Recent Reputation History Changes

Question

Update (March, 2012): This has been rolled out to all sites in the network except Area 51.

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Behind the scenes we've been hard at work making some changes to how we track reputation. Here are some of the issues we're aiming to address with these changes:

• Reputation Skew (your actual reputation doesn't match what's shown)
• Up/Down votes oddities (mostly with the daily rep cap, the magical +2)
• Historical Deletes (not impacting rep immediately, contributing to skew)
• Unaccepts (display issues in the profile)
• User Deletion (magically missing rep, another skew contributor)

To be clear: reputation values are not changing, every action in the system is still worth the same amount. Here’s what will be different:

• Your reputation will be correct at all times
• Deletions will have a much more immediate effect on reputation, not waiting on a recalc (but reputation sync takes up to 5 minutes on a delete/undelete action; as to not block the user's response thread, it's offloaded to a background queue)
• Recalcs will no longer be necessary
• Up/Down vote reversals will restore the correct reputation amount
• Up/Down vote reversals will correctly adjust to the reputation cap
• The reputation history in your profile will be more detailed and accurate (e.g. when a post is deleted, you'll see that in the reputation tab of your profile)

This means your reputation will go up and down more than it has previously, but it will be in sync. To think of it more easily: imagine that a recalc will be done after every action in the system.

Probably the biggest impact many will be concerned with is that you may see your reputation drop in cases where it didn't seem like it did before This was effectively happening before, but the results of that change were not applied immediately, but on the next rep recalc. Post deletion is the biggest factor here, previously it didn't (immediately) account for the reputation impact...that will no longer be the case. Reputation changes from the deletion will now be applied within the hour, and most other changes will be instant.

Now the part that will make everyone throw vegetables our way: this will require a global recalc to get everything in sync. We'll be rolling it out first here on meta, then the rest of the network...the enabling of the detailed rep view and global recalc on each individual site will coincide. During the rollout you will see empty reputation tabs on profiles as we transition to the new storage behind the scenes, they'll be restored as the recalc rolls though each user. We’ll put up a blog post on https://stackoverflow.blog/ before the network-wide rollout.

If you have any questions about this change or details I may have left out, please do so in answers below so that we can clear up as much as possible before this rolls out.

Answer 1

All sounds nice, but you're still missing a point that I think should be addressed. Currently, when things get deleted, they just disappear from your history. That's not very helpful, especially concerning reputation. When my reputation randomly drops by 40, it would be nice to be able to see that in my history. Would it be possible to make this change show up in the history?

I think it should show as a negative amount applied with a simple 'deleted" message. It would be nice to list the title of the question, and those with 10k rep would still be able to view it. At least knowing the title, we know what post got deleted. Reputation lost for deleted posts should only affect the daily reputation cap if those posts were from the same day cycle (just a side note).

Of course this would also have the inverse effect for a post which was deleted that had downvotes and you actually gained reputation, showing a positive amount, with the same restrictions for the daily reputation cap.

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Update: Here's a little preview of some of the things you can now find:

Answer 2

I know we're kind of in the later stages of this, but can we update how tag wiki reputation is displayed in the reputation history? Currently, it looks like this:

This is, obviously, not very specific. You have to click through to see what tag wiki (or excerpt) it's talking about. Can we get the tag wiki's title and the "excerpt" keyword (for those it applies too) added to these lines as well, like how it's displayed in your suggestions activity:

Also, it displays in the preview, why not the tab?

Answer 3

I, personally, think it's completely irrational to LOSE reputation points just because a question you answered was deleted!

If the answer was deleted, or if a question you asked was deleted, then it makes sense.

However, if I answer a question, and it gets any votes (1 or 100 - doesn't matter), and then the question gets deleted, you're basically saying that all the effort that went into answering it was for naught. And if THAT is the case, then why bother answering?

Note - I'm not in this for the reputation, but it's a nice side-bonus, and randomly removing heretofore established bonuses is mean-spirited, at the least.

Answer 4

One minor issue I found. The descriptions (titles) for unupvote/undownvote events are inconsistent.

answer was unupvoted
vs.
dwonvote was removed from a post

In my opinion, "unupvoted" sounds a bit awkward as a verb, so you might want to sync that up. Also, the typo in "downvote" isn't mine.

