The mysteriously increasing "Discussions" counter
If I go to "My Discussions" in the Quick Links box, I can see 18 discussions that I started, the most recent at the end of April. Ditto if I click my silhouette/picture at the top right and choose "My Discussions".
If instead I go to my profile (by clicking the silhouette/picture and choosing my name) and click on Discussions there, it at first shows me 2 (!) discussions, but if I click "more" a gazillion times, it'll eventually deign to show me 36 threads. (Six of those aren't actually threads I started, but leftovers from preceding systems where I replied to a question with an attached image.)
So in other words, the system is aware of at most three dozen threads/discussions "belonging" to me.
Yesterday, the count (in both My Discussions and Discussions) was 60.
Today, it's 62.
I have been observing the slow creep for months now, but I have yet to figure out any pattern or rhyme or reason to it. I have no idea what action on my part causes it to increment: I do everything exactly the same way, and sometimes it has gone up, sometimes it hasn't.
Any ideas?
Best Answer
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Hmmmm. In theory, it should simply be counting any discussions you started. One thing I'm seeing is that when you report a post, it is being counted as a discussion. I think I know why it does this but it's still weird to me that it would do this. In the Reported Post queue where moderators go to fix these issues, it is setup just like you see discussions in the community. My theory is that it considers your report as a 'new' discussion and it gets counted. I'll have to do some asking and digging around to find out for sure, but that might be why your counts don't seem to make sense.
Sam 😊
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My counter is also wonky, @Julia Szent-Györgyi.
In quick links, I have 65. If I go to my profile image, I see 65. If I open my profile, I see the number 65, but multiple clicks for more shows a total of 18.
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Sam, you mean flags (reports) increment the discussion counter?!?
I'll need to pay closer attention to that. I've been looking at everything having to do with posting and commenting; it never occurred to me to even remotely consider that reporting a miscategorized post would have any effect on that counter. This is at least partly due to the total invisibility of such flags/reports, from a user's perspective: I cannot even tell whether I've already reported a particular post or not when I'm reading it.
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@Julia Szent-Györgyi I know right!? Yes that's what I mean and it doesn't make any sense to me. I've asked the team that supports our community platform about this. We'll see what they come back with. I'll let you know. 🙄
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@Sam Sulser, I can now confirm that yes, it's the use of the "flag" thingy that's so inexplicably incrementing my discussions counter. (I had yet another opportunity to report that a thread that was exclusively talking about LDS rites really didn't belong in the Family Tree category where it was posted.)
Given that these flags/reports, once sent, are completely invisible to mere mortals like me, can someone please look into disconnecting them from this counter?
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@Julia Szent-Györgyi I got conformation that this is working as designed. I'm still not sure why you would want it that way but that's how they set it up. My next option is to request an enhancement from our vendor to give us the option to count it or not. I will get that request submitted and see where it goes. Sorry that it's weird like that!
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I am also experience 'magical flag numbers'.
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