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I just lost some reputation, presumably because someone changed their selected answer from mine to someone else's. Can these losses of reputation be noted on my reputation page similar to the other ways in which my reputation fluctuates? I'd like to figure out which answer was unaccepted so I can review it and possibly learn a thing or two.

I read this post covering the same topic, and I get that the vote record no longer exists in the database, but still isn't it possible to provide notification to the user of this vote change?

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12
  • I assume you mean more than just the iPhone downvote? stackoverflow.com/users/recent/…
    – Marc Gravell
    Commented Oct 9, 2009 at 18:36
  • Same happened to me at some point today, +1 for this
    – Rich Seller
    Commented Oct 9, 2009 at 18:37
  • 1
    I could swear this is a dupe, but I can't find it.
    – Jon Skeet
    Commented Oct 9, 2009 at 18:41
  • @Jon: (hint) It's linked in the question. ;)
    – gnostradamus
    Commented Oct 9, 2009 at 18:45
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    @Jon Skeet: He mentions the dupe question in the last sentence. He did want a little more explanation though. meta.stackexchange.com/questions/15912/…
    – Troggy
    Commented Oct 9, 2009 at 18:59
  • @Marc: Yes, more than the iPhone downvote; I find it very helpful to know when I've lost rep so I can improve my answers going forward; I would think losing an answered question to another answer would be the most helpful of these cases, but I can't figure out which answer of mine has been replaced.
    – fbrereto
    Commented Oct 9, 2009 at 19:08
  • 1
    Doh. I'm clearly too tired to do anything but just about breathe.
    – Jon Skeet
    Commented Oct 9, 2009 at 19:34
  • 14
    Quick everyone! Answer some C# questions while you have the chance!
    – gnostradamus
    Commented Oct 9, 2009 at 19:42
  • 4
    Oh the irony... I've just had an answer unaccepted, and I don't know which one it was...
    – Jon Skeet
    Commented Oct 9, 2009 at 20:10
  • 2
    I know this is an old request, and that it's probably low priority, but I would very much appreciate a feature that gives this functionality. :-)
    – corsiKa
    Commented Jun 25, 2011 at 20:55
  • 1
    As of 2011-09-22 you can see in your reputation report if an answer was unaccepted.
    – Hendrik Vogt
    Commented Sep 22, 2011 at 9:50
  • possible duplicate of Please show us when we lose an accepted answer
    – Chris Frederick
    Commented Sep 23, 2011 at 0:46

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
10

This was implemented last night, you'll now see unaccepts in your reputation history (in the user profile).

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  • 2
    I saw that recently! Any chance it might be broken? I just received -15 without a 'red-box' unaccept in the reputation view.
    – sehe
    Commented Nov 24, 2011 at 16:08
  • i can't found anything why my scores get down in reputation area.
    – Nouman Ch
    Commented Apr 18, 2018 at 9:15
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It strikes me that the vote record being removed from the database makes rep recalcs fundamentally unreliable. For example, take a day when this happens:

  • Answer accepted
  • 100 upvotes
  • Answer unaccepted

Total reputation: 185 (you hit the cap, then the 15 is removed)

After recalc: 200.

Basically a rep recalc is meant to replay history - but it can't do that if the history isn't there any more. A vote given and then removed is not the same as the vote never being cast. It seems to me there are three options:

  1. Start recording actual vote history, rather than just votes which haven't been deleted
  2. Change rep algorithm so that it wouldn't matter (which may not be feasible with any kind of limit - I'm not sure)
  3. Ignore the problem

Personally I'd like the first option - although I see the major benefit as being things like this overall question, where a change has happened (losing 15 rep) but there is no data left to say why it happened.

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3
  • 1
    Good answer for only being able to do much beyond breathing at the moment.
    – Troggy
    Commented Oct 9, 2009 at 19:59
  • Now it seems that the "accepted" reputation bonus is not included in the 200 rep daily limit.
    – Paŭlo Ebermann
    Commented Jun 26, 2011 at 20:37
  • @Paŭlo: Yes, accepted answers and upvotes are now essentially entirely separate.
    – Jon Skeet
    Commented Jun 26, 2011 at 20:47
7

The issue TheTXI was highlighting in that response is that the /recent page simply lists data in the "votes" table of the database. Upvotes, downvotes, and accepts are all noted by a single record, these are accumulated and displayed in your /recent page.

However, when an answer is unaccepted, a record is actually being removed from the database. The query which shows your /recent page has no way of knowing that a record used to exist, therefore it shows nothing. Changing this would not only require adding database data when the accepted answer changes, but modifying the /recent page to acquire that data as well as the plain votes data.

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  • 5
    If you think that you can just go and rewrite my answer and make it better and get an upvote from me, you'd be right.
    – TheTXI
    Commented Oct 9, 2009 at 18:41
  • @TheTXI: Think of the positive, you will not be downvoted for no reason for a correct answer on this question. ;)
    – Troggy
    Commented Oct 9, 2009 at 18:56
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    I would presume, then, that the same issue applies when a person revokes a downvote/upvote, that a record is being pulled from the DB so there's no way to tell when, say, someone used to think my answer helpful but do not anymore. I would think this particular case would be the most helpful for people trying to improve on the answers that they give by seeing how they are bettered by others.
    – fbrereto
    Commented Oct 9, 2009 at 19:10
  • 2
    Couldn't the record be modified from accepted to accepted-but-revoked or some such? I'm not familiar with the DBs particulars, but that way there would be some lasting record of this kind of event. (The same could be done for un-up- and un-down-voting).
    – fbrereto
    Commented Oct 9, 2009 at 19:14
  • Nothing is impossible, it is just up to the SO team to choose which feature requests they choose to implement. I am sure Database changes and additions are near the bottom of the priority list.
    – Troggy
    Commented Oct 9, 2009 at 19:24
2

Just for the record, this is the answer you've got unaccepted.

how to upload file by POST in libcurl?

And you can check the question timeline here, you got unaccepted at 2009, Oct 9 05:44 :-)

https://stackoverflow.com/posts/1510346/timeline

enter image description here

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3
  • Wow! And can you enlighten us how you worked that out? Brute force?
    – Hendrik Vogt
    Commented Apr 28, 2011 at 14:58
  • @Hendrik, Yes, above is just manual bruteforce. A bit lazy to write a script though, that could be done.
    – YOU
    Commented Apr 28, 2011 at 15:04
  • @Hendrik: Here is a very simple bookmarklet to see a timeline javascript:(function() { var parts = location.href.split("questions/"); location = parts[0]+"posts/"+parts[1].split("/")[0]+"/timeline"})();
    – mplungjan
    Commented May 29, 2011 at 11:38

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