Winter Bash 2013 came and went leaving behind satisfied users who had their share in the fun.
35 "ordinary" hats and 10 secret hats, users went hat hunting all over the place.
My question is, if you were one of those hat hunters, did anything "stick" i.e. you started doing something you did not do before, and you keep doing it now even though there are hats no more?
While I'm not sure if this makes me "better user", I started using the chat to collect a hat or two but now I definitely intend to keep using the chat, at least the Meta tavern. I avoided chats in general for years due to my fear of becoming too "addicted" but I was proven wrong, and can split my time just fine.
I uploaded a profile picture. It's persisted past winter bash.
One thing the Archaeologist hat encouraged me to do on Electrical Engineering was to go back and write proper detailed answers for a few questions I'd previously answered in comments which is something I'll try to keep on top of in the future. It also prompted me to improve a few CW posts for the Stallman hat which is something I hadn't done before.
While I'm fairly regular in the EE chatroom it was also nice to go in there and "hand out" a few hats and see a few new faces some of whom seem to have stuck around, so I'll also make more of an effort to assist any new users in chat in the future.
While I had always done tag work, this Winterbash pushed me to complete my Research Assistant badge on SO for the SO Hi-Ho Silver hat, and to do a lot of tag work on Meta also (though I didn't figure out the Before It Was Cool hat and just missed it). I actually learned quite a few things about the tag wiki process that I hadn't realized before.
I also realized that I need to work on the Review queues more to have myself in a good position for a badge-related hat when the next Winterbash comes, so I'll be trolling those regularly (on SO, I always checked out the Meta ones).
There once was a user from Nippon
Who wanted to put different hats on
Please don't convict him
For gaming the system
Since that behavior was common
There were a few less-than-stellar behaviors promoted by the hats, specifically: encouraging necromancy, begging for upvotes, making questions out of hatsessity rather than necessity, and copious amounts of flagging -- overall I wish it made us all better users, but I think it made several of us -- myself included, change certain behaviors for the worse due to the compelling nature of headwear
It certainly made me contribute a lot more than usual. I liked the idea of the event and started collecting them as soon as I got my first hat.
I edited posts, added comments whenever it was relevant, and answered questions not only on SO but on other sites of the SE network as well, which is something I wouldn't do otherwise. I flagged posts, talked on chat, and I even asked a question that was cool enough to render me a few hats and golden badges.
I spent several hours trying to complete tasks to earn hats.
I'm glad it's over and that I can go back to my regular life, thanks!
I'm new to the site, but it got me into the habit of upvoting good answers when they helped me out. Unfortunately, one or two of the hats seem to encourage upvoting indiscriminately, but it didn't take too long to find 40 answers that were actually good.
I was already doing most things that were encouraged by hats even before the Winterbash so getting over 20 of them on SO was not a problem.
It made me realise though how hard it is to resist temptation to get one more by gaming the system or slightly (or not so slightly) stretching the rules. I hope I didn't do it a lot (though this cw post wasn't really in a bad need of editing)...
