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I recently lost 2 points of rep, with the reason "User was removed". It's likely that this is because I had received 2 points for a suggested edit, and then lost it when the user and the user's posts were removed. Which is cool. On another question, there's a brief conversation about why this happened in my very specific case if you're interested.

One of the things that came out of that conversation was the reason for me losing the reputation given on my reputation feed: "User was removed".

While there are other discussions about what this actually means from a high level, we found it odd that the behaviour is different when the question's OP was removed, as opposed to just the question itself being removed.

Would it not make more sense for me to see the title of the post that was removed so I know exactly where the reputation loss is coming from? This is after all what happens when a post by itself is removed. From a user experience point of view, I would expect the behaviour to be more consistent (although I do understand the need for some differentiation).

It would also help eliminate any of the other possibilities as to what could have happened to the rep (i.e. it could have been an answer I had accepted that was removed, or the removed user might have given me a +1 at some point, which was capped by the daily reputation cap).

Is the problem a technical one, or has this simply not been considered before?

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  • Losing rep from just the suggested edit is an edge case. Most people would see post votes being nullified instead or in addition to suggested edit scores, and the 'User removed' message protects the integrity of those votes. Commented Feb 13, 2014 at 13:55
  • @MartijnPieters I see, I guess it depends on how the reputation removal happpens. If, like you suggest, it all happens in one fell swoop then what you say makes sense. I suppose I was expecting that each reputation-affecting event initiated by the removed user would be undone individually. Commented Feb 13, 2014 at 14:01
  • Thinking some more about this, the +2 you lost is more likely to be the result of a combination of up and downvotes. 1 upvote on an answer (or 2 on a question), and 4 downvotes on other posts would lead to you having gained +2 total score from that user. Commented Feb 13, 2014 at 14:04
  • Because if this is for a suggested edit on a post now deleted you'd actually see the deleted post listed instead. Commented Feb 13, 2014 at 14:04
  • @MartijnPieters Indeed, that's what I was expecting. Your suggestion is a possibility, I suppose, but unlikely for me, since none of my questions or answers have ever been down-voted (and since I spend most of my SO time suggesting edits!) :P Commented Feb 13, 2014 at 14:07
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    @MartijnPieters I thought the same, but looking through the OP's history in his linked post, he has a couple of User was removed -2 events. It would take either a partially rep-capped vote or a unique combination of upvotes and downvotes from a user to get a -2 (+10 and 4x -2), and for that to happen more than once, it seems unlikely. And while the votes would obviously be gone, I didn't see enough of a downvote history there to account for it. Of course, I could be wrong. Commented Feb 13, 2014 at 14:08

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