This is an explication of [DoubleAA's point][1] that > the posts that do come in on Shabbat tend to be *mostly* just the lower quality or spam posts Suppose that we simplify our non-deleted content collection into three groups: - high-value, which gets, on average, many up-votes and very few downvotes - medium-value, which gets, on average, some up votes and few downvotes - low-value, which gets, on average, few upvotes and some downvotes Most of the users who produce most of the high-value posts are experts on Judaism, most of whom are dormant on the Sabbath. Therefore, relatively very few high-value posts are produced on the Sabbath. In addition, most of the content produced by such experts is at least medium-value. Roughly conversely, the users who are not dormant on the Sabbath are mostly not experts on Judaism, so most of the content they produce is medium- or low-value. As a result, on the Sabbath, very little high-value content is contributed, and low-value content is a greater proportion of the whole than it is during the week. This causes the average votes per post to be significantly less favorable. ---- More speculatively, I'd suggest that perhaps posts that would get closed quickly during the week, thanks to the much-higher activity levels, stay open for longer when posted on the Sabbath, and that as a result, they collect more down-votes from people who see them sitting around, open. It should be possible to test this hypothesis by querying, if you're interested. ---- By the way, congratulations on an excellent meta post. I appreciate the way you're approaching a new community by taking a good, objective, data-driven approach at what's going on, being sensitive to local conventions, and asking questions. [1]: https://judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3673/2