Yeah, I am the engineer mentioned in the article, and I agree the explanation doesn&#x27;t really work. The pieces of the explanation that ended up in the article itself don&#x27;t add up to a coherent explanation. The fault for that is mostly mine. In hindsight, my original explanation was too long and too elaborate to be helpful. It&#x27;s a good reminder that it is easy to go to far with an analogy and end up complicating the thing you were trying to simplify. Oh well, live and learn :)<p>There are more (coherent and to-the-point) details about PoolCounter in the prologue to PoolCounter.php in MediaWiki&#x27;s source tree:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;wikimedia&#x2F;mediawiki&#x2F;blob&#x2F;1617e7822eaf74261687d2d2c3148ce10ab5da69&#x2F;includes&#x2F;poolcounter&#x2F;PoolCounter.php#L3-L43" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;wikimedia&#x2F;mediawiki&#x2F;blob&#x2F;1617e7822eaf7426...</a><p>And in a short blog post by Domas Mituzas, who is the original author of PoolCounter:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dom.as&#x2F;2009&#x2F;06&#x2F;26&#x2F;embarrassment&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dom.as&#x2F;2009&#x2F;06&#x2F;26&#x2F;embarrassment&#x2F;</a>