I believe the counts reflect only direct responses to a post. Responses to responses are not included. In otherwords, it represents how many children a node has, not how many children/grandchildren/greatgrandchildren/etc..
Well if thats true then the problem is even worse!
If you look at Perl Monks Discussion I posted something that you replied to, under the title A PerlMonks 'Community' section? at the very instant the replies counter says 9. There are only 7 (grand)-children, only 4 of which are direct children. Unfortunately neither of these numbers is 9. :-)
Have a look around and you will see the counts are consistantly inaccurate for more than 1 reply.
Yves
-- You are not ready to use symrefs unless you already know why they are bad. -- tadmc (CLPM)