Winter Bash 2016 Secret Hats Doc

Winter Bash 2016 is now over.

Feel free to add any ideas, new hats, and come chat in the chatroom. Please do not confirm things that have not been reproduced or thoroughly tested. To gain edit access, see the pinned link in the chatroom. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Currently, 7 hats have been cracked, out of 13 total (known) secret hats. All secret hats are presumably found, as seen in ‘Not a Documentation’.

Requests for Testing

• For “Don’t wanna taco bout it”, edit 5 posts without leaving a comment on any of them. (-BR)

Confirmed Criteria

✔ 180°

• Closing, editing, then reopen voting a question. Hammers are not required, but work for both closing and reopening

✔ This Is Fine

• Answer a question with an active bounty and receive an upvote, but not the bounty. The answer must have been posted during the bounty period.

✔ Where in the World (Both Forms)

• Actively participate in a community during the winter solstice. For the purposes of this hat the winter solstice begins when the first time zone has locally started Dec 21st and then continues until all timezones have locally ended Dec 21st (10:00 UTC Dec 20 ⇒ 11:59:59 UTC Dec 22).

✔ Blue In The Face

• Make 10 comments with at least 1 upvote each during Winter Bash (ignoring deletion; comments suggesting duplicates do not count).

✔ Mild Mannered

• Any zero-scored, accepted answer that remains zero-scored for at least 12h after accepting.

✔ The Hatter

• Post a question at a UTC time that has 00, 15 or 30 as minutes number, i.e. xx:00:xx, xx:15:xx or xx:30:xx. The question must have at least one upvote.

✔ Trendsetter

• Change your hat at least once (UTC) daily for any three days during the Winter Bash.

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Unconfirmed/Incorrect Criteria

❓ They Live        

• Review (at least 20?) suggested edits, using all 5 options

• Didn't work for me after completing 20 suggested edits and using each option at least once each. (stewartside)
• Next thing to try: use each option at least twice

• Edit an old + closed question, that gets reopened later

• I did this, got Elementary/Taco, not They Live - Mithrandir

• Review a edit suggestion on an old post (3+ years)?
• “When presented with 5 options, only 2 matter”
• ^ Maybe for using a specific 2 options (i.e improve and reject & edit) in sequence?
• This table shows a bunch of actions which all triggered They Live somehow:

• Movie called They Live mentions “The idea for They Live came from a short story called "Eight O'Clock in the Morning"...in which a man is put in a trance by a stage hypnotist. When he awakens, he realizes that the entire human race has been hypnotized, and that alien creatures are controlling humanity. He has only until eight o'clock in the morning to solve the problem." (emphasis added) - Werner
• Got this hat after Improve Edit / Accept (in that order). Edit History prior to being awarded hat for the entire UTC day. I also went back and (re-)edited the question I improved, as I missed an issue. Edit was during ninja period, and consisted of me inlining an image. Hat was awarded at 12/29 08:13 UTC, with last review pre-award being made at 08:03 UTC. -Kaz
• Got the hat today after 3x Improve Edit, 1x Reject (automated test), 2x Improve edit and finally 1x Reject and Edit. As the final Improve edit and Reject and Edit were rather close, I’m guessing it’s the following:

“Improve Edit / Reject and Edit at least 5 (or 6?) times in one day (maybe: ...and do at least one of both).”

❓ 8,243,721

• Seems to be the same requirements as for the Cleanup Crew hat from a while back. Multiple users reported getting it after deleting comments specified by this SEDE query.

• I used the SEDE query mentioned in the above comment and got 11 comments outputted. After going through and deleting 10 of them, I got the hat. I don’t think that this matters, but the comment that I did not delete was the comment that had the most upvotes out of all of them. - Owen Hines

• Two users (one OP) in a conversation must post 8 comments (1 user post 8 comments, not total 8 comments)

• Two users are not required. The badge can be achieved by just deleting your own upvoted comments - DavidPostill
• This is important: You need 8 comments posted by each user; less than 5 comments will not trigger it.
• If the OP also want the hat, he/she need to post 8 comments too, pinging the other user
• Question must be edited by user or OP
• User who deletes 5 of the comment will earn the hat
• (I’m not sure about the deleting part, but past users all stated that they have deleted some, not all 8 of the upvoted comments)
• Source: a user who got the hat recently
• No, I tried it with another user, when I was the OP, but only the other user got the hat. -MasterBob

• Fun Facts

• Something to do with Bert’s favorite number, 6, and Ernie’s favorite number, 8,243,721, in episode Bert's favorite number is 6 
• If that number is a range of seconds we have here about 95 days.

