I am mystified as to why the automatic feed is adding in character definitions at only a quarter to a half of the rate of other character modes - so that my total is now only half that of the others and it seems as if it must drop ever further behind - although looking at all the green blocked-in squares at 'my lists', it seems that they have been added in. It's been like this for a while though I haven't fiddled much with the settings, though now I am on slow feed as I adapt to raw squigs. Am I missing something?

The different parts are spaced out so you don't get them all at once. They'll just be scheduled for a bit later on.

Do you add characters when adding words (checkbox on language settings)? If not, you will study the writing, tone and pinyin of the individual characters whenever you study a word of 2 or more characters and those parts will count as known. But you only study the definition of that word, and not of the single characters in it, so that counter won't go up.

Oh, thank you Friederike - I think I get it now - I haven't added characters when adding words so I have relatively few single characters to study so few single character definitions - but the pinyin, writing and tone stats under 'character' rise as I learn characters as parts of words.