Category counts: some have per-month but not all

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AI-generated summary

jidanni pointed out an inconsistency in the category counts on https://meta.discourse.org/categories, where some categories display per-month counts, while others show only total counts. bryce agreed that it’s likely due to less active categories or collections of items being shown as grand totals, and suggested adding a label to indicate when a category is shown as “total”. Moin mentioned an existing discussion about topics per week, which might be related to the issue. jidanni expressed that the discussion is becoming too complex for them to follow.

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Today I am looking at
https://meta.discourse.org/categories

In the far right some of the items have a per-month count. Some simply don’t. The mouseovers pretty much say the same thing.

Well, if all items had a per-month count,
or if all the items had just simply a total count,
that would make perfect sense.

But showing per-month counts on some, and total counts on others, causes the user to have to guess why you do so.

Perhaps it is because the items with just totals are very active categories, so per-month counts don’t matter.

Or maybe they are very inactive categories, so thus their per-month counts don’t matter.

Also users don’t know what is considered very active vs. very inactive, or in fact if that has anything to do with what is being shown here.

I mean if we are looking at our savings account passbook, and there is one column whose meaning changes from line to line, it would be weird.

Therefore, perhaps in the mouseover, add a few words saying what is going on.

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That’s a good observation, and I think you’re right that it’s showing grand totals for less active categories and categories that represent a collection of items (i.e. the themes category). As the monthly new topic total approaches zero, I think it becomes more useful to see the total topics instead.

What would you think about having a label for the categories shown as totals, so it would read as “60 total”?

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There is also topics per week

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Well all I can say is this is all rapidly getting above my head so I better keep my mouth shut.