Obviously I’m asking this because as I’m seeking the "Defender of the Unicorn" hat but it also raises the question, are hats like this just going to end up causing extra noise in the meta site (like this one)?
It’s a stretch I know, but if you could just tag this status-completed it would be appreciated.
Looks like all the bugs have been ironed out, so how are you legitimately meant to earn this hat?
No. Most Winter Bash participants know better than to post pointless noise in search of hats, and the few who do usually get downvoted quickly and end up with a question ban or give up themselves. The moderator team is ready to handle any escalations but I haven't seen any (both this year and last year).
It helps that most contributions for a hat need to be well-received, i.e. have a positive score. IIRC the hat you mention is awarded manually, but even if it were automatic, I'm pretty sure the developers would include Score > 0 in the query.
