I came back today, at my usual time, to run through the review sections in the ServerFault SE. Today I noted that over 270 first posts were indicated as being in the first posts queue. I am generally up-to-date and have not found that many in a single day. This is VERY unusual and seemingly too high for a single 24 hour period, especially with all the other reviewers around.
Was just wondering if this unusual activity was the result of some type of problem in the system?
Yes, it was the result of a problem - one that was fixed.
A bug in the First Posts review queue was causing questions from new users to not be added to the queue. The bug fix was rolled out earlier today.
The fix resulted in some 10,000 questions being added to the queue on SO.
It was 343, actually.
And it happens when they change the algorithm, like with the late posts review queue back when they started the new system - they restricted it to a date range, waited for the queue to empty, and then expanded the date range. In this case, they probably made the criteria for first posts/new users more permissive, which resulted in the new posts in the queue.