Answer 5

Congratulations on the new system. Abolishing recalcs is a big and important step, and the new reputation tracker, showing all past changes, is awesome for accountability. I feel that this was quite a substantial improvement in terms of felt usability, even though it doesn’t actually affect the handling of the site at all.

EDIT And this feature is just awesome:

Answer 6

What happened to the SO league ranking that was display in the profile's rep summary, does it also need a recalc or something? this was one of my favorite things to watch:

Old:

New:

On the plus side I only lost 15 rep cause of the recalc :D

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Also, it would be nice to have upvotes that have are partially(or fully) lost rep due to the rep cap displaying something to that effect (I assume this is the magical +2 rep?):

Answer 7

Do I need to change my mental model of how the rep cap works?

The behavior I'm used to: Suppose that on Monday I get 20 upvotes on question A, and then one upvote on question B. The upvote on question B is eaten by the cap. Further suppose that on Tuesday one of the upvoters on A retract their upvote. My rep total immediately decreases by 10, but I can regain it by triggering a recalc, because now the upvote on B can fit in under Monday's rep cap.

Is this still the case? The annoncement seems to say that the retraction of the upvote on A now counts as a separate reputation delta occurring on Tuesday, so my rep movements would be

Monday: 21 upvotes ~ 210 points, capped to 200
Tuesday: 1 unupvote

thus the net effect would be that I've gained 190 rep, in contrast to 200 rep in the old system.

Or am I misunderstanding either the old or the new system?

Answer 8

Fix how deletions/reversals appear in history:

This has really confused some users, making it look like they've lost reputation for the day or that they are unable to "reach the rep cap" for the day. This is most thoroughly outlined by Greg Hewgill.

The problem is when content gets deleted or voting fraud gets reversed, it shows up for the day that occurs. This makes sense, because it allows users to quickly figure out why they lost reputation. However, it also confuses some users because the daily total is skewed by that event.

Here, I lost 76 reputation because of voting fraud the previous day. I also received an upvote for an answer, which I later deleted for a net effect of 0 there, then got an upvote on a question and a downvote on another answer. My net gain for the day is actually +3, but it looks horrible because of that -76 which affects the +76 from the previous day.

A good fix would be to separate these reversal events into two separate counts. Whenever a deletion or reversal takes place on your account that affects reputation from a previous day, it should display as a separate number next to the number representing your gain (or loss) for the current day. Something like this:

This would tell me that I've gained 3 reputation today, cool! It also tells me that I've lost 76 reputation from something, so I should probably look at it. Expanding would tell me that voting fraud was reversed which cost me 76 reputation, also cool! This should also be the case if you gained reputation (possible from serial downvotes). For example, if I had lost 76 reputation the previous day and that day has reversed those to gain me the 76 reputation back, it should display as +3 / +76 to show me that I'm sitting at +3 for today and I gained 76 from something else on a previous day.

Answer 9

There seems to have been no distinction made between deletes and migrations. Migrated questions have been marked as deleted in the reputation tab, which is a little confusing...

Is it possible to distinguish between them? Or are migrated questions just marked as deleted?

Answer 10

I'm sorry, but this makes me very angry.

Here is my issue: I worked really hard to build up my SO reputation. Like many things on SO, what you do on day x can be altered many days into the future, in ways that you cannot anticipate or expect.

For my account, my reputation suddenly went down by hundreds of points. Checking the "log", it appears to be for items where were deleted. But the deleted items were valid questions when I asked them.

Most troubling about this is that SO users are encouraged to display their reputation on others sites, and I do this with my blog. To have a sudden downgrade in my reputation, which is part of my blog public profile, is equivalent to slander and defamation, in my opinion [just imagine if you put your credit score on your website, and suddenly the credit agency changed the formula and downgraded you].

I've been suspicious of SO for awhile because of these changes, and my current thinking is that it is time to say goodbye. I've been a member since 2007 or early 2008 [I don't remember off hand], and it will be sad to leave...but the actions of the site are the problem, not anything that I have done as an active member of the SO community.

Does anyone else share this sentiment?

IMPORTANT UPDATE: My reputation was reduced by 380 points, the vast amount being for old questions which were deleted. These old questions were perfectly fine when first asked, but as SO (evolved/devolved), they were no longer valid and were closed...sometimes YEARS after they were opened. And now deleted. That's amazin[ly bad].

