Sunsetting Winter/Summer Bash: Rationale and Next Steps

Question

This year, we made the difficult decision to sunset Winter/Summer Bash. Winter Bash has been an annual event on Stack Exchange each December for the past decade.

What are the origin and goals of Winter Bash?

Winter Bash, in its original conception, was an event that was there for fun at the end of the calendar year. This was also when contests used to be held more frequently on individual sites. Community members would participate over the course of three weeks and earn hats, which they could display on their profile avatars. Over the years, Winter Bash evolved beyond just fun and was a way to encourage participation on the platform during a time of the year when participation typically wanes. It was also viewed as a source of re-engagement as we hoped it would encourage community members who had become less engaged to start participating again and stick around long term.

After last year’s event, we analyzed some of the data, and this is what we found:

• Only 1% of community members who came to the site during Winter Bash chose to wear a hat during the event.
• The total contributions from people who were participating in Winter Bash were lower than those who weren’t participating. This means people would come, participate enough to earn a hat, and then drop off again.
• We do know that a number of community members enjoy participating in Winter Bash, but each year we receive more feedback on how the concept has grown a bit stale.

Why is Winter Bash Being Sunsetted?

In addition to the data and feedback shared above, we also looked at how expensive it is to run Winter Bash every year. From the outside, it may seem like a simple event, but it’s actually quite complex. For last year’s Winter Bash, three engineers spent two months building, launching, maintaining, and ending the event. There were also four community managers who were heavily involved, a Product Manager, and resources from our Design, Marketing, and other teams.

In the end, the lift and time required for Winter Bash is too great for the team to take on. This year we have an even smaller number of staff members on Product, Engineering, and Community, and we had to make the call that we don’t have the bandwidth to run this event.

Will Winter Bash Return in the Future?

Never say never, but we don’t currently have plans to bring back Winter Bash as we’ve known it. What we would like to do in the future is look into fun engagement events that wouldn’t serve as a replacement for Winter Bash but could facilitate boosting participation on the platform. If we are able to move forward with this, we’d like to make sure that these events lead to sustainable participation and re-engagement. If we saw a substantial/significant increase in participation during Winter Bash we'd have strong grounds for keeping it. Anything we try in the future, we want to make sure it is successful. We also want to work with the community to ensure that any future initiatives we take on related to engagement are meaningful to you.

Answer 1

Let me be unpopular for a moment and say I support this decision.

Speaking as someone who's been participating in Winter Bash since 2014 (read: a grumpy old fart), I feel that the interest has worn off way long ago. It was fun the first couple of years for me, then for a few years I'd randomly pick up hats during the period and wear them, now in the last few years I haven't even bothered wearing hats on my profile. That means it might still be interesting for new users but not for ... perhaps the majority of us by now. Time for a change.

Also, I've noticed something that's also been mentioned by staff here on this thread: Winter Bash used up actual developer and designer time from SE. I don't have major problems with a fun community event using up CM time, since interacting with the community is part of their job, but other employees' time could be better spent on other things. Instead of designing a whole separate Bash site with two distinct Winter/Summer themes, why not have those staff members spend their time on giving recently graduated sites their own themes? Instead of adding temporary fun bells and whistles to our profiles, why not create new permanent badges rewarding healthy site activity?

This isn't saying "we won't have fun events any more". Staff have explicitly said they'd like to have a different community-building event. To those upset about losing Winter/Summer Bash, let's engage with that process instead. Maybe we can get something even better to replace it. Maybe something that uses less developer/designer time, prioritising employee time more wisely, or something that new and old users can enjoy equally rather than the same old thing whose novelty has worn off for many of us.

Answer 2

As much as I may understand the decision, I'm still very sad.

Winterbash was a big part of many years of my career at Stack Overflow, and I enjoyed the work on it tremendously.

I had a lot of fun building countdowns, knitting machines, realistic stick figure snowfights, realistic snow fall animations, and chickens, and more chickens.

I enjoyed updating FAQs with a twist, drawing red herring hats (I'll explain that some day), tweaking the hat placement mechanics, and when I left the company in 2019, writing down detailed documentation of how everything Winterbash-related works in our internal Stack Overflow for Teams instance.

Most of all, I enjoyed seeing how our users had fun chasing and wearing hats and discovering the Easter eggs I left for them.

I made a little tribute so we don't forget: https://winterbash.rip *

Rest in peace, Winterbash. You were awesome.