• Theory: user and OP post 8 (could be more or less) comments (pinging each other) each, at least 1 vote for all comments, question is edited by user/OP

• Possibility: deleting a number of comments (of some age? upvoted comments? Some other attribute of the question/answer where the comment lies?)
• There is a question with that id, but an upvote does not trigger the hat
• You can get the badge by deleting your own upvoted comments. Badge was achieved somewhere on the way to the daily maximum of 20 comment deletions. I’m not sure how many are actually required. I deleted only old upvoted comments (more than 2 years old) - DavidPostill.
• I did the same as DavidPostill. Got the badge at 2 sites (DBA and math) - ypercube
• I used the query and deleted 8 obsolete but upvoted comments and got the hat shortly after that. The comments were on different questions and all dated from 2011 and 2012.

❓ Don’t Wanna Taco ‘Bout It

• Definitely something to do with edits
• Got this hat by editing tags only or the trigger includes multiple posts

• I got it for editing multiple posts, but I only added a single tag to one of them

• Possibly for having 3 edits (possibly in a row) without having any summary?

• Proven false. Did three in a row without summary. -ATaco
• A lot of people got this hat by not leaving a summary (arda), but I tried that and didn’t get the hat. It must be another trigger, or a trigger that includes something else.

• Possible related to not including an edit summary? (not talking about it?) (Testing this now - doesn’t seem like it - nope, I got it now. Likely this. -arda) I just got it.

• A question by me or someone else?
• By someone else, if it is by you it does not count, I think, but it has to be tested.
• Got my taco hat finally after editing one of my own answers on ligusitics.se
• Today I tried to farm this hat 2 times: first time I just edited 5 very old random questions. I didn’t get “Elementary” or this hat (got Mild Mannered though). Second time (3 hours later) I edited about 5 very old questions without answers and 2 very old answers and commented one of them. Got both this hat and “Elementary” - Duck
• So, you got one hat for commenting? -betseg Not sure, may be. - Duck.
• Did what Duck did the second time and got both elementary and taco -   suomynonA

• Happens sometimes in conjunction with Elementary
• Community users for each site have it for doing automated tasks, so they  can earn this hat
• Got it while I edited old questions. I forgot to describe what I did and clicked save. SO remembered me and I added a description.
• Is not caused by simply ‘not leaving an edit description.’
• Comm. It has to be something that they do. (Community users sometimes edit old questions without accepted answers to bump them.)
• Maybe it would be with the “without accepted answers” criteria. (No, only “old question” is not enough, I tried it in my first attempt to farm this hat. - Duck) (So, the criteria is supposedly an old question without an accepted answer. -MasterBob. Maybe it for “elementary” not for this hat - Duck)
• I’m pretty sure this one comes from doing an edit and leaving no commentary.
• I got it after editing an old question where I was the first to edit the body.
• I just got the hat around 5:50 PM EST, see my recent activity http://stackoverflow.com/users/2415822/jal?tab=activity

• Might have to do with editing and leaving comments, or leaving a comment on a question and answer and downvoting the answer? -JAL

• No, I didn’t comment on any of the posts I edited, nor did I cast a vote -Saiid

• Jal, I think your hat came from this edit: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/41251683/create-a-keyboard-that-has-only-apple-emojis-ios-swift-3 

