What are private reputation events?

Question

The accepted answer to the question "Why is my total reputation less than my monthly reputation?" talks about private reputation events. If I correctly interpret that answer, then these are some examples related to such events:

• deleted posts.
• downvotes.

My questions:

1. What's the real purpose of private reputation events?
2. Does it matter if the deleted post is self deleted, or if it is deleted via delete-votes and/or deleted by a moderation?
3. For downvotes of (non-meta) answers the downvoter lose one rep point, which I'm aware is not shown in the reputation tab of the downvoter, so that's probably a good example of such a private reputation event. But is there anything else that also leads to such private reputation events?

Answer 1

Here are some insights in this matter; I'm probably not 100% complete but it should at least help a little.

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Downvotes on answers cost you reputation, so this basically means that the public can't see which posts you downvoted. As you mention, this is ... useful ... to protect against revenge downvoting.

When such an answer is deleted, you get your reputation back. It makes sense that such an event is private as well.

Downvoting a question doesn't cost you reputation, so it's not a reputation event. If one of your posts (questions/answers) gets downvoted, it will be shown as a public reputation event.

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However, not all events regarding deleted posts are private. For example, on August 13th, 2015, I received 45 reputation for an answer on Stack Overflow which was later deleted. You can check it here; it links to this answer (SO 10k only):

How can I get the values of all the boolean properties in a C# class using reflection?

Note that I get to keep that reputation because the answer's score is greater than 3 and lasted for longer than 60 days. For posts which do not meet those criteria, like this one (SO 10k only), the events are not visible in my public profile. I'm not sure why this is, but at the very least, this prevents us (10k users) from 'searching' (downvoted) deleted posts by a specific user, which only ♦ moderators can do.

I have not seen any difference in this behaviour between self-deleted, ♦-moderator-deleted or otherwise deleted posts.

Answer 2

I did some eyeballing via my own reputation tab, using either of these approaches:

• by browsing it while logged.
• by browsing it as an anonymous user.

For any entry I see in this reputation tab while logged in and which an anonymous user doesn't see, I consider such entry as one of the "private" events that my question relates to. The rest of my answer is based on what I noticed using the above approaches ...

1. What's the real purpose of private reputation events?

My best bet: provide a technique to hide any reputation related event in your own reputation tab for anonymous users and for other users (unless possibly special users such as the CM team, etc).

I think such events are marked as private for either of those reasons:

• for some reason the SE system wants to keep them private.
• something happened due to which it doesn't make (a lot of) sense anymore to keep showing them in public (so changing them to private is like a way to hide them, as an alternative to deleting them).

The typical example of "wants to keep them private" is the "-1" decrease for the downvoter of an answer: if such vote would NOT be kept private, then that might help to identify the downvoter of an answer. There are also cases related to an increase of points. The typical example is the "+1" increase for the downvoter of an answer, around the time such answer gets deleted: if such vote would NOT be kept private, then that might help to identify the downvoter of a (deleted) answer.

2. Does it matter if the deleted post is self deleted, or if it is deleted via delete-votes and/or deleted by a moderation?

This is what I've noticed so far about deleted posts:

• it doesn't matter if they were upvoted or downvoted.
• it doesn't matter if the post is self deleted, deleted via delete-votes or deleted by a moderation.

• these are the private events I've found for these cases:

  • the net reputation you won (resp. lost) from the upvotes (resp. downvotes) before the post was deleted, is deducted (resp added) again via a removed entry in your reputation tab.
  • the events entry in your reputation tab corresponding to the reputation you won (resp. lost) from the upvotes (resp. downvotes) before the post was deleted, and which is shown in public (so NOT as private), will no longer be shown in public when the post is deleted. So it's like these events are changed to private from that moment on.

3. For downvotes of (non-meta) answers the downvoter lose one rep point, which I'm aware is not shown in the reputation tab of the downvoter, so that's probably a good example of such a private reputation event. But is there anything else that also leads to such private reputation events?

Approved edit suggestions of deleted posts is another example of private reputation events. Assume I suggested some edit of a post which got approved. And later on the post gets deleted.

These are the private events I've found for some case like this:

• the "+2" rep points I earned from the approved edit suggestion before the post was deleted, is deducted again via a removed entry in my reputation tab (via "-2" rep points).
• the edit entry in my reputation tab corresponding to the "+2" rep points I earned from the approved edit suggestion before the post was deleted, and which was shown in public (so NOT as private), is no longer shown in public from the moment the post is deleted. So it's like this edit entry is changed to private from that moment on.