by lee » December 13, 2009, 10:59 am
This is an error with the forum software itself. The new version, which we shall be upgrading to soon, removes banned members from the forum stats including birthday announcements.
Total members shown on the front page is not 100% accurate, it does include a few spammers, trolls, inactive members etc.
If we were to delete the above rather than ban, then they could immediately sign up again and post more spam. By banning their username, email address or IP address rather than deleting it, it makes it more difficult for them to sign up again.