Confusion between backup "frequency" and "period"

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”.

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It seems quite clear to me. It is the frequency of backup in days.

If you think different wording would help, feel free to propose it.

“The period of time between backups”. You don’t measure frequency in units of time, you measure it in units of time-1 (aka 1/time).

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”.

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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.

Sure, @jomaxro can take this and make an edit so that the help text is clearer.

Copy updated:
https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/48aea2a9fcf926893af78eab172c97489e3b2d9a

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