I middle-click everything. Except on Discourse, where I middle-click, remember that doesn’t increment the counter, and then return to the page to left-click.
I know it’s documented behaviour, but I really hate this.
I’m sure most people would be fine with the counters over-counting rather than under-counting. At least that way you know people interacted with a link, whereas currently lots of people can follow a link but the damn counter never goes up.