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Is there a specific time of day (please specify timezone you're in to convert from) when the site is most active? Or is there a good time relative to that (directly before, etc) to ask?

I will often find that I want more answers - I don't even care about views, but I want a variety of approaches without needing to set a bounty.

When do you normally ask your questions?
Does time even make a difference?

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  • $\begingroup$ If you want more attention to your post in not-cheating kinds of ways, you can try things like breaking up posts into a series of linked questions, and answering it yourself after a day or two of idleness. $\endgroup$
    – kingledion
    Dec 6, 2016 at 5:45

1 Answer 1

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I was able to get a couple Data Explorer queries from Question and answer activity on StackExchange: Interactive and customized edition on Meta Stack Exchange. I chose the query Best time to ask questions on StackExchange: Get answer faster, rather than Best time to ask questions on StackExchange: More likely to get an answer, as the chances of a question that doesn't get closed not being answered are about as low as . . . well, something improbable.

Anyway, I switched the site to Worldbuilding Stack Exchange and the inputs to

  • All = 1 (all users)
  • Frequency = 1 (Gets data for the average day)
  • MaxTimeDiff = 1440 (Data ranges over the course of 1,440 minutes, i.e. one day)
  • UserID = 1 (all users; redundant since All = 1)

Here's the graph I got:

enter image description here

As you can see, the shortest answer time - the lowest point on the graph - is approximately 13:00 UTC. At this point:

  • East Asia and Australia are in or entering the night.
  • Africa, Europe, and the Middle East are at midday to afternoon - approaching teatime, in fact.
  • South America is already well into the morning, possibly finishing off an early cup of coffee.
  • North America is rubbing its eyes, getting out of bed, and possibly leaving the house.
  • Antarctica is doing its own thing entirely.

This might give you a decent idea of the demographics of Worldbuilding users, interestingly enough.

The worst time to get an answer to a question is right around 0:00 UTC, which is, by a strange coincidence, right about now.

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  • $\begingroup$ So, are you going to update the graph to take this answer into account? $\endgroup$
    – user
    Dec 12, 2016 at 16:14
  • $\begingroup$ "North America is rubbing its eyes, getting out of bed, and possibly leaving the house." Really depends on where. In Eastmost Canada, people would probably be at work (9:30 AM). In New York City, leaving the house or arriving at work (8:00 AM). In Los Angeles, many still sleep (5:00 AM). And of course, add an hour for Daylight Savings Time at the moment. $\endgroup$
    – Brythan
    Dec 13, 2016 at 6:08

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