What is the red dot next to something in the review queue?

Question

I'm one of those people who has to get rid of flags, be it on my phone, emails or on here! Whenever I have a grey dot on the review queue, I complete all the tasks, but now I have run into this:

What does the red dot mean? Have I done something wrong?

I looked in the help pages but couldn't see anything relating. That queue is empty so it doesn't seem to be anythign to do with that.

I'd appreciate any insight.

Answer 1

That is the “review needed” indicator that is shown to reviewers when the queue is getting full. There is more information about how it works on Meta.

You’ll see the indicator is turned on:

1. if any review queue has a red dot (explained below) and
2. if it’s been at least an hour since you clicked on the review icon.

So the idea is that when you see the indicator light up, it’s a reminder that there are reviews to be done if you haven’t looked recently. The goal is to draw reviewers’ attention to queues that can use some help.

Each queue may be in one of three states:

1. No dot (empty queue)
2. Grey dot (at least one but fewer than N review tasks)
3. Red dot (N or more review tasks)

At the bottom it says

Finally, all active tasks are counted for each queue when determining if a queue is in “danger”. Thus, there may be times when the indicator will light up but you’ll be unable to do anything about it—for example, if you’ve already done all the reviews you’re allowed to do for the current day in that queue, or if all the items to be reviewed are your own work.