According to the deleted answer FAQdeleted answer FAQ, if you delete your own answer, and that answer was upvoted, you lose the rep you gained from that answer.
However, you don't gain the rep you lost from a downvote.
My question is, is that a good thing? As you've probably already guess, this happened to me today! I posted an answer which had a logic error. Someone downvoted it, left a comment about why, and I said "oh snap! They're right!" and deleted my answer.
So now I have this quandary. I made an honest mistake, and someone told me about it, and, and, I deleted my answer like a decent person!
So the question is: on the one hand, one could post a wrong answer (or an answer which demonstrates a user is untrustworthy), the user could catch their mistake, delete it, but still be stuck with the penalty. In this light, it seems kind of unfair, the user should get their rep back.
On the other hand, giving the rep back would really get diminish an incentive not to post bad answers.
On the flipside, if a post that people liked was deleted, why should that user be penalized (in a sense) by having that reputation lost - since prior to deletion, their post had earned the trust of another user?
So my question is: is it worth reconsidering the way reputation is handled when deleting questions? I kinda want to say (because of my traumatizing experience today) that it might be worth trying giving reputation back to deleted answers - if we feel that answers are usually deleted because the poster wanted to clarify a mistake. Is this a bad idea?
