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I have 130 unexplained reputation that just appeared this evening on Programmers.SE that I cannot account for.

My reputation was at 444 prior to the change in reputation policy to do more frequent recalculations, and was at 398 yesterday prior to me deleting an answer with a +16 net rep score and casting a downvote. This put my reputation at 381. Right now, I am at 511, and I have received no upvotes nor have I had any undeleted content. The only obvious thing in my reputation trail that I can see is a +40 for an answer to the question "A question to Interviewers: Should I stick to C++ or learn something new?," which is now apparently deleted and I do not see a corresponding -40 for it elsewhere in the history. The other 90 points, I still cannot track down. It is also hard to go by vote counts on answers, as quite a few went CW, some after at least some reputation had been accrued.

Is there yet another change to the reputation algorithm that could explain this?

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  • 8
    blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/…, perhaps?
    – Tim Stone
    Mar 6, 2012 at 3:03
  • 4
    Wait, you're complaining about having too much rep?
    – Kevin
    Mar 6, 2012 at 3:06
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    @Tim, possibly. I see "First, if you’ve contributed something worthwhile to the site, you should keep the reputation for that even if it eventually gets deleted. “Worthwhile” here is defined as,: A score of 3 or greater, Visible on the site for at least 60 days." I don't like it. If the content is deleted, it's deleted. I deserve no rep for that. :/
    – Anthony Pegram
    Mar 6, 2012 at 3:06
  • Right, because it was deleted and all that hard work put in to an answer just goes away with it. It's like you never spent the time on it at all!
    – Marco Ceppi
    Mar 6, 2012 at 3:10
  • @Marco, I wouldn't exactly consider my contributions to Programmers hard work.
    – Anthony Pegram
    Mar 6, 2012 at 3:19
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    @AnthonyPegram Then maybe you actually don't deserve that rep :)
    – Marco Ceppi
    Mar 6, 2012 at 3:21
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    I can understand where you're coming from, but consider that you did put in some time to share your insight on an issue, presumably in the good faith that it would help the OP. As we've seen lately, deletion can be...subjective. Consequently, erring on the side of caution and not punishing users in these cases seems sane. If you still feel like you should part ways with the reputation, you can always offer up bounties to other answers you feel do deserve credit; with these changes, the choice is now left in your hands.
    – Tim Stone
    Mar 6, 2012 at 3:30
  • Almost had to downvote you for usage of the term 'automagically.' Almost.
    – Jay Riggs
    Mar 6, 2012 at 4:15
  • @JayRiggs, but... that's how it happened. Well, the only other plausible explanation was unicorns.
    – Anthony Pegram
    Mar 6, 2012 at 4:20
  • It's a special reward for posting things that were so off topic that they got deleted.
    – sth
    Mar 7, 2012 at 2:25

1 Answer 1

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Yes, there was another change:

First, if you’ve contributed something worthwhile to the site, you should keep the reputation for that even if it eventually gets deleted. “Worthwhile” here is defined as,

  • A score of 3 or greater
  • Visible on the site for at least 60 days

The above was not true when the pseudo-realtime reputation changes first rolled out. Any reputation you lost due to old posts meeting these criteria being deleted (two in your case, garnering a total of 130 reputation points) has now been restored (I just got back ~1,000 rep on Programmers myself).

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