One True Thread: Post Rate by Time of Day

Individual Users - 128 Days

Main jjjdavidson page
Time of day graph — All users — 128 days
(SVG versions)
Older version - 114 days

Jump to userakacatAluisioASGazuleBlitzGirlChronosDragonergmanEternal DensitygghHESjetpacjjjdavidsonk.bookbinderkenmelkenlmjb1964Marsh'nmschapatzerSkUrRiErStormAngelyappobiscuitsZoomanSP

These graphs show activity for individual users by time of day. After I published the original version of these graphs, some users added comments in the One True Thread about their graph or my analysis; I've take the liberty of adding some of those comments.

On all graphs: The horizontal black line at 1.0 represents a uniform average post rate; the vertical axis represents variation from that average. The heavy gray line represents the post pattern for all users over all of Time, for comparison to the user's personal post pattern. All times given on this page are Randall Daylight Time or RDT (equivalent to Eastern Daylight Time) unless otherwise specified.

NOTE: I won't be publishing later versions of these graphs, unless a Waiter specifically asks for one. I think it's unlikely, as the OTT winds down, that any of these graphs will change significantly, so I choose to leave them here, at the climax of the One True Comic.


By this graph, akacat (confirmed to be in the Randall Time zone) has an admirable ability to actually leave the One True Thread for extended periods, with absolute post vacuum between 11pm and 6am RDT. akacat writes: I wasn't too surprised to see that there are noticeable spikes when I'm posting immediately before work, at lunch and immediately after work. With the lunch stretching significantly to accommodate the fact that I don't always get to do lunch at my usual time. …and I tend to molpy-down whether I want to or not between ~midnight and 6am.


AluisioASG's own OTTer map places him in Brazil, two zones east of Randall, but in the southern hemisphere, so presumably only one hour ahead. His peak posting time is between 10pm and 1am RDT (11pm to 2am local), making him something of a night owl. His slack time is well-defined, from 3-10am RDT (4-11am local). His weekday and weekend posting rates are unusually similar.


I don't know where azule lives, but his posting pattern is surprisingly similar to BlitzGirl's below, if a bit more exaggerated. He has two distinct peak periods, from 2-6am RDT, and from 3-9pm RDT. If he's in the continental U.S., he'd appear to be an early riser, and there's no time of day when he's never posted; since I seem to remember something about a new baby, perhaps that's not surprising.


Someone once suggested that BlitzGirl only sleeps three hours at a time; her graph certainly doesn't contradict that. She has two distinct peak periods, 3-4am and 4-6pm (midnight to 1am and 1-3pm Seattle time), with only limited down time between. Except for mscha, she has the lowest variation from her average post rate; even at her slack period of 9am-noon (6-9am her time) her post rate is significant. However, her weekend posting is significantly slower than her weekday rate.


From 4am to 12 noon, ChronosDragon scarcely posts at all—another OTTer who actually gets some sleep, I judged. He writes: You're right, I have a rather solid sleep schedule that I intend to keep. :P Interesting that my peak posting times are different on weekends, but then I've been in school in one form or another for 60% of the OTC's duration, so it only makes sense.


ergman's pattern climbs erratically but irresistibly from a low from 4-6am to a peak period from 8pm to 1am. The two valleys at 9-10pm and 11pm to midnight are curious, speaking of some regularly-scheduled interruption; is there a dog that must be walked?


Eternal Density has mentioned being in Australia—eastern Australia, if I remember correctly, which puts him (I think) 14 hours ahead of Randall Daylight Time. This surely explains why his slowest posting time is from 9am to 5pm RDT (11pm to 7am his time?) On weekends he gets some posts in the morning, but his afternoons (midnight to 4am RDT) are clearly spent far from the OTT. Altogether, his pattern is as nearly opposite the overall average as anyone I've graphed.


ggh, somewhat atypically, is far more active on the weekend, with peaks at 1-2am and 7-8am. This pattern made me wonder if ggh wasn't also somewhere outside North America. ggh replies: You are right, I am not in the US, but in New Zealand, 8 hours behind (and a day ahead) of RST. I'm actually a little surprised that it's so apparent though: with the little one, I thought maybe I'd be more random. In my case, my weekend activity is not necessarily that I have more time to Time then, but because I don't like to blind post and that's when the OTT generally let's me catch up... barely.


