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This happened with me with my Stack Overflow account.

One day I got 500+ points and got the privilege of retagging; the same day I retagged one question, and got the Organizer badge.
Now I have a reputation lower than 500; while I did not get any down-votes, Stack Overflow took away my retag privilege, but I still have organizer badge.

How can this be explained?
Can anyone lose points without being down-voted, and without being notified, or even without getting a downward (red) bar in the reputation graph?

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I got 500+ reputation on February 2, and out of curiosity I tested retagging, and I got the badge. My profile doesn't show 1 red line, which is for bounty I set up (only 50 and doesn't account for losing more than 50).

screenshot

I did get the badge on same day.

screenshot

EDIT: @SO-loyal-people: If you are voting me down because I tried to get points by cheating, then you should also know that there are still several ways which SO is not able to detect. I posted this to know if SO has official doc and even implemented this. you know if you never try, You never know. and also down-votes matter if you are afraid of loosing privilege. So all the people who have put those insensible answers like "bounty is the reason" and kicking down-vote should realize this.

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  • 7
    you offered 3 bounties(each for 50), which cost you 150 reputation points
    – örs
    Commented Feb 3, 2012 at 14:36
  • 1
    The Organizer badge is not tied to your reputation, why do think you should have lost it?
    – Frédéric Hamidi
    Commented Feb 3, 2012 at 14:39
  • @fred I edited and uploaded pic which shows that I did get Organizer.
    – Peeyush
    Commented Feb 3, 2012 at 15:04
  • @örs I edited and uploaded pic, after setting bounty I got 500+ points. So bounty is not the reason behind. also bounty leave trace as red bar in reputation graph. which is not there.
    – Peeyush
    Commented Feb 3, 2012 at 15:10
  • I mentioned the bounty because of your question: "Can anyone loose points without being down-voted?"
    – örs
    Commented Feb 3, 2012 at 15:17
  • but you said " you offered 3 bounties, WHICH cost you 150 reputation points" clearly state that you are making bounty responsible for loosing points.
    – Peeyush
    Commented Feb 3, 2012 at 15:43
  • @dear-downvoters : don't forget to mention the reason.
    – Peeyush
    Commented Feb 3, 2012 at 15:43
  • 3
    @Peeyush CHECK THIS OUT MAN. IT'S AWESOME.
    – Josh Darnell
    Commented Feb 3, 2012 at 16:33
  • 3
    I down voted because you were voting via sock puppets (cheating), and when you lost the rep from being caught, came here to ask about it. Talk about "not showing research effort"...
    – Andrew Barber
    Commented Feb 3, 2012 at 19:16

5 Answers 5

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It sounds distinctly like you got serial upvoted, and those votes were taken away by the suspicious voting detection process that runs every day.

I say this, because I see that you got the "mortarboard" badge, but your reputation history doesn't show any day where you actually earned 200 rep.

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6
  • where is this "suspicious voting detection " mentioned in stackoverflow ?
    – Peeyush
    Commented Feb 3, 2012 at 16:00
  • @Peeyush The details are a secret (so that people don't try to curcumvent them). I think there may be a more-or-less official post about it though. I'll check =)
    – Josh Darnell
    Commented Feb 3, 2012 at 16:02
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    @Peeyush Here's a blog post about it. That's about the best I can find right now.
    – Josh Darnell
    Commented Feb 3, 2012 at 16:06
  • 15
    Yeah, about that: Stop making sock puppet accounts, @Peeyush.
    – mmyers
    Commented Feb 3, 2012 at 16:29
  • @mmyers Wow. I just submitted a mod flag asking if something like that was the case here =) Good timing! You read my mind.
    – Josh Darnell
    Commented Feb 3, 2012 at 16:31
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    Wow, his SO rep is plummeting so fast it's silly.
    – Aaron
    Commented Feb 4, 2012 at 3:53
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You can lose points for questions and answers that are deleted. And obviously for offering bounties on questions.

You can also lose 15 points without a trace if the OP changes his mind on a selected answer and selects another one instead.

Most badges are kept once earned, but the privileges are more tightly bound to you actual reputation. If you go under the required rep, you will lose the privilege until you earn back the lost rep.

So there should be a trace when the selected answer is changed. Not that I have ever seen that when my rep jiggled. Could be a different cause though.

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    You can also lose reputation points if someone serial-upvotes your posts and those votes are reversed by the daily "unusual voting" checks. Or...if one had sockpuppet accounts that were merged, all the cross-voting between accounts is lost.
    – Josh Darnell
    Commented Feb 3, 2012 at 14:41
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    Unaccepted answers do leave traces now.
    – Frédéric Hamidi
    Commented Feb 3, 2012 at 14:41
  • @jadarnel27 perfect, probably this is the answer I was looking for. thanks, If you put effort to post the same as answer, i will be happy to accept that. btw where is official details for this ?
    – Peeyush
    Commented Feb 3, 2012 at 15:45
  • @Bo Persson: do we also get points back if delete the question/answers which were down-voted ? why not ?
    – Peeyush
    Commented Feb 3, 2012 at 16:02
  • @Peeyush - I believe the votes are cancelled when the post is deleted. At least I regularly get my point back when downvoted answers are deleted. I don't have any downvoted questions :-) so I'm not sure about those.
    – Bo Persson
    Commented Feb 3, 2012 at 16:11
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For what I can see, you have offered 3 bounties of 50 points, which would cause you to lose 150 points from your reputation; you have been also down-voted once. I am not sure if this happened before you get a reputation of 500 points, and if it explains losing reputation.

About not having a privilege, but having a badge, that is normal. When you lose reputation, you lose the privileges associated with the reputation, but not the badge. After all, you made your first retag, and that is the condition required to get the badge.

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3

SO took away my retag privilege, but I still have organizer badge.

Regardless of your rep score, you still completed the action that was the pre-req for the badge. They'd have to alter the space-time continuum to affect that.

Can anyone loose points without being down-vote ?

Yes you can. I'm sure one of the mods can expand on this.

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  • i completed action ? to complete the action you must have privilege. and I got privilege after getting 500+.
    – Peeyush
    Commented Feb 3, 2012 at 15:13
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    @Peeyush All you have to do to get that badge is retag a question. Once you have done that, the badge is not taken away. In fact, you could get that badge for making a suggested-edit that was approved, so you don't even need 500 rep to get it =)
    – Josh Darnell
    Commented Feb 3, 2012 at 15:33
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If you have dates then perhaps this could be more specific, but based on your reputation graph you have indeed lost reputation (102 points from November - just based on your graph) - and this would take you under the privilege requirement. As for your badge, you should get to keep that, since you did retag when you had said privilege.

As for ways to lose reputation other than by being down-voted: there are many scenarios, including the ones where you issued bounties of certain amounts.

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