Answer 11

Showing rep-changed due to removed up/down-votes and accepted answers could generate confusing noise:

A couple of days/weeks ago a colleague of mine (~10 rep) who apparently didn't quite understand votes or the general idea of SO, was repeatedly clicking the accept-answer button of an answer to his question (or up-vote, I don't recall which) in pure confusion. I tried to explain to him what this meant and what he was causing with this random clicking (I'm not sure if I managed to communicate the idea to him in the end).

Anyway, if all these actions would have been shown to the user who posted the answer, that could have caused even more confusion, but certainly some unwanted noise. Maybe this should be given some thought when implementing the new system (perhaps a one-minute undo-block, or something).

Answer 12

That 'Image thumbnail view/editor in JFrame' should show a 'correct' marking like threads 'How to use ProgressMonitor..' and 'Is there any way..', shouldn't it? Is that part of the new changes? Is it intended?

[Also: (grumbles) lost 176 rep. in these maneuverings. But that is just a comment, it seems it was part of the general re-calc.]

Answer 13

How does unaccept and accept works?

why they differs?

Answer 14

I woke up to find that I'd taken a 3K+ hit. It's pretty shocking.

Answer 15

I can report a little sync problem. My rep on SO is currently reporting as 1 fewer than the true value. This has been so for an hour or so. I'm at the rep cap for the day and some post-cap downvoting followed by upvotes to return me to the cap level appear to have resulted in the discrepancy. Perhaps you had not intended that this behaviour (quite familiar of old) would be changed, but that 's how I read your post.

Anyway, as one SW dev to another, I thought I'd give you what may be a bug report.

Answer 16

As for me, there's another issue behind these changes that is worth discussing.

As the FAQ says, reputation is a rough measurement of how much the community trusts you. That said, every person could go to a user's profile page and easily locate all his 'bad' questions or answers, because all of them were marked with catchy red color. That way, the reputation log served as a simple display of how often does this user make notable mistakes.

Of course, errare humanum est. But now, the profile page of an average user can get overwhelmed with red marks that immediately attract negative reaction. But the thing is, the user often has nothing to do with the fact that OP had changed his mind or pressed the wrong button. It has also become difficult to locate downvotes among all this new stuff.

I have been a member of StackOverflow only for a week, but I was kinda proud that my reputation log was almost completely 'green'. Until now.

What I'm trying to say is, maybe it's better to leave the detailed explanation of the reputation only for the user himself? Or at least provide some filters on the profile page that would allow to hide certain items if the person is not interested in them.

As an alternative solution, maybe there should be another color for 'unaccept'/'undownvote'/'unupvote' actions.

Answer 17

This might be unrelated to the recent changes, but in case it is:

If a question is deleted by a moderator, a bounty is refunded. (And it might also refund the automatic downvote that occurs on closing?) Is that the expected/intended behavior?

And would the same apply when deleting one's own question? If so, then in theory, this might allow for: open a bounty on a bad question, still don't get any answers or get one answer but don't upvote that, delete the question, have the bounty refunded.

Background:

Yesterday I asked for deletion/migration of an off-topic October 2009 question of mine. It happened to have an old bounty (which was never awarded). And that bounty was refunded. Robert, who deleted it, confirmed he did not refund anything manually.

(I guess the +39 implies 50 bounty, 3 upvotes and 2 downvotes were reverted: 50 − 15 + 4. Google cache shows 2 net upvotes two weeks ago. So I guess Google cache actually shows +3/−1 and hence the 19:22 automatic downvote was the 2nd downvote, and was reverted too.)

Answer 18

Can we do/trigger recalculation by our own at https://stackoverflow.com/reputation or https://meta.stackoverflow.com/reputation (don't want to wait till automatic trigger or want automatic trigger but want to see how much reputation will be mine after recalc).

We can see there day by day votes,rep today, rep this week, rep this month, rep this quarter, rep this year,rep from bonuses, reputation from suggested edits. See below image.

Answer 19

Honestly, other than the benefit of everything being consistent in the back end - it seems a bit pointless to me. Thinking about the impact on the community, does it really matter that rep is reclaimed in such a manner?

