I just spent an hour and a half trying to work out why certain epics weren't displaying in the Epics panel of my backlog.

Most of this time was spent searching here and in the community for "Why aren't my Epics displaying in backlog" or "How to set which Epics appear in the backlog". 

I couldn't find anything that addressed my issue.

Eventually I discovered something I had never known before (I have been using Jira for nearly 10 years) :

• There are two types of status: Epic Status and Issue Status and it appears these two are completely unrelated.

That is, if I'm editing an Epic, changing Issue Status has no effect on Epic Status and vice versa.

This is really confusing – especially as Epic Status does not display by default on the Epic Issue edit form. 

Also, if I set the Issue Status of an Epic, shouldn't that set the Epic Status and vice versa?

What is the meaning of Issue Status for an Epic?

This needs to be clarified both on the form itself and in the documentation.