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The question is largely in the title. A friend observed that the beta launch is somewhat unfortunately timed. Thanksgiving weekend is upon us, with its unofficial deadlines. Anyone going on the job market this year will almost certainly be highly concerned with that right now and for the next few months.

The timing will affect those not on the job market as well, in the sense that faculty will be writing letters and making calls, and calendars are filling with job market talks.

Is this timing a concern? Is there anything we can do to address it?

I suspect the answer is (a) timing is somewhat of a concern, but (b) there's not really anything to be done about it. However, I still wanted to bring the Q to the floor -- perhaps useful discussion regardless.

Edit: Just to be clear, my concern is with the formal "economics job market" process as arranged by the AEA, which culminates in the January ASSA meetings. (Noah Smith has a reasonable post here about this entire thing.) Thanksgiving is important here not because of the holiday itself, but because it is often referenced as the unofficial "final deadline" for having applications materials in for participating in the job market (see p21 here, for example).

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    $\begingroup$ Bear in mind this only concerns the northern half of the planet, and Thanksgiving is a U.S. holiday. I'm not saying it is not relevant, just that it isn't a global thing. $\endgroup$
    – han-tyumi
    Commented Nov 25, 2014 at 16:27
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    $\begingroup$ I don't think that job market candidates would be hanging out here significantly at any time in the year. It somewhat affects junior professors who I think would be here much more than seniors, but that we'll just have to accept. $\endgroup$
    – FooBar
    Commented Nov 25, 2014 at 16:29

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I think that for any time of year, you can always find a reason why it's a good time, and why it's a bad time. Once we've been established and around for three years, we'll be able to look back at the visitor-traffic time-series, and see if there is a significant annual pattern to participation.

But it doesn't make any difference, really, in that we're launched now, and the public beta will come just as soon as the Community Team reckon we're ready for it.

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