In 2011, the Gaming Stack Exchange hosted an event called Hat Dash, where users earned "hats" for their gravatars by completing certain tasks (analogous to badges):
Certain actions would trigger the user receiving a hat, which their gravatar could then "wear". For example, editing a post would yield an editor-themed hat (fedora with pen) to the editor.
Since then, Stack Exchange have expanded the holiday theme to any site that wants to participate.
- This year, the event will run from 14 December 2015 to 3 January 2016.
- Users will be able to see their entire hat collection on http://winterbash2015.stackexchange.com/. That site will also have a landing page, explaining the rules and other details of the event.
- Hats will be shown to visitors by default, but logged-in users can click an "I hate hats" button to see the normal hatless avatars.
- The only visual change to the site itself will be the presence of the hats and the "I hate hats" button in the footer.
Sites participate unless they explicitly opt out. If you wish to opt out, reply to this post and say why. If the CS.SE community shows that it wants to sit this one out by December 9, we'll opt out. Otherwise, we're in!