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I was looking at the site analytics (25k users only, sorry) while trying to work out whether Winter Bash skews the stats.

There are a couple of noticeable spikes in the traffic graph:

enter image description here

The spike in the last month or so is some low-budget indie film.

I’m more interested in the spike on 28 June 2012. There’s a comparable spike in posts, but less so in votes. What happened?

The stats page lists a few milestones that might have caused a traffic blip, but all at the wrong time:

  • 11 Jan 2011 – private beta
  • 18 Jan 2011 – public beta
  • 13 Dec 2011 – graduation
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This was an event related to Futurama.

I looked on the list of questions ordered by date and noticed a lot of Futurama questions on 28 June 2012. Personally I wasn't around at that time, but I've heard about this event from DVK, who said:

sigh. I was SOOOO hoping that the Trauma of Futurama was fully behind us :( Basically, we got overflooded with Futurama questions, many of questionable quality, as part of a promotional event.
-- DVK, 7 Dec 2015

For more details, have a look at the various meta posts thrown up by this search. Notice the date stamps: they're all in June or July 2012. In particular, here are two posts from 28 June. Congratulations on being mentioned on Futurama's Facebook page! says:

https://www.facebook.com/Futurama/posts/313500278739993

I was browsing Facebook this evening and noticed a link to the SciFi Stack Exchange on Futurama's newsfeed! Congratulations - this should bring a good bit of traffic.

And then the results of this promotion. Holy monkeys Batman! That is A LOT of posts! says:

I think due to what happened here: Congratulations on being mentioned on Futurama's Facebook page!, or most probably here: https://www.facebook.com/Futurama/posts/320014191418612

We are getting MANY posts within the past few minutes.

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    from what I remember, this quickly went from "awesome we were mentioned on Futurama's page!" to "oh s#$ we were mentioned on Futurama's page." to "dear god make it stop make it stop". It was around that time that I learned how to ignore the futurama tag.
    – KutuluMike
    Commented Dec 23, 2015 at 12:41
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    I think I still have it on Ignore since that terrible, terrible time. Pointless, pointless questions everywhere!
    – Avner Shahar-Kashtan
    Commented Dec 23, 2015 at 14:22
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    -10000 for making me remember that atrocity.
    – DVK-on-Ahch-To
    Commented Dec 23, 2015 at 18:39
  • @DVK - I'm sad I missed it. I like futurama :-)
    – Valorum
    Commented Dec 27, 2015 at 19:56
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    @Richard -- You wouldn't like it after experiencing Futuretrauama ...
    – Slytherincess
    Commented Dec 30, 2015 at 0:51
  • @Slytherincess - Honestly, I've had a look at the question from around the time period. Some of them actually looked quite decent.
    – Valorum
    Commented Dec 30, 2015 at 0:54
  • @Richard maybe there were lots of deleted ones too?
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Dec 30, 2015 at 0:56
  • @randal'thor - I had a look at the deleted ones as well. There's more than a few that got closed by trigger-happy regulars that might have survived if they'd been asked today.
    – Valorum
    Commented Dec 30, 2015 at 0:59
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    @Richard Well, I suppose that balances out the many old highly-voted questions and answers that'd be DVed to the pits if they'd been asked today ...
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Dec 30, 2015 at 1:01
  • Is this a treasure trove of deleted questions that ought to be reopened? The only thing data.SE won't help with is finding deleted posts. :-/
    – Molag Bal
    Commented Apr 13, 2016 at 23:04
  • @amarillo I wasn't around at that time, but the comments above, as well as what I've heard in chat, give the impression that this is anything but a treasure trove of worthwhile questions.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Apr 13, 2016 at 23:25

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