If you're going to fetch important quantitative data using a client-side Ajax query, then you really shouldn't default that value to "0". That results in a del

If you're going to fetch important quantitative data using a client-side Ajax query, then you really shouldn't default that value to "0". That results in a delay of several seconds or more when the page displays "0" even if the actual value is say, "12". It would be much better to default to either the empty string, or "-", or "fetching..." or something like that. In my case, there was a "0" on the page as the main value for at least 5-10 seconds (probably due to HN load) before the correct value was displayed ("12").