Our most important users (read: $$$) were also the most sophisticated. They also appeared to like numbers... as numbers helped them when they complained back to us that our system sucked. If we took information (as bullshitty as it was) away, they accused us of hiding the truth. As Calvin said to the monsters under his bed... they lie, I lie. Our process was very heavily weighted near the end...so if you made it to 90%...and hung on, it would very likely finish. Again, you need to know your users and play to their strengths/weaknesses and track metrics.
Probably creative accounting. Nobody really knows what their "users" actually mean anymore. There's no way to really grow users from their particular baseline.
Besides clients/users you have (not in any order): investors, employees, security, stability, sustainability, usability, education, learning curve, ethics, morality, honesty(?), the community, the environment, the economy, humanity, history...
I see... Interesting problem, we had a similar issue previously where we didn't define our users well. This time we rigorously interviewed potential users before even started anything :D
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