  We explore the impact of an update to the typical approximation for the shape
noise term in the analytic covariance matrix for cosmic shear experiments that
assumes the absence of survey boundary and mask effects. We present an exact
expression for the number of galaxy pairs in this term based on the the survey
mask, which leads to more than a factor of three increase in the shape noise on
the largest measured scales for the Kilo-Degree Survey (KIDS-450) real-space
cosmic shear data. We compare the result of this analytic expression to several
alternative methods for measuring the shape noise from the data and find
excellent agreement. This update to the covariance resolves any internal model
tension evidenced by the previously large cosmological best-fit $\chi^2$ for
the KiDS-450 cosmic shear data. The best-fit $\chi^2$ is reduced from 161 to
121 for 118 degrees of freedom. We also apply a correction to how the
multiplicative shear calibration uncertainty is included in the covariance.
This change, along with a previously known update to the reported effective
angular values of the data vector, jointly shift the inferred amplitude of the
correlation function to higher values. We find that this improves agreement of
the KiDS-450 cosmic shear results with Dark Energy Survey Year 1 and Planck
results.
