Day 4
I'll try and post a more substantive entry sometime soon.
For now, more SH stats:
Yesterday, we received another 21 submissions. A couple more just after midnight (by east-coast time, which is what our database uses) brought the total for this week so far to 92, making it the second-highest-volume week ever.
But then something weird happened: there've been no submissions at all for the past twelve hours. (I was surprised by this 'til I looked at the patterns from past years, below.) As if all of our potential submitters cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced suddenly and collectively noticed that we're swamped and decided to give us a small break. Thank you, potential submitters!
Still, I'm almost certain that today will bring at least ten more subs, which will put us over the top into highest-volume week ever with two more days left in the week.
Admittedly, the "week" terminology is a little misleading; in previous years, Jan. 1 didn't fall on a Sunday, so the first seven days of submissions were not the same as the first full "week" of submissions. The first seven days of 2005 went: 14, 15, 16, 11, 17, 8, 14; total 95. The first seven days of 2004 went: 33, 18, 7, 15, 15, 15, 17; total 120. In 2003: 22, 19, 13, 5, 5, 13, 5; total 82.
So I think it used to be that we would generally see a very high volume on the first day back, dropping down to normal in a week or two, with an anomalous day or two somewhere in those first couple weeks. But last year there was a different pattern: instead of a very high peak on the first day, we got a steady high (but not extraordinarily high) volume for quite a while, with occasional anomalously low days. The unusually high volume lasted well into February, with further peaks in March and in late April.
So far it's looking like this year is following last year's pattern, but four and a half data points is far too few to extrapolate from.
