We have the opportunity to participate in the Stack Exchange Hat Dash of 2012!
The following email was sent to the mods:
As the year draws to a close, we wanted to do something fun and lighthearted with our communities as a way of celebrating the many amazing people who make the sites awesome.
Winter Bash 2012
Last year, on our Gaming site, we hosted an event called Hat Dash, where users earned "hats" for their gravatars by completing certain tasks (analogous to badges). Certain actions would trigger the user receiving a hat, which their gravatar could then "wear".
For example, editing a post would yield an editor-themed hat (fedora with pen) to the editor. I've included some examples from last year in the attachments:
This year, we're expanding the promotion to all sites which choose to participate, and redesigning the hat selection to be more appropriate to the entire network (no severed Wampa heads). Some of it is holiday-themed, some of it is a bit silly, and all of it is (hopefully) fun!
Some Nitty-Gritty
This event will run from 19 December 2012 to 4 January 2013. Users will be able to see their entire hat collection on http://winterba.sh. That site will also have a landing page, explaining the rules and other details of the event.
Individual users who don’t want to participate, don’t want to see hats, and/or are generally anti-hat will have an "I hate hats" option available, just as we had on Gaming last year.
The only visual change to the site itself will be the presence of the hats and the "I hate hats" button in the footer.
So, Do we at Cog Sci want some hats? We have to opt in by November 28th so we should decide soon!