>A few of us asked to have only the number put back, but to no avail.

I think Michel kindof had a one track mind on the idea. He figured (or at least this is my hypothesis, since he didn't care to discuss in detail the reasoning behind his actions I have to guess) that such a number would only be useful if it didn't "double up" due to the same account reading a message multiple times.

To avoid this number he would have to gather information about who reads what, and whether that information was displayed or not, it isn't a good activitiy to be engaged in from a privacy perspective. Had Michel just counted the number of reads of a message, whether a single user accounted for multiple reads or not, he would have no issues.

I don't think any other members would have issues with this type of counting scheme either.