Post number out of sync

In a topic with many posts, the posts themselves don’t appear numbered, but there’s an orange scroll bar to the right that shows what’s currently in view. Looking at the Newcomb topic (nearing 700 posts now), I can put that scroll bar somewhere and it says something like 668/691 meaning 691 total posts (including the OP), and that post 668 is the post at the top of the window currently, which happens to be one of my posts.

But if I highlight a bit of that post and hit ‘quote’, I get [quote=“noAxioms, post:672, topic:298”] …

That says post 672, off by 4. That’s my gripe. For long topics, if this gets off by much and the posts are large, it gets pretty difficult to find your way back to the post you’re addressing.

I’m perhaps guessing that deleted posts account for the discrepancy?? I mean, if I delete a post, it leaves a ‘post deleted by author’ or some such place-holder. Maybe the count gets off only by post removed by moderation. Doesn’t matter. My point is, is there a software fix one can apply to make the orange numbers to the right stay in sync with the post count you get when you reply?

Interesting. It looks like the number 668 in 668/691 refers to the 668th post in the topic, but when this post was submitted it was the 672nd post, so it was assigned that post ID. Or something similar.

I’ll look into it. Possibly not.

If it helps:

I played warmer-colder with the site and located at least the first discrepancy.

In that topic, it’s in sync until post 413 (by Pierre). If I reply to 413, I get 413 in the [quote post#

If I reply to the post immediately after that (by Suny) the orange says 414 but the post number is 415. I did not hunt down the other three discrepancies.

The interesting thing is that 413 includes a diagram in it. My guess might be that the image in number 413 eats the 414 as well, sort of using up two meta-slots or whatever it is the engine counts.