3

At Stack Exchange, one's reputation can never decrease below 1. Is negative reputation that is not counted in case of insufficient reputation deducted later on, i.e. when reputation is earned?

EDIT: SOLVED. The point of my question was that it is ambiguous from help/other Q&A whether, in the case of insufficient reputation mentioned above, the reputation is not decreased to below 1 just for the time being or the negative reputation is permanently ignored. The doubt was considering the fact that every user's reputation change is recorded, and there are reversions in reputation change in case of deletion of posts.

Improve this question
2
  • 1
    From the duplicate: No user’s reputation may drop below one point; if an action would cause a user’s reputation to drop below one point, that user’s reputation is set to one point.
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Commented Nov 17, 2016 at 16:41
  • 1
    @Glorfindel Yeah.. partially the answer. but its not clearly worded there whether this negative (<0) reputation is kept account of
    – Ayush Jain
    Commented Nov 17, 2016 at 16:48

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
7

Nope. If you are downvoted there's no tally on your account that the rep is negative. So, because of this, order of voting matters.

If you get two downvotes and then an upvote, you will have only the upvote as a reputation change.

If you get an upvote followed by two downvotes, however, you will earn the rep and then lose some of it.

This is actually great for new users. It means that, if your first post is poor and receives downvotes, they do not hurt you but if you fix the post and it gets upvotes after, you still get the reward of having fixed it. It may still show a negative overall value, but your rep will be higher in the end.

Improve this answer
2
  • "..order of voting matters." exactly the answer to my question.
    – Ayush Jain
    Commented Nov 17, 2016 at 17:16
  • Would this imply that a reputation points recalculation would always have to be done in date order?
    – This_is_NOT_a_forum
    Commented Nov 7, 2022 at 13:19
3

No. Reputation can't drop below 1 and there is no 'memory' of reputation below 1 which you have to pay afterwards.

1 is the absolute minimum.

Improve this answer

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .