over the past few days, several times i've clicked on "questions", and instead of increasing by (approximately) the number of "new questions" mentioned in the gray bar at the top of the page, the question count has decreased.
for example, just a couple of minutes ago, the previous count of 44,092 changed to 44,062.
since i often leave the window open while i go away (sometimes even overnight), i have been using the difference in the count to let me know how many questions i have to catch up on. having it decrease is rather counterproductive.
any explanation?
a couple of years ago, i posed a similar question, but in the opposite direction: How can the question count increase without a new question appearing at the top of the list?. this was diagnosed as a caching issue. does the present anomaly have the same cause, or is the site just trying to anticipate the second anniversary of the former question?