The “Frequent Posters” statistics within a topic currently include hidden posts, such as whispers, and likes totals are also drawn from total number of posts. However, the category page only queries visible posters and stats. jcoates suggests that it’s inconsistent to change this behavior for frequent posters and likes. codinghorror notes that excluding whispers from topic stats might be painful, but jcoates points out that whispers are already ignored in the category view. A fix has been pushed by zogstrip to address this issue.
The frequent poster stats within a topic are currently based off of total number of actual posts, not those visible to the user. For example, log out and take a look at Onebox Link Trips 'First Quote' Badge. You will see the that Jeff and Joshua each wrote two hidden posts and TechAPJ is listed although he didn’t write any visible posts.
Likes totals are also drawn from total number of posts rather than visible.
Hmmm, do you think that’s a bug though? It might actually make sense to include whispers.
The frequent posters listed on the category page querys only visible posters and the stats for total replies only lists visible posts. Seems inconsistent to change to all posts for the frequent posters and likes.
Ah yup, that’s a fair call.
Hmm yeah, I don’t know how painful it is going to be to exclude whispers from the topic stats under the first post.
Just pushed a fix 
https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/0096ee40da5b848a2db2f5ecbfefd07ef494f934
