Why are the reputation points one gets for an answer deleted if the question was deleted? I mean, you made the effort of answering the question with valuable information, spending time for it, and then, just because the question wasn't as good as the answers, you lose reputation.
Seems very unfair to me. (I just lost about 100 points on Stack Overflow.)
just because the question wasn't as good as the answers, you lose reputation.
So spend some time improving the question if it needs it.
The question you seem to be asking about (<10k screenshot) is obviously not a good fit for Stack Overflow: it's a confused and confusing rant focussed on Apple's policies rather than a genuine programming question. This one would be a hard one to save, but if you were so inclined you could try to rewrite it as a question about how to improve stability of iOS applications. The original question relies on "NSZombie" (which should really be NSZombieEnabled), so you could ask about whether there's any way to build an NSZombieEnabled-like system that could work in production code to protect against and maybe even report memory problems.
But there are a number of problems with doing that:
It's a lot of work.
The OP didn't bother to write a decent question, so why should he or she gain reputation from the work you put into a complete overhaul? It may be better to let the question die and post your own version as a separate question instead.
If you do go ahead with the rewrite, the OP or others may roll back your changes because they're too radical. That's not necessarily wrong -- you will, after all, have completely changed the meaning of the question.
Why are the reputation-points one get for an answer deleted if the question was deleted?
The point of deleting a question is to remove it, including any answers, from the site: it's as if it never happened. (Yes, 10K users and moderators can still see it so that material deleted wrongfully can be discussed and possibly restored.) If it never happened, you can't gain rep from it, so it's logical that your reputation should reflect the deletion.
It might help to turn your question around: Imagine an answer that included some material that was downright rude and offensive, and despite that a few users had upvoted that answer because they agreed with it, thought it was funny, whatever. After a little while the answer gets flagged and deleted. Should the author keep the reputation derived from that answer? You'll probably agree with me that they shouldn't.
Okay, but what if instead of being voted up, the answer was instead voted down by civic-minded users who found the answer not useful. Should the author gain back the reputation that they lost due to their awful answer when the answer is deleted? We'd like to punish them for writing such drivel, so no, they shouldn't get their reputation back, right? But that conflicts with our feeling from the previous situation, and things start to get complicated.
If you want authors of deleted answers to keep upvotes for good answers and downvotes for bad answers when their answer is deleted, someone has to determine whether the answer was truly good or bad and then somehow mark the answer as still counting or not counting in the reputation calculation. That process will by its nature lack transparency and open moderators to criticism about favoritism and whatnot. The right solution, really, is to eliminate deleted questions and answers from reputation calculations and let the chips fall where they may.
