Looks very seasonal to me... probably indicative that most of the readers are in the same hemisphere.

I know that when winter approaches for me, I tend to get a little disheartened with whatever I'm doing, want to quit and do something inspiring and new... Then when spring rolls around, things are so much better and I have a new lease on life.

I'd suggest comments reflect people's internal barometer, and there probably have been studies on this...

The majority of the english speaking net is in the northern hemisphere anyway - with notable examples of southern hemisphere mostly being limited to australia and brasil, sure there are other net users south of the equator, but those are the two countries with the most presence online...

The reason why brasil's huge online population doesn't really count in these kind of things is because they largely keep to their own communities, often portugese-speaking.

So it being seasonal in appearance isn't really much of a surprise.

I'd also argue that geek-types (which most of us are) seem to be more prone to SAD.

move to california ;)

Graph is shockingly accurate. I've deleted and created accounts in each peak and trough you laid out.

Why do you delete and create accounts? How do you delete an account?

Wouldn't this mean that you're part of the problem? Just kidding :p

Did you generate that from intuition, or by some concrete algorithm?

I'm pretty sure intuition : )

I smell a GraphJammer.

I assume this is what chasingsparks is referring to: http://graphjam.com/

That's different. In the early days of the web, the quality of any board <<<<< forum was destined to plummet every September, then slowly rise with attrition until after Spring break.

But then maybe there aren't that many students here ???

That looks like a damped harmonic oscillator to me.

Which I guess makes sense :)

Hopefully it's driven.