For many people who have passed a landmark, or are approaching a landmark - you'll get an initial reaction of "why has my rep been stolen?" (sample size: 1 :)) - hey, I'm over it but its not a warm and fuzzy feeling inside.

Answer 20

Well, I managed to get my rep skewed again. Hooray!

Apparently the new system and the ghetto /reputation report disagree on how much rep I should have.

Today I hit the cap, took a 60 rep loss, and the new system put me at 3484 reputation.

/reputation said I should have 3499. So I recalced and apparently, this is now how much I have. I just received another question upvote that was lost to the cap, but still, /reputation now tells me I should have 3504.

Answer 21

If I look at my accounts tab here on this site:

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/144983/boltbait?tab=accounts

I have a SO rep of 7181.

If I go over to SO, my rep is 6584.

I thought this was going to fix the rep to be updated everywhere instantly.

Guess not.

Anyway, I just lost 10% of my rep because some of the questions I answered got deleted. That doesn't seem right. I still answered the questions. People still liked the answers I gave. I'm assuming someone got some value out of them. But I lose out the benefit because someone comes along later and deletes the question? Bah!

The same thing happened the last time you guys did a global recalc. I lost ~10% of my rep then too. Do you ever consider how that will affect your users before you do something like that? This was one of the major reasons I don't come here and answer questions anymore. I figured, "what's the point? I'll just lose the rep later anyway."

Answer 22

Given the comment to another answer, there is a bug on the displaying of a link to a deleted question when it is upvoted. See the upvote on Jun 27 '11 to Games which can be helpful as a minor distraction in my reputation history.

Answer 23

It's not just deleted content whose points were lost! If you had upvotes on a question/answer that was later moved to a different Stack Exchange website...

...poof, the double-counted points are gone.

Arghh!

Answer 24

I don't unterstand why I have lost rep. Yesterday I had 1886 now 1825. Well I read that rep is decrised if I delete an answer. What's about an updated question where you see that your answer was horridly wrong, but not downvoted. Is that a reason to loose rep?

Well the Update is funny I can see that a guy accepted and unaccepted an answer two times^^

Answer 25

I am not sure if this is known. But, on other sites, english.stackexchange.com in this example, the reputation shown is the old value (on the profile page). So, the old value was 1563(shown on english.stackexchange.com for stackoverflow) and now it is 1471 (shown on stackoverflow).

Answer 26

On my answer of this question : How to read query parameter value from URL using perl command , I've got a score of 5 points. How is this possible, according to reputation tab, it should be 65 points?

10   today
+10  1 hour ago upvote  How to read query parameter value from URL using perl command
145  yesterday
+15  20:36  accept  PHP Phone Number Replace Regex
+10  17:27  upvote  Javascript string regex /.*/gm does not catch all line at once
+20  16:45  upvote  If statement in javascript regex
+10  15:26  upvote  How to read query parameter value from URL using perl command
+20  15:20  upvote  Javascript string regex /.*/gm does not catch all line at once
+15  15:06  accept  How to read query parameter value from URL using perl command
-15  15:06  unaccept    How to read query parameter value from URL using perl command
+10  14:24  upvote  function declaration to function pointer declaration using perl
+15  13:59  accept  Euro symbol in PHP ereg_replace
+10  13:36  upvote  How to read query parameter value from URL using perl command
+15  13:36  accept  How to read query parameter value from URL using perl command
+20  11:30  upvote  How to read query parameter value from URL using perl command

Answer 27

Probably asking really dumb right here will get rather get me another rep dip, but I still don't understand what happened. My rep dropped by ~70 over night. I have not been active very recently, but I realized it was headed south when I just checked droidstack which I rarely do. Because of a slow 3G network I just saw my old rep and then saw it diminished.

I checked my profile and found no downvotes, unacc. or whatsoever. Plus I checked the network profile graph time line (please bring that one back to SO) and SO wasn't there. I only found programmers and statistical analysis.

So the question is: Do I just have to be a little patient to get my rep back? Or should I mentally prepare for never getting it back because what I see now is my true rep?

Answer 28

Well something is wrong with the new calculations I think. Possibly related to unawarded bounty points. If you open a bounty on a question and do not accept an answer you lose the the bounty points. I think after the new calculations you not only lose all the points but also lose another half of the bounty that is awarded to the first answered question (or the one with the most upvotes or whatever the rule is).