Is it better to ask in the high traffic time?

Question

I notice the traffic of TEX.SX is heavy, for example, from 4:00 PM to 12:00 AM UTC. So, is it a good idea to wait for that time to ask a question to get enough attention/support from plenty of visitors? or the difference is not that much?

Update

I think this graph gives a better idea that the time factor is quite important, which makes sense because high percentage of LaTeX experts are living in this timezone, and, intuitively, they have more free time to answer questions after their workdays in the evening.

P.S. I know the question quality is important to draw attention/support, but here, I am asking about the weight of the timing factor.

Answer 1

I used this query to determine the amount of asked and unanswered questions grouped by the hour of asking the question.

This is what the data looks like when plotted with gnuplot:

There percentage of answered questions fluctuates between 57.78% and 62.88%. From the graph it looks like questions asked between 5 and 7 are less likely to be answered and i'm sure one can find a correlation that explains this(More people asking than people answering questions online?), but i doubt that there is a statistical significance.

Here is another plot of the data, with the amount of questions asked in an hour on the x-axis and the percent of questions answered in an hour on the y axis for the 24 hours of the day.

I also ran a query to determine the average wait time, but i do not see any connection to the time of asking. (This query only measures the time between asking the question and the "accepted" answer being posted, so it also only includes questions with an accepted answer)

I think i also came up with a query to determine the average time it takes for a first answer to be posted (ignoring unanswered questions). But i'm unsure how to interpret it. It looks like you can get a first answer a lot quicker, if you ask it at 4, taking an average of more than 8 days. In comparison to asking at 7, when it takes an average of 12 days for a first answer to be posted.

I'm not an expert on statistics or the stackexchange-data-api so take this with a grain of salt. The data provided might be misleading or not suitable for answering the question at all. Feel free to point out any mistakes.

---

The script used for plotting:

set datafile separator ","
f = "QueryResults.csv"
set xlabel "Hour of asking"
set ylabel "Questions"
set y2label "Percent Answered"
set y2tics
set ytics nomirror
set xtics (0,2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20,22,24)
set format y2 '%2.0f%%'
plot f using 1:2 with linesp title "Question Asked", \
f using 1:3 with linesp title "Question Answered", \
f using 1:($4*100) with linesp axis x1y2 title "Percent Answered"

and

set ylabel "Percent Answered"
set xlabel "Questions Asked"
set format y '%2.0f%%'
set  xtics auto
unset y2label
plot f using 2:($4 * 100) with linesp notitle, '' using 2:($4 * 100):1  with labels point  pt 7 offset char 0.5,0.5 notitle

Answer 2

It might seem better to ask in the high time but actually it doesn't matter. Because:

1. You ask in the high time, more people are online (mostly CET day time). More people can look at it. You have high chance of getting an answer.

2. You ask in the other hours, but because there are not many people online for the same reason, there not many questions either. Hence, in morning of the same people of the previous bunch, your question is still on the list.

So in terms of getting an answer it doesn't matter. In terms of waiting time for an answer can move a few hours but that's still negligible.

In my opinion it won't matter. This is only valid for our TeX-SX network though. It might be different for other networks.

Also users tend to look at the unanswered lists and sweep through anyways so it will be seen as you can judge from the smallness of the number of Tumbleweed badge.