I have done some analysis about the period 2019-08-01 to 2020-03-31 which is summarized in [this CSV](https://gist.github.com/Glorfindel83/9de216d695b4fe737f2198c3c6f123d9). It is sorted by column 7, the number of views on Hot Network Questions per hour. [The Workplace](https://workplace.stackexchange.com/) is the clear winner here with 364 views per hour, having almost double the number of views of the runner-up, [Skeptics](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/), with 188. Interpersonal Skills is number three in that list, so perhaps the unique configuration did help here, showcasing only the real gems on that site. ``` site [-------BEFORE HNQ------] [-------DURING HNQ------] [Questions] [Spots] views duration views views duration views # % # % /hour /hour ================================================================================================ workplace 898 09:27:00 84.7 10157 36:20:00 364.9 17 1.65 8 3.04 skeptics 444 09:52:00 34.3 11023 59:51:00 188.4 74 0.29 38 0.89 interpersonal 398 10:07:00 33.9 8388 52:40:00 153.2 87 0.19 49 0.50 movies 138 09:00:00 14.3 4728 33:09:00 140.2 46 0.64 34 1.05 parenting 325 10:17:00 14.7 7057 52:26:00 139.4 101 0.13 65 0.36 money 269 09:44:00 21.1 5215 37:25:00 124.2 30 1.15 14 2.18 academia 277 09:17:00 23.9 4960 38:51:00 121.1 15 1.83 4 3.62 softwareengineering 183 09:20:00 19.4 4119 34:24:00 112.1 62 0.39 44 0.69 security 283 09:41:00 15.9 5691 46:50:00 109.0 43 0.72 21 1.72 politics 252 09:32:00 22.1 4387 36:37:00 105.6 18 1.64 7 3.04 ``` Some clarification about the columns: the average Hot Network Question on Workplace needs 9 hours and 27 minutes to become an HNQ, has 898 views in that period, which amounts to 84.7 views per hour. It spends (on average) 1.5 days in the HNQ and gets just over 10k views in that period. Not all of those views will be via the HNQ list, but if you subtract the views/hour from before the HNQ period, you'll get a decent estimate. The last four columns are two ways of ranking all sites; by the number of distinct questions in the list, and the number of spots, i.e. how often the site occupies a place in the list. Of all Hot Network Questions in the network, 1.65% of those are Workplace questions, while if you pick a random Hot Network Question, it will be a Workplace question 3.04% of the time. It's rather hard to say something about the least exposed sites; the list contains 156 entries, while there are about a dozen more sites which *could* appear in the HNQ but simply lacked the questions. Some of the sites who made the list had only one or two HNQs; not enough to perform a reliable analysis. Data was gathered by downloading the Hot Network Question list every 3 minutes (similar to [here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/315017/295232)). The main difference is that every 15 minutes, additional data about the questions is retrieved as well via the [Stack Exchange API](https://api.stackexchange.com/docs/), including the number of views and the scores. Part of this data is loaded into a PostgreSQL database, of which a backup file is available [here](https://github.com/Glorfindel83/SE-Userscripts/tree/master/hnq-research); all data relevant for this analysis is in the `snapshots` table. As for your last paragraph, those events aren't registered in this setup, but you might be able to fetch some of the data from SEDE, since it [records becoming an HNQ since March 2019](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/324663/295232).