What does this do, exactly? I'm no greenhorn when it comes to computers but then again there's certain areas where I'm no expert either.

This field in my account information says "60 / 60 (may not be up to date)" but why do I need this information, what would I be using it for?

If you're just browsing porn, you don't need to know about it

If you use an automatic tool e.g. Python to query the site, there's a cap on how fast you can make requests. I believe it's averaged out over a minute, so if you make e.g. 15 requests in a minute, you would expect to see "API Limits 45 / 60 (may not be up to date)" showing that if you make 45 more requests you'll get blocked for a while.

For readers who don't know what an api is for, you can use the api to automatically download data from the website. I use it to search tag aliases, to check sources for deleted duplicates, and to find posts that had a tag at one point but do not anymore. You could also use the api to make at tool like https://tagme.dev but that's a lot more work.

Pretty sure that DMails also affect API limit counter. Though who the hell sends 60 DMails per minute?

hexen said:
Pretty sure that DMails also affect API limit counter. Though who the hell sends 60 DMails per minute?

You mean to say you aren't member of any of the e621 mailing lists? /s

hexen said:
Pretty sure that DMails also affect API limit counter. Though who the hell sends 60 DMails per minute?

Nobody, it's impossible.
You are limited to 1 DMail per minute, and 20 DMails per hour. Mainly to prevent spam.