This came up recently in the Physics meta, and as it is a network-wide issue I am bringing it here.
Currently, the 10k tools page in Physics (and, I surmise, network-wide) has a toolbar on the top which includes a very visible red counter showing a count of flags. However, upon clicking on it, the counter seldom has anything to do with the actual number of flags available to review. If there are flags for me to review, the counter will typically show more than those, and very often I will be unable to see any flags at all:
This has come up before in this MSO answer, but the question it appears in seems to describe a different bug (the counter dis- and re-appearing over time) which was addressed and marked status-completed by Jarrod Dixon ♦. I raised this issue as a bug in the Physics meta, and Oded ♦ gave an explanation for that behaviour:
One you have flagged, but so have others - you are seeing the count of others on it, but you can't see it because you have flagged it.
The second one also has a couple of flags on it, but one of those is a moderator flag. The count includes the non-moderator flag, but the moderator flag prevents you from seeing the post.
So... the count is that of current non-moderator flags (minus yours), the posts don't show up in your list for two different reasons.
EDIT: On second thought, this may not be quite as simple. The flag count I see sometimes depends on what tab I'm in. At the moment I see the counter at 4 when I'm in the stats
through delete
tabs, and it goes down to 3 in the flags
tab (with no flags shown, as in the image above).
I contend that this is a design flaw: that counter should show the number of posts (or flags) I can and should help out with. There is no reason for me to know that there are posts with moderator flags on them, and it is redundant to show me posts I have already flagged. That counter is prominently visible across all of the 10k tools so that I will go to that page when there's flags I should be handling. Having a nonzero value when there's nothing I can see makes me have to go to the flags
page to check whether there's anything, and completely invalidates the purpose of the counter.
Also, while I'm at this, can the flags page say something like There are currently no flags for you to review
, much like the review queues currently do, when there are no flags there?
It is a bit unnerving to have a blank screen there.