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Recently (a few minutes ago), I noticed that on SO, all but one of the recently awarded badges on the list on the home page were Enthusiast badges. Normally, there are just a few at a time. Was this some sort of huge coincidence, or was this some sort of recalculation? If it was a recalculation, how often do these occur?

I know this is a strange question, but this seemed way too strange to be a coincidence...

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I would assume it is because it's shortly after midnight UTC time, which means its a new day, but still early enough in the US that there are people likely hanging around and earning the badge. Basically, I wouldn't be surprised if many days around this time there are a bunch of people earning the woot badge.

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  • Yes, spot on. The cron job for this badge also runs every 300 seconds, which causes a 'flood' every 5 minutes as people visit the site near the start of a new day. – Ian Elliott Jul 28 '09 at 1:12
  • I would also add, it's likely you see a slew of woot earners around this time tomorrow I believe it is. – Timothy Carter Jul 28 '09 at 1:35
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    @Ian: how do you know that it fires every 300 seconds? – Kyle Cronin Jul 28 '09 at 1:37
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    I hax, in other words, SELECT Date, count(*) as Occurrences, (ABS(Date-1246021054)%300) as Offset FROM badges WHERE Name LIKE '%Enthusiast%' GROUP BY Offset – Ian Elliott Jul 28 '09 at 2:05
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I'm guessing that happens once a day as new people go over the 30-day threshold for the badge.

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