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So, between yesterday and today, my "People Reached" metric on SO dropped by ~13k. I believe I was somewhere in the range of ~906k and now I'm down to ~893k.

Sure, it's a (wildly) fuzzy metric... but barring some change to the algorithm, I wouldn't expect that the number of people I've "reached" could decrease. Certainly, I haven't noticed this behavior (until now) since the release of this feature.

So, three things:

  1. What, specifically, could cause this? User-deletion/hard-deleted posts?
  2. Is this behavior intended? ?
  3. Is there any chance of developing around this going forward? It seems like there's already an exception for rep. Can that exception be applied to people reached as well?

For reference, Jaydles explains the feature in this post. Scroll down to the How it currently works (and why) section.

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  • 8
    If some old highly-viewed question you answered was deleted, you likely would have kept the rep.
    – jscs
    Commented May 9, 2015 at 15:34
  • @Josh enough even that other answer on a popular question OP answered got upvote, making it score higher.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented May 9, 2015 at 17:15
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    It's not really a bug, you usually lose the rep as well (just be glad you didn't on this occasion). As there's currently no answer, it might be worthwhile editing your question to be more feature-requesty for retaining "people reached" when question is deleted.
    – James
    Commented May 9, 2015 at 19:20
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    I would call it a bug if it is a product of deletion. You might expect to lose rep if a question is removed, but you can't unreach people you have reached.
    – Andrew Leach
    Commented May 9, 2015 at 20:03
  • @AndrewLeach "You can't unreach people you have reached" If a question is removed then the (10) views of your post no longer exist. So you have no longer reached 100 users, but 90. The site "unearns" rep you have already earned (depending on criteria) and that is worse than unearning "people reached" count, because rep gives privileges, and "status" without having to view profile. Whereas "people reached" does nothing other than indicate you have posts with X views, it doesn't even signify if your posts were any good or not, you could just have piggy-backed a popular thread (etc).
    – James
    Commented May 9, 2015 at 20:51
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    You could have done. But if 10 views of your post happened before it was removed, they have still happened even though it's been removed. You can't unreach people. If a question or answer is removed [within 60 days of posting] then you can lose that rep, because the question wasn't actually worth it (To put it crudely, which is all comments allow, really). Once a post is 60 days old, rep is not lost.
    – Andrew Leach
    Commented May 9, 2015 at 20:57
  • No you cannot "unreach" people, you did "in the past" reach those people. However, your "current" list and count of people reached is now accurately minus those 10. I don't agree or disagree, there are arguments for an against, just the same as there are many about losing rep with a Q delete. You earned the rep at the time and so should keep it VS your answer is not there so you cannot have the rep (etc).
    – James
    Commented May 9, 2015 at 21:10
  • Just for fun (though it might explain how things work): this member has been around for less than an hour and is listed to have reached ~22k people as they posted to an old question that was already viewed 21733 times, and I upvoted their brand new answer... :-)
    – Arjan
    Commented May 13, 2015 at 14:01
  • Adam suggested in a comment at "We're working on a new stat to help convey the reach of your posts here" to at least use AnswerViews = PostViews * (AnswerAge/PostAge)...
    – Arjan
    Commented May 13, 2015 at 14:11

1 Answer 1

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I had the same problem as seen here. Seemingly, one of your answers on a question with 13k views did not match the criteria in the accepted answer. But the 13k has come back as the People Reached is now back to 902k.

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  • You should click on my link.
    – Anthony Pham
    Commented May 18, 2015 at 22:37

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