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I feel like that I should know this by now and that I might have known at some point, but at any rate: what does this number in the orange box indicate?

Image of top-bar showing an orange box with a number in it

There is also a blue box that appears to its left that I find equally baffling. An explanation would be appreciated. (Comment: the blue box got removed, mods still have one.)

Well, now that the meat of the mystery has been solved, here's my next question: why are there so many fewer posts actually "awaiting review" than the box would suggest?

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    $\begingroup$ What have you tried? (e.g., clicking it?) $\endgroup$ – user147263 Sep 20 '14 at 5:03
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    $\begingroup$ ...or hovering? $\endgroup$ – user642796 Sep 20 '14 at 5:11
  • $\begingroup$ Hovering did it! Thank you, that's a bit embarrassing. $\endgroup$ – Omnomnomnom Sep 20 '14 at 5:21
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    $\begingroup$ @Thursday to be fair, though, clicking it tells you that it has something to do with review. However, there does not to be a correspondence between the number in the box and the number of "posts awaiting review", as the hover-text so boldly claims. $\endgroup$ – Omnomnomnom Sep 20 '14 at 5:23
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    $\begingroup$ @Omnomnomnom: shouldiblamecaching.com $\endgroup$ – user642796 Sep 20 '14 at 5:48
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For 10k+ users those are posts awaiting review, but not necessarily your review. SE developers found it too expensive to compute the number for every user individually (given that users load question pages a lot more often than they load /review).

The orange box serves some purpose: it appears only when the number of pending reviews is 10 or more, indicating that some backlog may be building up. But the number itself is not that useful.

For 2k+ (yet not 10k+) those are the pending suggested edits.

Blue box is the number of suggested edits pending review. (If I remember correctly; I got rid of these lights, along with green reputation changes, long time ago.)

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