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Hats are a really nice idea and earning one is a happy event.

Who invented the hat system?

I was wondering how they were born, and who chose their names?

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  • 10
    Check the documentary, bilal: youtube.com/watch?v=CDi_nj1-G6U
    – ave
    Dec 21, 2016 at 12:18
  • 6
    I'd start by reading this.
    – Taryn
    Dec 21, 2016 at 12:19
  • Thanks for the comments. i will look into it
    – NID
    Dec 21, 2016 at 12:32
  • 6
    Some of that information might be completely ironic, btw.
    – Sklivvz
    Dec 21, 2016 at 13:39

1 Answer 1

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According to the video, it started in the Stack Exchange offices, where they had a tradition to hand out special hats to acknowledge outstanding work, initially to reward developers for fixing bugs and shipping features.

hatted devs ship it

And then it spread:

  • community managers get hats for answers on meta that get more than 50 downvotes
  • the marketing team get hats for successful campaigns or really great tweets
  • sales team gets hats for big deals

From there came Holiday 2011 Hat Dash: The Hattening on Arqade which was such a success, it spread to the whole network with Winter Bash in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016.

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    Good answer, to make it even better you can mention the first hats event of SE: arqade 2011 Hat Dash (due to its immense success, it then spread to the whole network.)
    – Shadow Wizard Says No More War
    Dec 21, 2016 at 13:58
  • @ShadowWizard Thanks, added!
    – Hugo
    Dec 21, 2016 at 14:03
  • There just haven't been many community manager hats. In fact, I had never heard of them until I first saw the video.
    – Jon Ericson
    Dec 21, 2016 at 16:21
  • @JonEricson An outrage! You'll have to work much (less?) harder for it!
    – Hugo
    Dec 21, 2016 at 19:19

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