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So I periodically grab data from the API and publicly report the statistics (according to this question I'm allowed to do that) and I noticed a really bizarre inconsistency with my graphs, but it was consistent across multiple sites. (Though it was not consistent across all of them.)

On December 9, 2016 at 00:03:08UTC the Software Engineering site had 135168 answers and 42977 questions. Approximately 24 hours later (10 December 2016 00:03:07UTC) it had 134023 and 42789 respectively, another 24 hours later (11 December 2016 00:03:01UTC) it was at 133979 and 42782, respectively.

This is not the only site I've noticed this discrepancy with. I've seen it with Super User, DBA, Server Fault, and even this Meta site.

I was just curious as to what happened. Was there some massive trash compactor that ran?

Here's the sample dataset (much shrunk) to demonstrate what I'm seeing:

ApiSiteParameter    Gathered    TotalAnswers    TotalQuestions
softwareengineering 2016-12-11 00:03:01.0525174 133979  42782
softwareengineering 2016-12-10 00:03:07.1150193 134023  42789
softwareengineering 2016-12-09 00:03:08.6461616 135168  42977
meta    2016-12-11 00:01:30.6305214 120809  80496
meta    2016-12-10 00:01:25.4431400 121172  80572
meta    2016-12-09 00:01:13.7712670 121165  80559
serverfault 2016-12-11 00:01:05.1775098 395842  233005
serverfault 2016-12-10 00:01:10.0680812 396342  233412
serverfault 2016-12-09 00:00:59.5526146 396251  233321
superuser   2016-12-11 00:01:17.8024674 497852  333693
superuser   2016-12-10 00:01:12.5230816 498376  334384
superuser   2016-12-09 00:01:01.7400281 498246  334236
dba 2016-12-11 00:03:32.8649598 68062   51038
dba 2016-12-10 00:03:38.0525317 68189   51232
dba 2016-12-09 00:03:36.9119067 68138   51196

They're tab-separated, should paste to Excel nicely.

Here's a graph of what the Software Engineering cleanup looks like:

Software Engineering Graph

Was this some sort of pre-winterbash cleanup?

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  • It's the roomba.
    – approxiblue
    Dec 26, 2016 at 0:56
  • @approxiblue I get that it's something to do with the roomba, but there's got to be more information as to why on the 9th and 10th many sites lost a substantial number of answers and questions. Software Engineering alone lost 1200 answers between those two days.
    – Der Kommissar
    Dec 26, 2016 at 0:57

1 Answer 1

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Roomba was modified that weekend to add new criteria. When migrations were rejected, we used to just leave them sitting around for all of time. Now those locked, rejected migration stubs get automatically deleted in the same way that the initial migration stubs get deleted from the origin site. The mass deletions that occurred from this change show just how many of these we had sitting around.

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  • Thanks for the speedy response! :) I never realized that was an actual issue on the network. (It really borked my graphs, but that's alright, I'll get over it.)
    – Der Kommissar
    Dec 26, 2016 at 1:39

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