jousefm is suspicious about the time to first response data in the forum, noticing peaks that don’t make sense given their usual 8-hour response window. pfaffman suggests that unanswered questions at night might contribute to the peaks, but jousefm points out that the peaks occur only on 1-3 days and can reach up to 200 hours. pfaffman guesses that old topics without responses might be the cause. jousefm has investigated and found that the algorithm includes posts from the past, which might be the source of the anomaly. The discussion is ongoing, seeking further input and ideas.
Hi guys!
I am very suspicious about the time to first response data gathered from the forum, I always have peaks in there which do not make sense at all. We usually answer posts within a 8 hour window or faster, so why does is there always a peak. Am I missing something? Example:
Best,
Jousef
Are there multiple peaks or just that day? Isn’t the scale minutes? Isn’t it likely that someone asked a question in the middle of the night and it went unanswered until morning?
No it is only 1-3 days that have a peak and I take the time to first response per day!
Could be but how would you get the 200 hour peak then? 
OH. The scale is hours, not minutes. I wasn’t sure about that.
My best guess is that there were some very old topics that somehow had not had responses, like some topic in a category that you’d not expect to get responses. It seems improbable that the metrics are computed incorrectly.
Thanks for your answer Jay! Already investigated this and I assume it takes also posts from the past which is a bit “odd”.
From what I have found the algorithm looks like this:
builder.where(“p.user_id != t.user_id”)
→ Also means that the owner of the topic posting the first reply, should not be considered a reply at all
Maybe someone else has an idea on this
