Why is the orange pending edit reviews counter replaced/lost for 10K users?

Question

Before I reached 10K, the orange counter next to the top bar's "Review" link was very useful. It popped-up as soon as there was some suggested edit(s) to review so they can quickly get my attention.

After reaching 10K, since a recent "evolution", this counter theorically now shows the total number of pending reviews for everyone, no matter if I have any pending review myself or not. Concretely, it is just always present displaying some random number between around 5 an 10.

I see it a bit like a mail notifier notifying you that someone has received an email even if you yourself have no unread messages. It just feels useless to me or, to be fair, I do not understand the role and meaning of this indicator.

Let's say the counter shows 5 but I have no pending review. What should I do to get it to 0? Or should I just ignore it and miss a lost feature? (damned, this was punishment for having written too much answers, 10K users are actually being sanctioned here ;) !)

The more I read, the more I have the impression that this number is just a trend information misplaced here instead of the "Stats" tab. It just seem obvious to me to reserve such orange-highlighted indicator to an urgent and actionable information... and again I perceived the previous indicator as really useful.

Answer 1

This has been answered over on meta.SE

It is the number of pending edit reviews. They may not be accessible to you because of rep, or because you have already reviewed and they are waiting on someone else to review.

Answer 2

I've found no technical answer for this, so my best guess is that the answer lies somewhere else.

My observations are that the counter now takes into account all review queues from everybody, and pop-ups only when a certain threshold (most probably defined on a per-site basis, each site having different loads, the threshold appearing to be currently set to 3 reviews on Security SE), leading to these notable effects:

• The counter may be present while I have myself no pending review in any queue,
• The counter may be absent while I have some pending reviews (total number of pending reviews < threshold).

Here is how I understand this now:

• While the user is below 2K, there is no such indicator (even though starting from 500 a user already has access to a few review queues). At this stage the new user user should focus on understanding how SE works and what defines a good post on the current site.
• This counter first appears when the user reaches 2K. He has gained more experience, this counter will notify him about the status of his own Suggested Edits queue. This is a way to encourage the user to familiarize himself with the reviewing process.
• Starting from 10K, the counter keeps the same visual look but as I saw his meaning is completely changed. Having gained some experience, the user is given a more management-like role (as can be understood from the 10K privilege lecture: "we're counting on you to guide the community and lead by example").
  Such user should:
  • Not focus on individual review tasks but instead delegate this to lower rep users so they can evolve,
  • Just ensure that the reviews queues remain manageable, that's why he is only alerted when the queues as a whole go beyond some threshold so he can act accordingly (take a part in the review process, or in the worst case invite other established users to give a hand).

Answer 3

There are two things going on here.

1. As you noticed, before you reached 10k, the count was of suggested edits; now, it's of all queues.

2. The number is heavily cached, which can make it seem wildly inaccurate when the queues are empty or nearly so (the difference between 0 and 5 feels bigger than the difference between 110 and 115).

There's not necessarily any action for you to take if you click on the number and don't see anything to do. An exception might be if you'd previously skipped a review and want to go back to it.