Is it my imagination (scratch that, it's definitely not), or does simply browsing method doc pages (without using the "Run" function) consume quota?

From Bash using httpie and jq (on a private, non-shared IP):

$ http "https://api.stackexchange.com/2.3/questions?fromdate=1648771200&order=asc&sort=creation&site=askubuntu&pagesize=100&page=1" | jq ".quota_remaining"
164
# Repeat again
$ http "https://api.stackexchange.com/2.3/questions?fromdate=1648771200&order=asc&sort=creation&site=askubuntu&pagesize=100&page=1" | jq ".quota_remaining"
163

Go browse the /answers method doc in the browser. Then /answers/{ids}.

Then, again:

$ http "https://api.stackexchange.com/2.3/questions?fromdate=1648771200&order=asc&sort=creation&site=askubuntu&pagesize=100&page=1" | jq ".quota_remaining"
154

Each doc (method) page hit seems to consume 4 quota units.

On the other hand, pages like Write Access do not drain quota.

This appears to be because the "Try it" on each method page makes a call to /sites to retrieve the list of possible SE sites, whether or not the "Try it" feature is even used.

Is this expected? I didn't find anything here with the following searches:

• quota method
• quota doc
• quota help

Sure, 4 per page isn't much if you've registered for a key and have upped the quota to 10,000, but for new users starting out browsing the doc (an obvious first step), the unkeyed 300 quota limit can be rather quickly run down just browsing the doc.

Should this be considered a "bug"? Could/should it be fixed either by:

• Having "Try it" not populate the Site list until the user attempts to "Edit"/change the default site from Stack Overflow to something else (if they even need to)
• Exempting /sites from the quota? This shouldn't be an issue, since it's normally going to be a rather rare call, I would think, for most apps. And existing 30 calls/second limits should still be in place.
• Or at least alleviate the issue somewhat by allowing unlimited page size for /sites so that only one call is needed. If an app needs at least 100 results from /sites, they really need all results, anyway.