Maximizing AskMe

March 15, 2005 1:53 PM

Ok, I couldn't find this anywhere but it seems fairly straightforward: When is the best time to post a question to AskMe, when is the questioner most likely to get the most answers? Or, what days/times of the week are the most answers posted to AskMe?
posted by scazza to MetaFilter-related at 1:53 PM (12 comments total)

Guess: during business hours in the US, likely skewed there towards afternoon hours, when people are more thoroughly sick of doing their jobs, and skewed toward EST, where the larger portion of the US population is located.

So if you posted your question about 1ish EST, you'd probably do fairly well. However, I have a bad habit of posting mine about 6ish PST and still get excellent responses to my fairly niche queries.
posted by cortex at 1:57 PM on March 15, 2005

I would think so, but maybe a ton of MeFites have nothing to do on Saturday nights or Sundays or something. Maybe there are stats out there somewhere that show how many comments there are posted to AskMe on each day of a given week?
posted by scazza at 2:01 PM on March 15, 2005

If there aren't stats already extant and available, I'm sure one of the many clever nerds hereabouts could arrange to do a polite crawl through a month or so of AskMe questions and put together a report based on the timestamps of questions and ensuing answers.

They could probably even make graphs. If they wanted to.

/me glances up at mention of bored workers in his previous comment.
posted by cortex at 2:06 PM on March 15, 2005

weekends are bad. sometimes you can see tumbleweed blow across the green.
(this from someone who works shifts, and has off-shifts, that include weekends, so the change really sticks out, because it's not in synch with my own life. does that make sense? iow i'm working alternate weekends)
posted by andrew cooke at 2:08 PM on March 15, 2005

Wow. I was considering posting this very question to AskMeFi a few hours ago before until I realized that I'd be better off just asking the damn question...

I'd guess that 1100-1300 EST is your best bet as Europe are still around and the leftsiders are jacking up on their joe.
posted by i_cola at 2:45 PM on March 15, 2005

I actually thought about spending a little time plottting a graph of Questions Asked/# Answers/Time type thing. But then I realized that I have two jobs that must be worked. Weekends are slow, though.
posted by graventy at 4:14 PM on March 15, 2005

4:30pm GMT
posted by seanyboy at 4:31 PM on March 15, 2005

weekends are bad. sometimes you can see tumbleweed blow across the green.

I learned the hard way when I asked a tech question on what fell on a Friday evening (US). It didn't get too many answers, but it didn't scroll off the main page as quickly, either (not until late Sunday or Monday morning, at least).

There are definitely noticable peaks and lulls, just no one seems to have a definite idea of where they fall. Someone should definitely plot the trend. :)
posted by Lush at 6:48 PM on March 15, 2005

I don't know about dates of the week, but for the month of February, each AskMe question had an average of 15 responses.

The highest number of responses were between 1-2am (PST) at 19 answers/question and 2-3am at 20 answers. From 10-11pm-19 responses and 9-10pm-17 responses were good hours to ask questions as well.

The slowest hour is 3-4am at 8 responses/question, 6-7am-11 responses and 5-6pm-11 responses were the slowest daytime hours.
posted by Arch Stanton at 7:29 PM on March 15, 2005

When Askme is ovulating is really the best time.
posted by naxosaxur at 7:53 PM on March 15, 2005

Depends on your question. I have had decent luck with weekend questions, since with the Green being dead, people are more likely to see your question, but many of my questions are on the "anyone can answer this" end. If it is work-related or technical, the week may be better.

I am also a big fan of the Sunday night question. If you hit it right, you get bored at night people and then at-work Monday morning people starting from Europe and working west, like the sun. This means fewer West Coasters, but I don't care what they think anyway.
posted by dame at 10:00 PM on March 15, 2005

I wonder if it's different for different questions. Maybe the people who can answer questions about video games tend to read mefi at different times than the people who can answer questions about taxes.
posted by winston at 11:10 AM on March 16, 2005