consider:

http://api.stackoverflow.com/0.9/questions?page=0


    {
      "total": 764951,
      "page": 0,
      "pagesize": 30,
      "questions": []
    }

http://api.stackoverflow.com/0.9/users?filter=mike&sort=name&page=0

    {
     "total": 1161,
     "page": 1,
     "pagesize": 30,
     "users": [
      {
       "user_id": 27284,
       "user_type": "registered",
       "creation_date": 1223858821,
       "display_name": "wcmiker",
       // blah blah blah
      },
      { 29 other users omitted}
     ]
    }

The workaround seems to be to explicitly set `page` and `pagesize` to `0` whenever you want a count.

http://api.stackoverflow.com/0.9/users?filter=mike&sort=name&pagesize=0&page=0

    {
      "total": 1161,
      "page": 1,
      "pagesize": 0,
      "users": []
    }

While this works just fine, a consistent api implementation that infers a count operation from `page=0` alone would help provide a more consistent and concise api.