• Got it for editing 5 Qs without As. Did not get Elementary for it (yet). Qs where not too old in terms of activity, a few months old.
• I got it after editing 8 posts that are about 4 years old. I always provided any edit summary, so missing edit summaries are not the trigger. I got it directly after I edited all posts of a Q&A (question and all of its 3 answers).
• Confirmed: Got the hat without having any edit without summary since the beginning of Winter Bash (except to my own posts).
• I got it within ten minutes after this edit. Number of posts (not my own) edited since the beginning of Winter Bash depending on properties:

• 10 questions, 0 answers
• 8 removing at least one tag, 8 adding at least one tag
• 2 without answer, 5 with answer by me
• 4 or 5 with a tag-only edit (this one is weird)
• 5 old posts
• 9 with automatic edit summary

• I just got the hat shortly after editing two answers, with no question edit in the temporal vicinity.
• After obtain Elementary in Drupal site I got my taco hat finally after editing one of my own answers and other 2 questions more. (adriancid)
• I was editing tags only, no summary left. And was browsing tags afterwards, but no further actions, and suddenly recieved it. For this one I’m a bit clueless. --- 5chdn

❓ Elementary

Trial Runs

• Confirmed with 5 posts from 2010 on English Language & Usage
• Confirmed with 3 posts from '13 and 2 posts from '12 on Stack Overflow
• Confirmed with 5 posts from ‘13 on Stack Overflow
• Confirmed - I just edited 7 questions older than 1 year on the Motor Vehicle site. I didn’t do anything for 10 minutes. BAM. Received this hat. (ducatikiller)
• Confirmed - Edited 5 questions from 2008 on SO (CinCout) (iYoung)
• Confirmed - Edit 5 questions from 2012 in Drupal site and make some upvoted in the questions and answers (adriancid)
• Confirmed - Improved two edits on questions from ‘13 on SFF (Mithrandir) Got the hat.
• Edited 6 posts. 2 of them were in the same QA (One a Question, the other an answer).

• Either it was a 30-min lag, or there’s some small detail missing here…
• I got it after 1h inactivity. (Maybe it requires other user action? Something like upvoting old post edited by you? - Duck)
• It is related to editing old posts, but just editing 5 3-years old questions is not enough. I tried to farm this hat with 3 hours interval and got it from second run. It could be editing old answer, or commenting old post. Or maybe editing old posts without answers. Or upvoting old question. - Duck
• Possibly first posts queue? No, for sure. Got this hat, and did not touch first posts queue for a week
• Maybe you have to wait for a certain amount of time before editing another question or getting the hat.
• I’ve been doing that, trying to find old posts with 0 answers and 0 score that can be improved to the point that they might draw some attention. Doing this on Mechanics at the old end of unanswered.
• Got on linguistics for tag-editing 4 old posts, commenting on 2 posts (setting links to other questions) on two posts and casting a few votes (both up and down, both on questions and answers, and vote on comments). The posts had answers, comments, and votes before.
• Testing confirmed: edit 5 old questions without an accepted/upvoted answer. Confirmed by arda and Stewardside. It’s possible the criteria could be less.
• Plain ol’ edit a question
• Edit an question/answer without an accepted/upvoted answer
• Plain ol’ edit a question/answer
• By “votes”, do you mean on the question or on the answer? -MasterBob Probably whichever they edited -Saiid
• Community user has this hat

❓ 6

• Related to or in conjunction with 8,243,721. Bert's favorite number is 6
• Do 6 of any action i.e. vote, comment, edit, answer (not ask question)
• Could be related to removing tags from old posts?
• There is a question with that id, but an upvote does not trigger the hat
• I got it by answering a question, and editing it to include another tag (unknown if any of this was the actual cause, but all I did in the time frame) - Alexander O’Mara
• Got this after edits in review queue. -Kaz
• Got this hat when I worked with low quality post queue. Edited some of thiat posts, commented on them, raised couple of flags too. No tags editing involved. - Duck.
• Got this hat after making a series of “comment then flag” actions for answers that were Not An Answer or Very Low Quality. The comments were all boilerplate auto-comments so there were multiple exact repeats of comment content. I made two edits during this series of commenting and flagging, both of which were accepted. What got me the hat had to be a subset of these actions. It is worth noting that I did not edit tags, though I did make a comment with the word “tag”. -Emily Mabrey
• I edited a tag wiki (only one), and I did not leave an edit description. I got this hat immediately after submitting, and I had no other actions in the previous ten minutes. My edit did not need to be approved. I already had 8,243,721. http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/posts/22243/revisions
• When I (Wrzlprmft, ELU) got this, the events pertaining to me in the preceding fifteen minutes were:

