The automatic backup feature of Discourse has a setting backup frequency. However, I suspect that this setting does not control the backup frequency, but rather the backup period (where period = 1/frequency), i.e. when set to 4 my suspicion is that it would create a backup every 4 days and not 4x per day.
This is not clear in the user interface. The hint below the setting says “How frequently we create a site backup, in days”, which indicates that indeed this is the period and not the frequency. It also doesn’t indicate whether it accepts integers or floats.
I would suggest either changing the (label of the) setting to backup period, or adding a little explanation that a setting of 4 would create a backup every 4 days. This would take away the ambiguity between “most likely explanation” and “actual literal meaning”.
Saying that is the same as saying “this is the frequency of the sound in seconds”; it doesn’t make sense. Frequency (of sound, but also of other things) is measured in Hertz (1/time) and not in time. Maybe I’m being a bit pedantic about this, but in my experience getting the units of measurements right helps a lot in software development and the understanding of said software by end users.
@mpalmer’s suggestion of “The period of time between backups” looks fine to me; it could be shortened to just “Days between backups”.
As a new user, it was unclear what the settings meant. I had to read the description, and then the next setting and figure out how the two work together. It wasn’t completely clear until I read your post about automated backups.