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Recently I lost some reputation when a user was removed:

Out of curiosity, is there any way to know which user was removed?

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    Why do you care? And why does it matter?
    – Oded
    Apr 21, 2017 at 14:11
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    @Oded, it doesn't matter actually, I'm just curious.
    – Alexan
    Apr 21, 2017 at 14:18
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    @Oded It doesn't matter that much if we know what user was deleted. But we do want to know because, by its very nature, Stack Exchange fosters a community of curious users who want to know things
    – Stevoisiak
    Apr 21, 2017 at 14:34
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    The one who voted for you, of course.
    – Journeyman Geek
    Apr 21, 2017 at 14:50

2 Answers 2

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No, there isn't.

This information shouldn't be made accessible to the public, for good reasons. When a decent number of votes are invalidated, it's either

  • a high-activity user burning out and requesting account deletion, or
  • a sock-puppet that has voted on your posts so they won't get caught upvoting their own, or
  • a fairly active user who rage-quit and requested account deletion, or
  • network-wide voting rings and people who game lots of badges

Only the first case, which is the rarest, is info you should/might obtain, and the others are what mods and Community Managers deal with.

The other cases are most probably people you've never come across, and you wouldn't recognize them even if you knew that acoolguysomething99 voted on your posts.

Furthermore, as the comment and the other answer indicate, voting is always meant to be anonymous, and only the extreme cases of suspicious voting are revealed to mods. Telling you someone did vote on your posts would negate that.

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    Incidentally, I noticed a lot of users have experienced this vote reversal, which is one or two votes per site.
    – M.A.R.
    Apr 21, 2017 at 14:13
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    even if "X is a sockpuppet" or "Y has rage quit" should be public, letting you know you lost rep as a result of their removal would be telling you they voted on your posts. And the system never reveals who voted, ever.
    – Kate Gregory
    Apr 21, 2017 at 14:44
  • Right. @Kate I was merely indicating the info is most probably not interesting anyway. Editing . . .
    – M.A.R.
    Apr 21, 2017 at 14:46
  • "... voting is meant to be anonymous ...", that's indeed the intend ... but be carefull in assuming it's always the case ...
    – Pierre.Vriens
    Apr 22, 2017 at 13:18
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Voting is anonymous.

If we revealed who placed those votes when the user was removed, it would no longer be anonymous.

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  • This addresses the "can I know who was removed", but not the "why" part. Would it be wrong to say "User was removed by request" or "User was removed for reasons of moderation" or "Votes retracted due to reasons of moderation"? I think those are the three main cases - the user requested their account be deleted, a moderator deleted or destroyed the account, or the votes were found to be fraudulent and removed without the account being removed.
    – Thomas Owens
    Apr 21, 2017 at 14:53
  • @ThomasOwens In the third case, I believe it will always be called "reversal".
    – wythagoras
    Apr 21, 2017 at 17:26
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    Sure, @thomas - but it'd be potentially misleading. The criteria for retaining or removing votes (what other users see) is separate from the criteria for removing users; you don't get to decide to remove or retain your votes when requesting deletion.
    – Shog9
    Apr 21, 2017 at 18:33
  • @Shog9 No, but it would explain why the votes were removed. Either the removal of the user doesn't remove votes (and it doesn't show up in that history) or it does (and you see why the user was removed - the user left the community or was removed by moderators).
    – Thomas Owens
    Apr 21, 2017 at 18:44
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    Which just gives you a distorted picture, @thomas. Yes, it's more information... But it isn't information that explains what you're seeing; it's an unnecessary level of detail that answers a potential follow-up question, and probably just raises even more unanswerable questions. It's... xkcd.com/1818
    – Shog9
    Apr 21, 2017 at 18:58
  • @ThomasOwens - As explained by Shog9, the criteria for a vote reversal because of a user being deleted, is pretty specific.
    – Ramhound
    Apr 21, 2017 at 20:09
  • Who am I to question the quality of an answer of this SE director ... but I dare to do so anyway ... My claim: the first phrase in this answer is partially wrong, and I'd be happy to post a self answered question on meta.SE to illustrate what I mean ... If I'm allowed to disclose in public what I mean ... Want to accept the challenge (without me being blamed for disclosing "it")?
    – Pierre.Vriens
    Apr 22, 2017 at 13:24

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