There’s a way of giving a link as many clicks as you want.
Should I PM @lukegb how to perform this bug?
Strange, I can’t get the counter to show up.
Edit: This is a local bug, you can right click an external link to increase the counter locally, but the counter will reset if you then refresh the page.
The counter increments only from the user’s side. Go ahead and refresh the page after spam clicking it up to a large number. It will only have incremented by one, if you hadn’t yet clicked it. Just a temporary visual bug, that I find fun. :3
Knowing stackoverflow a little it would surprise me if it was actually a bug and not carefully thought through.
The reasoning I’m guessing is that by showing the user they are increasing the count, they are more likely to waste time increasing it rather then investigate real ways to raise the number. by resetting it when they navigate away from the page, they may forget about it and move on and not try harder. If they do notice, they get punished by realizing they wasted time.