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I know that there's quite a lot of existing questions about reputation count discrepancy but I want to point to a particular issue so bear with me please.

The situation is:

  1. On 17 Nov, I received +200 reputation.
  2. On 18 Nov, I received +225 and also got -15 from a reversed answer approval. This was an asnwer I gave on 17 Nov.

Now, on the reputation page it shows that I got 185 and 225 reputation respectively on those days:

enter image description here

But on my profile page, the graph still shows 200 and 210. This discrepancy makes it hard to check reputation, e.g. for Epic and Legendary badges (the reputation page shows the correct value for that). Also, it doesn't seem to be hard to fix the graph if the correct values are already calculated somewhere else.

enter image description here

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Both are correct. The reputation graph shows your net change for the day, while the reputation audit shows all the actual events currently contributing to your total reputation.

Originally, on November 17th, you earned 200 reputation. Then on the 18th, one of your accepted answers got unaccepted. With the way the system works, this reverses the original event on the 17th and does not create a new event.

So to make it visually appealing, you earned 200 on the 17th (185 + the reversed 15), then earned 210 on the 18th (225 - the reversed 15).

In the reputation page, though, those reversed events are completely hidden, because the point of the reversal to make it as though the event never happened in the first place. The entries in your reputation history are only to explain why your reputation changed.

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  • But it doesn't make sense to present it in 2 different ways. It's just confusing for no good reason. The figure presented by the graph is kind of useless whereas the reputation page is at least useful for badges.
    – Szymon
    Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 6:02
  • @Szymon People get confused when numbers from previous days randomly change. No one really goes searching through their past history to see if they've lost any more reputation somewhere, which is why the net change is calculated in this way. The audit is there for those who are more inclined to see the raw data. The graph is meant for the general population, who just want to see how their reputation has changed day-to-day.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 6:03
  • That makes some sense. But why are the badges based on another way then? You could argue that the reversal happened on 18th so 17th's rep should not be affected...
    – Szymon
    Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 6:06
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    Because then you open the door to gaming. Do you really want serial voting victims to keep those days where they hit the rep-cap from someone upvoting all their posts to keep that day for the badge progress? The graph is meant to be a visually appealing way of tracking your reputation. The audit is meant to be a more logical and detailed way of tracking it. It's hard to combine the two together, but honestly just subtracting the 15 from the previous day and letting it magically disappear would be a lot more confusing to users.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 6:09
  • I don't know how you do it but you're right again! Point taken.
    – Szymon
    Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 6:11

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