_{* personal tribute, to be clear -- not endorsed by Stack Overflow Inc.}

Answer 3

I love community events. In fact, I would state they are somewhat crucial to a community being a community. It's why I volunteered to look into the internal question, “No Winter Bash, so what’s next?” There is nothing quite like a group of people with shared interests getting to do things together in an enjoyable way. I would be thrilled to come up with something meaningful and fun.

I am currently looking into different kinds of community events we can run around engagement, mainly things centered around frivolous fun that are much lower lifts on our engineering teams and, ideally, things that are easily flexible to change thematically to avoid things becoming stale.

At some point, I would like to invite the community into the discussion, possibly in the form of a working group or just a general discussion on Meta, to see what y'all think about our ideas and proceed with whatever sounds fun.

Answer 4

"We have come here not to mourn Winter Bash but to bury it"

Honestly? I feel rather... meh about Winter Bash going away.

I am rather annoyed at the lack of community consultation, and while this is generally not a good year, between the annual April Fools day prank being cancelled, the protest action and now this. Of many years, this is the one that needs frivolous joy.

On one hand it was the last big community event, and probably the only network wide one. We'd already also lost things like the big formal graduations, site anniversaries. The company spends millions on big events apparently, and it's sad to see this one go.

On the other hand, it was getting stale - and we were recycling hats and such.

I guess the real question is - what do you think you should do instead?

Answer 5

All good things must come
to an end; Winter Bash, we'll
remember the fun.

No more hats, alas.
Now go and rest, Defender
of the Unicorn!

Answer 6

I've enjoyed Winter Bash quite a bit. It's been the highlight of more than one of my days, our own little annual celebration. (At times, it was the reason I did anything at all.) I'm sad to see it end.

But honestly, this tracks. When I do something for the first time, it's a fun novelty. If I enjoy it enough, I might repeat it. But do it too often, and it becomes an obligation – a thing that I do – long past the point it ceases to be enjoyable. Mandatory fun is not fun. It is, in fact, very bad.

If it's not fun for y'all any more, I honestly don't care how fun it is for us. Stack Exchange Inc.'s job is to keep the Stack Exchange network up and running (and, every so often, make it better). That's the only thing that should be causing any of you distress (as staff) – and even then, only to the extent it absolutely has to.

I don't think the proportion who chose to wear hats is an accurate metric for either deliberate participation in, or enjoyment of, any given Winter Bash. (For instance, I would wear nothing until I got a hat I liked, then wear it upside down and as large as possible for the rest of the Bash.) It's an approximate lower bound, perhaps. This is irrelevant. Even if everyone liked it, that wouldn't matter in the slightest. If fun gets in the way of high-quality Q&A, we hate fun. If Winter Bash has become a poor use of your limited resources, that's the end of it.

I'm disappointed we're losing this tradition. If you “don’t have the bandwidth” for Winter Bash any more, be proud of your decision to stop running it, however difficult it may have been. Things change. That's okay. Thanks for running it as long as you did, and thanks for giving us this much notice of the cancellation.

P.S.: There's good odds I'll be annoyed by whatever new fun thing you next decide to do, however many years down the line that is. So long as it doesn't interfere with Q&A, and I can turn it off (regardless of whether I like it): go right ahead, and don't let my disapproval stop you.

---

As for next steps… Stack Apps exists, and we might be getting improvements to the API. If we get organised enough before perihelion season, we could run our own Winter Bash. If we wanted to, that is. I hear it's a lot of work.

Answer 7

I see the sunsetting of Winter/Summer Bash to be change. I try not to take issue with change, because change is inevitable. There is an issue with which I do see as an issue.

I've been a member of the Stack Exchange network for over 10 years. I joined SE for two reasons. Having been a moderator on several typical forums, I didn't like how people could just throw things out there and there seemed to be no accountability for false or incorrect information. Here on SE there was a way to deal with bad information and also to get recognized for good information. That portion of SE remains. I also liked what I perceived as the community aspect. People can come together to solve issues and learn something. This community aspect seems to be suffering and has degraded over the last few years. Maybe this is because SE has become too big? Maybe it's because leadership/management has changed which caused a change of direction? Maybe it's because world events have caused us all to re-evaluate our priorities? I don't really know. It's probably a conglomerations of things all picking at things at the same time.

