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Today I noticed that my reputation got truncated by 64 points, and when I looked at my reputation history, I saw a bunch of lines notifying me of points removal along to a "user was removed" message. Each has a slightly different timestamp, ranging from 12:39:04 to 12:39:43.

Reputation lost due to "User was removed"

I can't find the questions/answers concerned by this (and I don't remember having won as much as 65 points once, making this even stranger). I would like to find out how I could have lost 65 points while I never won as much in a single question/answer.

Is there a way I can check which of my posts were impacted?

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13
  • Duplicate/Related questions: Strange “unupvote” pattern across multiple users, Don't throw away all votes when a user is deleted. The short answer... the deleted user had given you upvotes, but those votes were deleted when they were deleted.
    – gnostradamus
    Mar 23, 2012 at 18:09
  • @Arjan I see the same thing as you, nothing more
    – mdeous
    Mar 23, 2012 at 18:18
  • @gnostradamus hmm, this would make sense, thx
    – mdeous
    Mar 23, 2012 at 18:18
  • To add a bit more, I also lost points recently from a single deleted user, but that only showed up as one entry for me on March 16th. Since you have 6 entries, I wonder if it might have been 6 users deleted (or 1 user with many sockpuppet accounts).
    – gnostradamus
    Mar 23, 2012 at 18:23
  • Wow, indeed, @gnostradamus, it's even 410 reputation in your case. However, in your case it could have been a single heavily upvoted answer to a single question (hence a single post)? See also this for Yoda, but that might be the old way things were shown, as today I see this.
    – Arjan
    Mar 23, 2012 at 18:28
  • @Arjan: No, none of my top answers have disappeared. I would have noticed, since I don't have many. ;) Also, the message would have been different, something like "deleted post" instead of "User was removed". When the Rep first went away, each was listed individually. After a day or so they changed it to be one entry.
    – gnostradamus
    Mar 23, 2012 at 18:33
  • Yes, @gnostradamus, it seems things are consolidated into one line per deleted user nowadays. So I guess you're right: this is probably 6 different users/sock puppets removed at exactly the same moment...?
    – Arjan
    Mar 23, 2012 at 18:35
  • Ah, hovering my mouse over the times of the 6 entries shows slightly different timestamps for each entry. @gnostradamus is on to something ;-)
    – Arjan
    Mar 23, 2012 at 18:37
  • so this would be 6 different users deleted at slightly the same moment? sounds rather strange, doesn't it? (anyway, thanks guys for helping me investigating this)
    – mdeous
    Mar 23, 2012 at 18:49
  • Well, Mat, like @gnostradamus suggested: if the user had fake "sockpuppet" accounts, then this could very well be a reason to 1) delete the user and 2) see 6 users being deleted in total.
    – Arjan
    Mar 23, 2012 at 18:51
  • Ok, anyway, it's no big deal, it's just 65 points. But imo it would be really useful to have more details when such things occur (like displaying the related answers on hover, or whatever), this would prevent a lot of questions like mine I think.
    – mdeous
    Mar 23, 2012 at 18:54
  • This was indeed changed from displaying all details into just a single line; not sure for what reason.
    – Arjan
    Mar 23, 2012 at 18:58
  • 1
    I don't think this should be marked as a duplicate. The linked duplicate is a generalized guide to deleted users, rather than a specific question.
    – Stevoisiak
    Sep 6, 2017 at 20:25

2 Answers 2

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+50

Today I discovered by accident that this information is (sometimes) visible in your personal timeline/feed in the Stack Exchange app:

enter image description here

These two -10s corresponds to this -20 "user was removed" entry in my profile:

enter image description here

That means it's available via the Stack Exchange API, using the Reputation History call:

  1. Go to this page
  2. Change the site with the [edit] link (default is Stack Overflow)
  3. Click the 'Get Token' button so that the API knows it's you
  4. After authenticating, click the 'Run' button

enter image description here

Scroll down to the user_deleted events, you'll find clickable post IDs which will take you to the involved posts:

enter image description here

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  • Thanks, interesting! Is this now available on the web sites themselves, or still only through the app or making an API call? I can't use the app because I do facebook login for stack exchange and stack overflow, and the app is still in "developer mode" for facebook login, so doesn't allow me to use facebook login.
    – auspicious99
    Jul 11, 2020 at 6:58
  • 2
    @auspicious99 AFAIK it's still the only way and you do need a Stack Overflow username and password.
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Jul 11, 2020 at 8:20
  • You can find user_deleted events in my SE Reputation Audit app: se-reputation-audit.glitch.me and uses the same endpoint you describe.
    – rene
    Oct 26, 2023 at 17:46
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The system doesn't give you a way to figure out which posts lost votes. A sufficiently-curious person could use SEDE, which is updated only weekly, to try to figure it out, I suppose (assuming the votes weren't also recent).

On the full site (which is what your screen shot appears to be from), you get one "user was removed" entry for each removed user. So in your case several users were deleted around the same time -- whether that's a sock ring or diverse requests that all got handled together is impossible for mere mortals (i.e. people without direct database access) to say. On the mobile web site, in contrast, you get one entry per removed vote and no indication of how many came from the same source.

(Your tagging says feature-request, but your actual question says support or discussion to me, so that's how I answered.)

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