Do we have comparative statistics for Winter Bash 2019?

Question

Comparing leaderboard of 2019 with last year, It seems I did the same this time too (missing out on 2 hats again). But nobody got all the hats this year when last year there were six people. And even for the top spot, the tie was with two people only (missing one/one hat each).

It seems apparent to me participation was lesser this year and most of it was due to the most controversial year of StackExchange. Or maybe due to lack of originality.

So I wanted to know if we have comparative statistics of 2019 Winter Bash with previous years; like no. of participants, top sites with most hats, top users getting hats above some threshold (75% or 80%), etc.

Answer 1

Here are the stats from all Winter Bashes.

Year	Users	Hats	Winners	# of Winners
2012	46710	108924	N/A*	N/A
2013	76586	214172	Logan M	1
2014	84442	244872	Logan M, Martijn Pieters, rolfl, Mike Miller	4
2015	72184	322755	Quill, David, Bhargav Rao	3
2016	215961	797078	Alexander O'Mara, alecxe, Eran, David	4
2017	173054	546504	A J, David, alecxe	3
2018	335281	604061	alecxe, Alexander O'Mara, Eran, Panda, eLRuLL	5
2019	163865	265946	David, X-27 wants to Reinstate Monica	2

^* The N/A from 2012 is because there was no network leaderboard. The network leaderboard started in 2013.

Before you look at the numbers and think this year had lower participation, you have to realize all is not equal.
It's not fair to compare the leader getting all the hats one year vs this year missing some. That could simply mean the hats were easier to get last year. (Which is also supported by there being a record number of winners last year, five.)

First off what hat triggers there were made a huge difference in the number of hats collected. Some years had "Every! Body! Gets! A Hat!" which inflated the hat count. Other years had no "vote or post on X day" which greatly reduced the hat count. Then there was the "Still Fresh" hat in 2018. That added an extra 200000 hats

Further, who hed access to the WB makes a big difference. Before 2015 the WB was opt in per site. Also (and this made a big difference) on SO users had to opt in to the WB, in 2016 everybody got the WB.

Knowing all that, instead of trying to normalize the stats it is much easier to compare activity across years using hats with the same trigger.

First up is "Starred chat, ±12h from Jan 1, 0:00 UTC"

Year	Hat	count
2015	Auld Lang Syne	614 times, 544 distinct
2016	First Responder	605 times, 508 distinct
2017	Glasses With A Number On Top	299 times, 257 distinct
2018	Glasses With A Number On Top	320 times, 282 distinct
2019	Glasses With A Number On Top	211 times, 194 distinct

"Answer +5 a -3 question; later +3"

Year	Hat	count
2014	Red Baron	26
2015	Flying Tiger	11 (rarest hat ever)
2016	Maverick	17
2017	Waffles	16 times, 14 distinct
2018	Red Baron	13
2019	Red Baron	21

Granted using such a rare hat is not a good measure of over all activity, and was further skewed this year from a meta Q that granted somewhere around 15 users that hat.

"collect 11 hats"

Year	Hat	count
2015	Specialist Hatsman	1911 times, 1763 distinct
2016	011	2938 times, 2722 distinct
2017	The Milliner	1380 times, 1292 distinct
2019	The Milliner	311 times, 291 distinct

Now that is a striking difference. (2017 had the freebee "And YOU Get A Hat!" and three "Post or vote" hats vs 2019 had two "Post or vote" hats and no free hat.) Still there were less users getting many hats this WB.)

"Post or vote on Dec 25"

Year	Hat	count
2015	O Tannenbaum	21104 times, 16326 distinct
2016	Bûche de Noël	33925 times, 28770 distinct
2017	Red Hat With White Fur Trim	34350 times, 29603 distinct
2019	Bûche de Noël	40313 times, 35089 distinct

Do note that in 2017 it was a secret hat. Interesting that there were less users collecting many hats, but more users getting this hat.

Another thing to compare is the votes on the hat list posts over the years.

Year	Post	Vote total on question	DV count
2014	Secret Hats	338	5
2015	Secret Hats	340	11
2016	All Hats	579	12
2017	Hats	210	4
2018	Hat list	197	4
2019	Hat list	74	26

Note the votes are totaled for that year's time frame, meaning the total for 2014 ended in Jan of 2015. (Thus the results are not skewed by the older posts getting more votes).
A lot less activity going to the 2019 post. The active community on meta hated this WB more then ever (probably because of the Monica issue).

All in all there were fewer users (about 5% less) that collected many fewer hats (about 94% less). Interestingly that correlates roughly to established users shunning the WB, and drive by users participating and getting a few hats.

Detailed stats: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019