Speculating (which is just a more euphoneous way of saying 'talking out of my ass') here, but I'd imagine a Tuesday or Wednesday (maybe Friday), posting about 10am EST would get you the most eyeballs.

It would also depend on the nature of your question as the people best able to answer may have different traffic patterns.

Sorry for the long FPP, I hadn't figured out the MI tag yet...

Speculating in a similar fashion to Porpoise, I have come up with a very similar answer. Basically the idea is you want to be within working hours for North Americans. I think there was even a question about this to AskMe (or more likely, MeTa).

I'm guessing that 10am on a Friday (narth amerrkin time) would be good because no one wants to works. that's right. i said "works".

By the way, the MI tag: you simply click it, and continue typing. Try it and then preview your post.

who knows, I'm testing your weekend = bad theory. Maybe nerdy peole hang out here friday nights?

There was a MeTa thread on this within the past year.

So Dunwitty - what are you going to put into the ask.me post that shook the world?

I think, also, how you ask is just as important as when to ask. There was a question today that caught my attention - in a bad way. The poster came across as whiney, that he "deserved" an answer, and arrogant. I'm surprised that he got as much high quality answers as he did. The tone also made a bigger negative of his mistake - asking the wrong question - than it really was. Given better question writing, I suspect that the answers (to the question he was really asking as opposed to the question he posted) would have been expounded upon and explained in better detail.

Aside from questions that provoke titilation, evokes nostalgia, or inspires the imagination of mefites, I find that appeals to the potential answerer's authority, opinion, and/or experience works well (see the relationship threads). For example, the number of responses I got to this question absolutely blew me away. I think that some answerers tried to outdo one another, later in the thread, with the quality of their taste and the breadth of their familiarity with esoterica.

Also, while there's nothing wrong with jumping into the thread to expand on the question, provide details, and to ask for clarification, don't make my mistake of jumping in too early just to "chat" although I did get lucky that some answererss ended up riffing off of one another.

Having a good hook in the lines that will appear on the ask.me frontpage doesn't hurt either but make sure that there's enough information that those who don't get the hook (and thus wouldn't be arsed to check out the rest of the question) but might have an answer can know what the question is.

Of course you won't want to be accused of chatfilter but you may get more responses if you try to push the envelope a little.

When is the best time to post to AskMe?

Arch Stanton has numbers.

Interesting... was there any policy changes (ie., # of entries on the front page/number of lines on the front page)?

I wonder why posts (I'm assuming) entered around American midnight garnered more responses?

I wonder why posts (I'm assuming) entered around American midnight garnered more responses?

They are towards the top of the front page when everyone starts checking in first thing in the morning.