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In a few situations, it's nice to be able to get a rep recalc "on demand." In the past, I've simply pinged Marc Gravell about this, but it would be good not to have to bother him.

As an example, this morning I received lots of "dodgy" votes early in the day. They were removed later on, but then that effectively meant that the other votes I'd received up until that point in the day (which hadn't been counted due to the rep limit) still didn't get counted. A quick rep recalc would (possibly? not sure) have sorted this out.

Given that this is an expensive operation, I'd expect a rate limit on this - once per day per user would be adequate, I'd imagine - but it would definitely be handy. I'm hoping it wouldn't take much to implement, given that the moderators already have that ability.

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  • 5
    I would really like to be able to see a rep preview of what the result of a re-calc would be.
    – jjnguy
    Commented Aug 13, 2009 at 12:59
  • 36
    Make it a 10K tool!
    – Tom Ritter
    Commented Aug 13, 2009 at 12:59
  • That is a great idea Tom.
    – jjnguy
    Commented Aug 13, 2009 at 13:00
  • 4
    @jjnguy - why? there are intermittent rep recalcs anyway... it is artificial to cling to false rep. Just accept the delta and move on...
    – Marc Gravell
    Commented Aug 13, 2009 at 13:02
  • (-1) For the reasons I described in my answer. I just don't feel this tool would be useful enough for the (probable) CPU stress it would incur, and the likelihood of its overuse.
    – devinb
    Commented Aug 13, 2009 at 13:02
  • 1
    What about just making it so the rep cap is never less than 200?
    – Kyle Brandt
    Commented Aug 13, 2009 at 13:03
  • btw... I have some bad new for you re those dodgy votes and a rep-recalc fixing it (ahem)
    – Marc Gravell
    Commented Aug 13, 2009 at 13:03
  • 2
    @Marc, Well, I guess I would be interested in a report showing where the changes came from. I suppose the report could come after the recalc.
    – jjnguy
    Commented Aug 13, 2009 at 13:04
  • @jjnguy: I don't think it knows about changes really, beyond the total change. It's just a rebuild from scratch, rather than a diff.
    – Jon Skeet
    Commented Aug 13, 2009 at 13:06
  • 2
    Thanks Marc! I feel like I've been living a lie. Everyone should get a recalc. It will set you free!!!
    – jjnguy
    Commented Aug 13, 2009 at 13:16
  • 5
    Proving that, unlike jinguy, my reputation is built on solid facts and trust, rather than a catalogue of deceit and dodgy business practices.
    – devinb
    Commented Aug 13, 2009 at 13:27
  • 1
    In case anyone wants to know my results: 12,290 -> 11,869
    – jjnguy
    Commented Aug 13, 2009 at 13:28
  • 3
    Is there anyway to discover who's fault it is? So that I can serially downvote them?
    – devinb
    Commented Aug 13, 2009 at 13:29
  • 1
    How is the false rep generated? How come recalculating it fixes it? Why the offset to begin with?
    – juan
    Commented Aug 13, 2009 at 13:44
  • 8
    Why shouldn't we have a daily recalc for every user? It just makes the rep system more consistent. Is the cost really that high?
    – mmx
    Commented Aug 14, 2009 at 21:36

6 Answers 6

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64

This will go out with our next build.

We don't really intend the average user to go hog wild with this one, so its pretty well hidden.

Go to the existing reputation audit, there are now suitably ghetto instructions on how to trigger an immediate reputation recalc at the very bottom of the report.

Note that you can only do this once every 24 hours.

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    Nice! Maybe, to avoid confusion (unless there's already some error message in place) add that 24 hour limit to the To trigger a reputation recalc [..] message too?
    – Arjan
    Commented Dec 8, 2010 at 11:43
  • And, given for example Manual rep recalc (new user) - lost 1000 points - nothing in audit re associated accounts?, what about adding a hint (or a real button!) to first save the current reputation overview before clicking that button? I guess folks could then figure out what changed themselves, using the previous and new overview.
    – Arjan
    Commented Dec 14, 2010 at 12:17
  • 1
    Oh, never mind I guess, if my new understanding is correct: the report is the actual state, and hence represents the new reputation that will be shown in the header after triggering the recalc. (Mine said total rep 4081 while the header showed 4,360. After clicking the button the report did not change, but the header did.)
    – Arjan
    Commented Dec 14, 2010 at 13:16
  • This new facility is useful. Has any thought been given to automatically doing a recalc daily, or every couple of days, or even weekly, for the top users (say the first two or three pages)? I'm not sure whether we're more vulnerable to losing rep over a recalc, but I seem to accumulate 100 excess points every week or two, and I don't know whether other people request recalcs regularly to keep this under control. (I've not worked out where the points go - or how they arrive erroneously.)
    – Jonathan Leffler
    Commented Dec 27, 2010 at 9:04
  • How long does it usually take for the reputation screen (on the profile view) to synchronize with the actual /reputation data after I've triggered the "rep recalc"?
    – Volo
    Commented Dec 7, 2011 at 16:13
  • 4
    Does this still exist? An update would be nice.
    – Tim
    Commented Dec 26, 2014 at 17:05
  • 1
    @Tim rep recalcs are usual instant now. In the rare cases that they can't be done in realtime, they're re-run daily. I'll try to dig up a reference for the answer...
    – Kevin Montrose
    Commented Dec 26, 2014 at 17:07
  • 1
    Can mod's recalc someone's rep? I'm updating this atm.
    – Tim
    Commented Dec 26, 2014 at 17:10
  • Is the recalc button removed? I can't see it anymore (visited that page after a long time).
    – Himanshu
    Commented May 11, 2019 at 6:12
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+50

This is another issue that would be fixed by sanitizing the reputation system so things like order of votes didn't matter but being as that hasn't happened, I think this would be useful too.