Whatever reason has caused this shift, the community aspect I once enjoyed here seems to be quickly diminishing. I don't blame the death of Winter/Summer Bash as another nail in that coffin, but rather, the lack of something to replace it. If Winter/Summer Bash has become stale (in all fairness, I was one of the 1% last year ... my avatar lends to wearing a hat! :o), why don't you figure out something to replace it with before you kill it off? Without a replacement, the coffin which holds community is becoming more and more sealed. Quit trying to put a death knell upon SE. Try to reinvigorate the community rather than pushing it 6' under. Without community, SE will fail. Taking away more of what makes this a community without something to replace it is leading directly there.

Answer 8

Promote the existing fun

I'll miss Winter Bash (or "Winter/Summer Bash" if you prefer). Let's do something else to keep up the spirit and also drive traffic to our sites that need it.

Many sites have existing "fun" which is organized on their meta sites: Topic challenges. Picture competitions. Favorite posts lists. Many of these posts can be enjoyed by a wider audience, and promoting them could be very simple in terms of staff involvement. The most basic option would be to feature a post about one (or several?) of these events here on Meta Stack Exchange when there's a lull in other announcements, like is the case in December/January.

This is of course motivated in part by my own series of topic challenges, which has been usually failing to get any participants other than myself, hosted on a site where activity (and even traffic) is very low despite having a pretty universal topic — we are all here writing, after all.

Answer 9

This kind of for-fun project often costs more on paper, but brought a lot of morale and good will with it, which brings back a lot of value and energy. While the numbers on paper make sense, it's really just unfortunate that we're not going to be having hats.

I'm not...happy about this. I get why you're doing it, but we didn't need this morale obliterating news when we've (read: community and company and executive leadership) had a rocky year with each other, when the year isn't even over yet.

Answer 10

It is a pity. This was a good tradition. And I didn't have time to enjoy it, because I have registered just in December 2022... But the community thinks it's the right solution (+113/-53) - maybe it is?

And I hope that released resources will be used for something useful: for example, for bug fixes, yes?

Answer 11

I never participate in it myself, but I always enjoyed seeing other people finding clever ways to spice up their profiles with hats. Although I'm not too sad to see Winter Bash go, I'm excited at the prospect of something fresh ultimately replacing it. It would be interesting to see something integrated with the theme of the sites involved.

After last year’s event, we analyzed some of the data, and this is what we found:

I'd be curious to know how this compares to past years.

Answer 12

It'll feel a bit less like Christmas without the hats on Stack Overflow, but I admit that I, too, have been less engaged with them in the past couple years. As part of a team that has had to make difficult cuts to product features and personnel over the past year, and needing to do more with less at times, I understand SO's position.

Perhaps an advent-calendar-style event would make sense this year.

Setting up a separate site page wouldn't require too much effort. Each day leading up to Christmas there could be a link to a new download, etc. (Maybe one day could be the SVGs or renders for Winter Bash hats from prior years, so people can add them to their profile pictures manually.)

Even just a bit of a style change to the site in general to mark the holidays would add a bit of cheer.

Answer 13

In the realm of knowledge's vast expanse,

Where questions abound and answers commence,

A festive tradition we'll miss,

Winter Bash, with its hats and its bliss,

Now bids us farewell, a poignant glance.

Answer 14

To be honest, when I first joined and was using the Stack Exchange network it was a particular community (the Raspberry Pi site) that drew me in as I had bought one of the beasties (Ooops, that more accurately refers to FreeBSD - which Unix & Linux has been helpful for) devices and was seeking out advice and information. However over time that pursuit has waned, yet for several years Winter/Summer Bash pulled me back into visiting the communities.

Now, though, with some (because I haven't been around much to catch all I suspect) of the "upsets" that have occurred around here, my response to a future devoid of festive headwear is sadly now a resounding, meh! I mean, I probably won't even try to kindle a small spark of festive interest in SE at the end of 2023—sadly I suspect I won't be the only one.

Answer 15

Discovered Meta Stack Exchange during Winter Bash 2015, previously hung out on Meta Stack Overflow. Joined Meta Stack Exchange 8 years ago and posted my first answer here.

Winter Bash drew me into MSE, creating some wonderful #WinterBashMemories.

Answer 16

No more New things..
No more New stuffs..
No more New Hats forever..

No New Questions..
No New Users..
No News

:(

Answer 17

Good riddance!

I can't be the only one who loves the Stack Exchange network because of its focus on questions and answers instead of the traditional forum or mailing list that invariably end up with a small clique of users who keep butting in on every thread without much to say except they have nothing better to do.

If I remember correctly, that was also one of the initial goals or tool to drive up the signal-to-noise ratio—reduce the social networking to the minimum necessary level. There should not be a community; there isn't any need for one!