Why do different users see a different number of questions in a tag?

Question

DO NOT SAY CACHING

I asked about the phone tag on SO. I saw 160 questions there (now 159): enter image description here

At least 5 people say there are ten times as many according to the comments on my question.

Why? (Note that no tab is selected in that screenshot)

I think the real question is, why is no tab shown as selected in that screenshot? Looks like a bug to me, unless something on your side (like a broken user script) is messing it up. (Also, the text in the upper right corner is kind of misleading; it really ought to say e.g. "159 frequent questions tagged...") — Ilmari Karonen, Feb 14 '14 at 17:43

Ruddy · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-14 15:17:17Z

6

Yours is defaulting to the frequent tab by the looks of it. there is 160 on there and overall there is 1,726.

Guess there is a bug with the tab not highlighting? But that is the frequent tab. Lets see if I can find a way to also do that.

answered Feb 14 '14 at 15:17

Ruddy

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You are probably right, because if I switch to newest and then back to frequent I see the same numbers, but then why am I defaulted to frequent and why does the tab not appear selected? – Kate Gregory Feb 14 '14 at 15:19
@KateGregory How are you making your way to that tag? Searching, clicking a link etc? I will test to see if I can get it to default to it. – Ruddy Feb 14 '14 at 15:20
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@KateGregory It's defaulting to that because the last time you were looking at a tag you had selected "frequent"? It "remembers" your selection... – Servy Feb 14 '14 at 15:21
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@Servy Sooooo basically some form of caching? – PeeHaa Feb 14 '14 at 15:23
@KateGregory I can indeed confirm that, it remembers the tab you clicked last. Goob job Servy – Ruddy Feb 14 '14 at 15:23
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@Ruddy clicking the link in a question - you can use the one in my question to try it. I think that should not remember your preferences, but if it does it should tell me that it does by highlighting the tab across the top – Kate Gregory Feb 14 '14 at 15:24
@KateGregory It does remember it but even on mine it does highlight the tab I am on. Even when going off the page and coming back to that tag by clicking the one in your question. How odd. – Ruddy Feb 14 '14 at 15:26
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@PeeHaa Yes, exactly. – Servy Feb 14 '14 at 15:30
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@Servy & Ruddy nice catch! – curtisk Feb 14 '14 at 16:48

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