With 1/3 more posts than the 114-day version, HES's graph actually got more irregular instead of less. HES still follows a rising and falling pattern throughout weekdays, but weekends are much more erratic, keeping HES's overall pattern moderately irregular. But HES's around-the-clock posting rate is still more uniform than most, with a peak less than 2½ times average. HES adds: Oddly, I would have thought my post rate was more opposite to the usual, as there often seems to be nobody around, but I suppose I post less if there are fewer people to reply to.


Most of jetpac's posting takes place in a four-hour period from 2-6pm, giving him the most strongly skewed graph of any user; on weekdays his peak post hour from 4-5pm is more than 8 times his average rate. It appears that he never posts on weekends at all. With an absolute post vacuum between 1am and 10am, I'd guess he's somewhere a few hours west of RDT.


I'm on Central Time, one hour behind RDT, so you can see that I sometimes stay up far too late, especially on weekends. No wonder I'm tired. Still (somewhat to my surprise) I do show a post vacuum from 2-4am. From the 7-8am peak on weekdays, you can tell that I sleep later on weekends. And there's a weekend peak from 2-3pm (1-2pm my time); that's when I abandon yard work and come in out of the noonday sun.


For k.bookbinder, weekend OTT binges are clearly not an option. For only four hours of the day does k.bookbinder's weekend post rate exceed average. k.b.'s overall pattern looks fairly typical for North American OTTers. The weekday-weekend inversion of the 12-1pm hour arouses my curiosity, however.


kenmelken's weekend posts are even more rare—in fact are nearly nonexistent. Only during his peak posting time of 3-5am does his weekend rate even come close to his average rate. And where does he live, that 3-5am is the best time for him to post?


Another OTTer who doesn't have much time on the weekends, lmjb1964's peak weekday period of 2-8pm is almost empty on the weekends. But she appears to be an early riser (or a very late crasher); her weekend peak is from 5-7am RDT.


The graph for late-appearing OTTer Marsh'n is not very smooth, but with only 33 days of activity Marsh'n averages less than 2¾ posts per hour of the day. So the 1-2pm peak is very exaggerated, more than 4 times average.


I'm not skilled enough to separate mscha's posts from newpixbot's, so I actually expected mscha's graph to be even flatter than this. But indeed mscha's overall posting rate is the most regular of anyone's, never exceeding 1¾ times his average. His curve is flatter even than BlitzGirl's, although he clearly turns matters over to newpixbot for several hours each day. mscha points out that I originally had his time displacement wrong: mschaDT is 6 hours ahead of RDT, by the way. So his slack time (when newpixbot takes over) is from midnight to 5am RDT, or 6-11am his time; either his sleep schedule doesn't match local daylight or I've mustarded the time shift worse than before.


I've not caught where patzer posts from, but his slack time is 5-11am RDT, leading me to think that he's several hours west. Or I could look at his weekend posting, sharply lower than his weekday posting from 6pm to 1am RDT; for some other OTTers such a drop corresponds to weekend daylight, again making it appear that he's several hours west, perhaps Australia or Asia. Or we can compare his graph to yappobiscuit's below; perhaps patzer's another English musician.


With an average of 1 post per hour of the day, all we can tell from this graph is that SkUrRiEr is most likely to post during Randall's early morning hours.


StormAngel is also in Australia. With 70 posts, this graph is less well-defined than Eternal Density's; it nonetheless shows a similar pattern of time shift, although StormAngel goes to bed later than ED and has less weekend activity.


Yappobiscuits is in England, five hours ahead of RDT. Yappo's peak time is from 10pm to 2am local (5-9pm RDT) while his slack time is from 10am to 3pm (5-10am RDT), reinforcing Andy M. Stewart's assertion that musicians have "no concept of how to function during daylight hours." yappo comments: I actually do LIKE daylight rather a lot, believe it or not, and sometimes I have outside things to do during the day... Either way, I generally don't get on t'interwebs til later in the afternoon/evening. A couple of times I've even not got round to my daily ketchup til after midnight! Yeah, I do tend to stay up well into the morning, but my sleeping habits are less "completely nocturnal" and more just "lazy and erratic" and yeah, "musicianish".


ZoomanSP's slack time of 10pm to 4am RDT led me to guess that he's a few hours east of Randall, perhaps another European user. Beyond that, all I noted was that his weekend pattern is all over the place. ZoomanSP replies: You got my location right (I'm in Germany). I don't know what happened during my weekends, though... His weekends here are a little less erratic than on his 114-day graph, however.