If necessary apply limits like minimum rep (eg 5000) and limit how often (eg once per day).

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  • 6
    Making the site work? Surely you jest.
    – Ether
    Commented Feb 3, 2010 at 18:30
  • 2
    The rich get richer ... why do liberals not object?
    – Joe Polski
    Commented Jun 26, 2010 at 0:11
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devinb said:

Perhaps we could instead institute regular rep-recalcs (monthly? bi-weekly?) that way, it would still be controlled, rather than user-initiated.

Would it be horribly cruel to automatically perform a rep recalc when a user passed one of the thresholds for gaining new abilities (15, 50, 100, 200, 250, 500, 750, 2000, 3000, 10000)? I know it would be heartbreaking to "gain" an ability only to lose it (temporarily), but it would provide for regular checkpoints to keep reputation more accurate (and between thresholds, it doesn't really matter anyway - as others have said, it should be considered to be approximate).

This could be coupled with another feature request to give the user a pop-up when acquiring new abilities.

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  • 12
    I'd set it to do the recalc 10% away from the next threshold. So one would occur before getting to the threshold, and at real editing levels would be 1+ days of rep gain before attaining that level (13, 45, 90, 180, 225, 450, 675, 1800, 2700, 9000).
    – Pollyanna
    Commented Nov 30, 2009 at 18:31
  • The gain and lose an ability problem just happened to me with the rep recalc.
    – alex
    Commented Apr 6, 2010 at 0:33
  • Over a decade later, recalcs and privilege notifications exist, but not together.
    – WBT
    Commented Nov 25, 2019 at 19:15
7

Is it me or does it sound like there's a bug here? Asking for recalculation of rep seems like it's covering up for something being wrong with the rep calcs in the first place. Perhaps the thing to do is fixing whatever it is that causes the problems that people are asking for recalcs over.

If we do need a way for users to request a recalc, may I suggest a once a week limit? I mean, your rep is important, but if it's allowed to be recalculated every day, you know there will be people asking for recalc every single day.

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  • 2
    Perhaps everyone's rep should be recalculated on a weekly basis?
    – Thomas Owens
    Commented Aug 13, 2009 at 13:20
  • 19
    Perhaps every participant in a question should be recalculated when a question is moved or deleted, and when votes are removed due to fraud.
    – Jon Skeet
    Commented Aug 13, 2009 at 13:22
  • 5
    Fraud rep detection and removal, deleted questions and answers, moving questions between sites - all this could adjust the reputation ad hoc, you are right. A much better solution. Then mainly programming errors would make recalcs necessary.
    – malach
    Commented Aug 13, 2009 at 13:23
  • John, you beat me by 30 seconds ;-)
    – malach
    Commented Aug 13, 2009 at 13:23
  • 1
    Or if it's too costly to do it on demand, instead of performing the recalc immediately, queue it to be run in a batch job at the end of the day or week (so that one person's rep isn't recalculated several times in close succession).
    – Ether
    Commented Oct 10, 2009 at 0:30
3

Within the last month's or so, many questions have been moved between sites. It seems as if recalcs would generate quite some differences by now. The last recalc I can remember is when Jeff had issues implementing the association between accounts. I would like to see a more frequent recalc (maybe monthly). If that was the case, the recalc function asked for by John Skeet here could be limited to 10k users.

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2

It seems to me like this might be something that could be granted to all the 10k+ users, maybe.

But this is likely an issue that affects relatively few users. Probably the top 20-30 on each site. Beyond that this would not have much use, especially since rep is recalculated regularly anyway.

EDIT

I have been now educated that rep is not recalculated on a regular basis. However, recalculating rep is a very CPU expensive operation. Which is why you would not to give 70000 users the ability to have one on demand.

Perhaps we could instead institute regular rep-recalcs (monthly? bi-weekly?) that way, it would still be controlled, rather than user-initiated.

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  • 2
    I don't think rep is recalculated regularly. My rem pay have been recalced once that I can remember.
    – jjnguy
    Commented Aug 13, 2009 at 13:02
  • I'm not sure it is either. Is there someone in the know about this?
    – devinb
    Commented Aug 13, 2009 at 13:03
  • I only remember being recalced when they first started auto detecting voting fraud.
    – jjnguy
    Commented Aug 13, 2009 at 13:06
  • three times in the past? one vote fraud, twice for rep cap? and perhaps again if they change the downvoting rules. Not regular; sporadic, if you like
    – Marc Gravell
    Commented Aug 13, 2009 at 13:12
  • @Marc, thanks for educating me that I was not only wrong, I was almost criminally ignorant.
    – devinb
    Commented Aug 13, 2009 at 13:22

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