Mismatch Reputation in the thumbnail and the actual Reputation

Question

Actually this was quite surprising. A casual troll in the Users Page revealed few users with negative vote. One example is here

Then trying to see what could have causes such a low reputation, I peeked inside the Profile Page of this particular User and was surprised to see a decent positive score.

Can someone explain to me how this can be possible?

Answer 1

When your cursor hovers over the reputation, the tooltip says:

reputation this week: -1486

total reputation: 1948

Depending on whether you order the users by

• reputation:week
• reputation:month
• reputation:quarter
• reputation:year
• reputation:all

the displayed reputation is the one gained (or lost) in that period.

Answer 2

The number you saw on the users page was that user's change in reputation for the current week, not their total reputation. Based on their reputation tab, the number on the users page looks correct, given the several 500 reputation bounties that user has placed in the past few days.