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I'm thinking of starting a hefty bounty (on this question), since I haven't gotten an actual answer that works yet.

Now, a bounty lasts for a week; but it is likely to have the most visibility during the day, and then during the first few hours, after it's announced. Right?

So, which time of the week is best to attract the attention of bounty-hunters here on Unix.SX ? Would it be when the work-week starts in the US, i.e. Monday morning? Myabe towards the end of working hours on Monday? Or maybe the weekend is better?

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  • What is the purpose of the bounty? Is it to get a correct answer or to award an existing answer? I'm noticing that the question is quite old and already has five answers...
    – Kusalananda Mod
    Mar 16, 2019 at 18:18
  • Traffic is highest on the site during the middle of the week.
    – Kusalananda Mod
    Mar 16, 2019 at 18:20
  • @Kusalananda: See edit. None of those answers work.
    – einpoklum
    Mar 16, 2019 at 19:15
  • 4
    Be sure to add this fact as the comment to the actual bounty when you add it.
    – Kusalananda Mod
    Mar 16, 2019 at 19:42
  • @Kusalananda: Yes, you're absolutely right, thanks.
    – einpoklum
    Mar 16, 2019 at 19:43
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    On our site I've formed the opinion that bounties aren't all that effective. If want to use them as a reward for an outstanding answer that's a good use. To drive more interest in something that's old, prob. not a great use. Just my $0.02. There was a data explorer query that Giles produced that backed this up a couple years ago.
    – slm Mod
    Mar 18, 2019 at 21:19
  • 4
    Anecdata: I check the Featured Questions maybe 2-3 times/week. The only time I awarded a bounty was for and old question but it was after the answerer had posted their answer. I awarded the bounty because I felt that they had really gone the extra mile in researching the answer: unix.stackexchange.com/a/477511/22812
    – Anthony Geoghegan
    Mar 19, 2019 at 10:23
  • 4
    I agree with @slm. I've had better luck sharing/promoting the link to the question to people who might be able to answer it, e.g. topical experts or developers of the related tools/systems. Something that works to your advantage here is that such people (especially in the open source world where support devs are really self-selected) usually really like tricky puzzles in their area of expertise.
    – Wildcard
    Mar 19, 2019 at 22:24

1 Answer 1

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I'll offer three perspectives:

  1. I don't usually chase bountied questions, but if I wanted to, I would specifically pull up that tab of the Questions page (no matter what day or time of day I was on the site). Our bountied/featured questions tab is usually less than one page, so I don't think there'd be any better or worse time to post the bounty from that perspective.

  2. Judging from the site analytics, Fridays and Saturdays are typically lower in overall activity -- Questions, Answers, Votes, and page views/visits. From that perspective, I would avoid posting a bounty on Friday or Saturday because you'd minimize the amount of attention it would receive, historically speaking (the analytics go back about three months).

  3. I whipped up a quick hack of a SEDE query that summarizes bounty placement per day of week. Of the 1269 bounties recorded so far, most bounties are placed on Mondays and Tuesdays, followed by Thursday then Wednesday. The fewest bounties have (historically) been placed on Saturdays and Sundays. This doesn't tell you how effective the bounties were, just when they have been placed.

bounties per day of week

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  • Actually, the variations between any two days are not that high - less than 50% of the lower value. But +1.
    – einpoklum
    Mar 16, 2019 at 19:37
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    There was a discussion in chat a couple years ago about this and Giles produced a link to SEDE that showed bounties weren't that effective on this site.
    – slm Mod
    Mar 18, 2019 at 21:20
  • Uhm... It looks like the linked SEDE query lists the number of bounties awarded to answers (vote type 9 is "BountyClose", and only BountyClose votes on answers happen to have amount > 0). Please, compare it with this one. For those who like playing with data, this other query attempts to relate bounties' effects to the weekday they are placed on. Apparently, it confirms that the differences are not significant.
    – fra-san
    Mar 21, 2019 at 16:17

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