Can you please look into this?

Follow-up:

We definitely need to have the user count accessible because we provide current and potential advertisers with these metrics. And since advertising is a large part of what keeps our site up and running, having access to these numbers is very important to us. Please bring them back!

I did let them know that they can see the new users registering for the forum in the Dashboard stats and such, but not having a base count causes issues in ensuring they have accurate numbers.

Follow-up 2:

I know it's only been a week, but is there any update on if/when we'll be able to get the total user count back? We were just at a trade show and I want to send potential advertisers our updated media plan and I really need this number. I tried to get this info from the Dashboard to view our growth since January 31, 2015 from May 12, 2015, but the slider won't work for that time span. Analytics are an integral part of our business and it's very important that I have access to this data sooner rather than later. 

I did let her know how to use the slider tool properly (since May is the current month, you need to be in the daily view for that), but it’s obviously not as intuitive as looking at a single number.

3) S-TEC Forum (shimano):

I make a daily habit of checking how many new users have registered on my forum, and do that on http://sacforum.shimano.com/dashboard/user
 
On Friday, I had 11,401 users. On Monday when I checked, that page was blank. It still is. Did something change over the weekend on your end?

Laura responded:

We are making some changes to how the user page populates to help with overall performance. For now, while that page is still searchable, it will not calculate your total users. In the stats on your dashboad there is a metric for "Users" that is new sign ups, you can monitor the daily changes there. You can also request a CSV of your users information (they generally just contain usernames and emails), but note we limit requests for exports to once a month.

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Any solution to make this information relatively easy to access (and without doing math) would be great.