it's not based off people self reporting as not everyone is in a forum to share news and as you say, it's not reliable. I meant manual as there's some way to see daily approvals, rejections and rfe's, I don't do this and haven't looked into it to I don't know the *exact* process but it's pulled from the USCIS site so it's reliable. It's just not *exact*. So it's usually off by like a few 10's from what I've seen
You're correct, I think some people will do it manually and count from where ever you pull the data but some people have made computer scripts that automate this process.