• I improved a suggested edit to a question asked and closed in February. I changed the edit summary but did not touch the tags.
• I flagged a new question as possible duplicate resulting in an auto-comment.
• 94 seconds later, I left another comment on the same question, which received one upvote.

• Got this hat after making a series of comments. All it during 15 minutes. See this picture
• Maybe this is about a 6th tag of a question so you need to replace one tag

• Replacing one tag of five once isn’t enough.

• I got it at about the same time as I got my Excavator badge
• I got it once I got 3660 rep, probably you need to have 2 six on your rep
• I seemed to get this after asking a two comments on a question and then answering it. I was the 6th commenter on that post. (no upvotes on those comments -- could have been upvotes on other comments, there were three different commenters on that post)
• To get a hat 6 need write a comment for the answer which will be edited after comment and will be upvote(not sure about upvote but answer was upvoted). Answer not was edited, not was upvoted, not was edited. Answer is contained one comment from the queue of poor quality audits. I add first my comment, and after 1 minute i add comment from the queue of poor quality audits. After some time i got hat, and as i can see answer was edited and has 1 upvote. All actions in period 3 hours after published answer.  (@Alex)
• I got 6 just by logging in… - suomynonA

• Same here, no idea where it came from. -- 5chdn

• I converted an answer (and its comment) to two comments on the original question, then left a third comment on the question, all in a very short time. I suppose this could have counted as me leaving 3 comments. Did not leave any other comments that day. (rumtscho, Cooking)
• All I did all day on MSE was comment. When I posted this in chat, bluefeet replied “There might be something meaningful in that” - This makes it seem like, whatever is involved, commenting is part of it. - Catija

❓ Like Clockwork

• X Do something for 9 days

• Vote for consecutive 9 days

• nope--I’ve got 9 days of votes and no clockwork hat: voting record -nitsua60

• We can’t see your votes, so no-verify -Kaz

• I just received this hat and (1) was visiting the site for 80+ consecutive days (unlikely), (2) answering 3 questions on 3 consecutive, distinct days (at least one answer per day) or (3) (up-)voting for multiple (more than 3?) consecutive days. --- 5chdn

• (1) nope--over 500 consecutive days here, no hat -nitsua60
• (3) nope--18 consecutive days with upvotes, many more if counting more than just upvotes -nitsua60

• Trivia: Clockwork Orange is a movie, where Beethoven’s Symphony #9 features very prominently
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(soundtrack)
• Community User can get this hat, meaning it’s votes or edits.
• Edit 9 days?
• I didn’t get this hat on chemistry yet. I have posted answers every day for the last nine days (they have all gotten votes). I voted every day during Winter Bash. I unfortunately did not comment on 24 December, so maybe I’ll get it on the second. I did comment every other day. I think I reviewed something every day but I’m not positive (I love the queues, though). Here’s my user page for proposing theories. - Jan

• I got this without reviews. Must be some combination of votes and maybe commenting? My theory was still answering on consecutive days, maybe plus commenting plus voting? --- 5chdn

• New theory: voting for 9 days, and at least 3 edits, or/and at least 3 answers? I did 3 answers in a row. But maybe the trigger was edits on 9 consecutive days (don’t remember exactly, but I’m editing a lot)? Voting alone was not the trigger. And only 3 answers makes it seem unlikely. So what else could it be? --- 5chdn

Secret Hat Hints from bluefeet♦ 

1. Blue In the Face. 10 is a beautiful number.
2. This time for 2 hats, 6 and 8,243,721. Bert & Ernie have always been companions. As companions, they could work together with each other.
3. They Live. When presented with 5 possibilities, only 2 matter.