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Suppose you've hit the daily rep limit with two answers, each earning you 10 upvotes (so, 100 rep from each). Say, you delete one of those two posts, and then the remaining one gets 10 more upvotes. Then, tomorrow, you undelete the one with the +100. Would you get back that +100? If so, you've effectively received 300 points yesterday. Anybody ever tried this or heard about it? I know I'm not the first person to think of this...

p.s. I'm a regular poster on the statistics stackexchange, which is a relatively low-key site, so it's not easy to reach the daily rep limit, so I wouldn't be worried about stapling 100 points onto another day and potentially pushing myself over the limit on that day.

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  • I was not aware that there was a daily rep limit. I certainly have never reached it.
    – Jeremy Holovacs
    Jun 13, 2012 at 17:24
  • 2
    @JeremyHolovacs: It's more of a daily upvote limit. You can't earn more than 200 rep from votes alone per day.
    – Dennis
    Jun 13, 2012 at 17:25
  • Relevant to your interests: What does SE use to calculate reputations? SQL aggregate functions? A manual method?
    – Josh Darnell
    Jun 13, 2012 at 17:44
  • Its plausible but you'd have to know in advance that that you're going to receive enough upvotes to hit the cap. You're also potentially losing out on upvotes that you have gotten but aren't because your post is deleted.
    – Some Helpful Commenter
    Jun 13, 2012 at 17:51
  • @SomeHelpfulCommenter, I was imagining one would do that at, say, 30 seconds before the day ends and then undeleting right after the new day begins.
    – Macro
    Jun 13, 2012 at 17:53
  • @Macro hmm well I don't think the rep cap works like that. You'd get -100 and end up with 100 for the day. Rep lost after reaching the rep cap doesn't get recouped by upvotes that you didn't earn anything. See meta.stackexchange.com/questions/70158/…
    – Some Helpful Commenter
    Jun 13, 2012 at 17:59
  • @SomeHelpfulCommenter That was my thought, a priori, but my experimenting just now has indicated that isn't true - see my comment to the answer below (it's Macro btw :))
    – Macro
    Jun 13, 2012 at 18:01
  • @Macro that's definitely broken. You ended up with 10 points from stats.stackexchange.com/questions/27436/… which you weren't supposed to get.
    – Some Helpful Commenter
    Jun 13, 2012 at 18:04
  • @SomeHelpfulCommenter, that upvote happened today. It appears the rep is summed up and then the cap occurs. So, before I tweaked it, I had 280 rep (from upvotes) today, after the deletion I had 140 - so it all counted. But, waiting until tomorrow to undelete it wouldn't magically give me the extra 80 points.
    – Macro
    Jun 13, 2012 at 18:16
  • Odd. That upvote now doesn't appear to have the 10 points now.
    – Some Helpful Commenter
    Jun 13, 2012 at 18:51
  • @SomeHelpfulCommenter Yes, because I un-deleted the answer that pushed me over rep cap.
    – Macro
    Jun 13, 2012 at 18:56

1 Answer 1

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You're right; you weren't the first person to think of this. I once contemplated it while getting rid of old 1- or 2-scoring answers, so I did some science and no, you don't get extra rep from undeleting those posts.

Even if the reputation graph displays the reputation you originally earned from votes on those answers, by undeleting them, it'll nullify the reputation you then received from later votes when you first deleted them. Basically, it reverts to the same state as it was had you not deleted those posts to begin with.

Here's the answer I undeleted for science (you can probably guess why I deleted it in the first place!):

Is UILocalNotification cancelled when the application is closed?

Notice that the +50 from the last rep-awarding answer drops to +40 to make up for the +10 for the answer I undeleted.

Before:

After:

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the magic of automatic rep recalculation.

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  • That's odd because, I was experimenting as well, and deleted an old post with a few upvotes - I'm currently +6 upvotes over the cap - when I deleted the old post, my rep did not go down, indicating that, perhaps, it was immediately compensated for by the extra votes from today. Could've just been a lag or something, since I didn't leave the post deleted for a long time.
    – Macro
    Jun 13, 2012 at 17:54
  • I just tried this again. Today I've received 28 upvotes. My current reputation is 8065. I deleted one post that received 14 upvotes. My reputation went down to 8005.... This seems to indicate my perception is correct. The question is - would this be fixed, eventually?
    – Macro
    Jun 13, 2012 at 17:59
  • @Macro: 28 upvotes today = 280 reputation, capped at 200. If you delete one post that received 14 upvotes today, you have 14 upvotes received today left, for 140 reputation. So you lost 60 reputation in the process, and if any of those votes were made up for by later votes in the day those were filled in. Nothing wrong there.
    – BoltClock's a Unicorn
    Jun 13, 2012 at 18:01
  • From the post you linked to about automatic rep recalculation: "...but reputation sync takes up to 5 minutes on a delete/undelete action..." - Did you wait 5 minutes or so when doing these tests to make sure everything had synced up?
    – Josh Darnell
    Jun 13, 2012 at 18:02
  • They were filled in by votes that happened before I deleted. In any case, pretend the day was ending in 30 seconds and I did this, then undeleted in 31 seconds. Would I end up getting an extra 80 points?
    – Macro
    Jun 13, 2012 at 18:03
  • @Macro: No - it's not the votes you're deleting/undeleting but the post. The votes are simply used for calculating reputation changes.
    – BoltClock's a Unicorn
    Jun 13, 2012 at 18:04
  • @jadarnel27: Yes; in the meantime what I saw was the same as the Before screenshot, but without any red highlighting (the post removal remained there).
    – BoltClock's a Unicorn
    Jun 13, 2012 at 18:05
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    @BoltClock'saUnicorn - I see, so the reputation accumulated from an answer will always be credited to the day the votes took place, regardless of when you've undeleted the answer?
    – Macro
    Jun 13, 2012 at 18:07
  • @Macro: That's right.
    – BoltClock's a Unicorn
    Jun 13, 2012 at 18:08
  • A-ha. It took me a minute but I found some older posts that I've deleted and yes you're completely right - thanks.
    – Macro
    Jun 13, 2012 at 18:10
  • @BoltClock'sSometimesaUnicorn Very thorough, good detective work ^_^
    – Josh Darnell
    Jun 13, 2012 at 18:15

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