This is not a duplicate of Please don't red alert me for queues I've handled, because this reports different things from that question. That question is specifically about the case where the user has run out of daily reviews; this question reports different problems outlined in the below bullets. While this post also formerly covered that, that has since been edited out.
The review queues indicator shows all reviews in a queue a user has access to, no matter if that user is able to review them.
As a result, there are various circumstances where the review indicator gives false information:
- There are items in a queue which the user does not have the reputation to review. (I only know of this happening in the suggested edits queue, where tag wiki edits land in the same queue as post edits.) This once caused me some consternation.
- The only pending edits in the suggested edits review queue are the user's own tag wiki edits. (Users with 5,000 reputation but less than 20,000 can review tag wiki edits, but can't bindingly edit them.)
- There is a single pending suggested edit, which is currently being reviewed by someone else and has been "checked out" to that reviewer.
- The reviewer has already voted on a post in the queue (e.g. flagging a current Low Quality post as NAA or VLQ externally, or externally voting to close or reopen a post currently in one of those queues)
- The reviewer has skipped reviews
- The user has reviewed all items in a queue, but they have not left it yet
There have been numerous calls to fix all different aspects of this, as you can see by the links above. However, at heart it is all one problem: the indicator appears for queues when a user can’t review the items in the queue. I suggest solving this problem once and for all, by making sure that users are not notified for reviews they can do nothing about.
