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Yesterday, I made a relatively minor suggested edit (putting some text in block-quotes) to an answer on English Language & Usage. This was accepted and I got my +2 MIP1. Fine and dandy.

Earlier today, I noticed that I'd lost the points for editing the answer, as the original question had been migrated to English Language Learners. On ELL, the answer now shows as unedited – presumably it is only the "last version" that gets migrated and any edit history is lost.

The loss of two Meaningless Internet Points is genuinely of no concern (I only noticed because one of my answers had been getting see-sawing up/down votes and I was trying to make sense of what had happened).

I'm simply curious about this – whether it's "by design", an oversight, or simply too complicated to do differently. I couldn't find anything on meta about this; the closest I could find was this answer which says you should keep all reputation from a migration, although I suspect that was only considering up/down votes.

By request, this is the answer I edited, with my edits (putting the example phrases in block-quotes) still intact (although the fact it has been edited, and by whom, has been lost).

Below is an screen-capture of my reputation changes (on EL&U) at the time. As can be seen, the question using “them” or “it” as a pronoun for uncountable noun got +2 for editing (an answer) on one day, and -2 for "migrated" the next. I have no reputation changes on ELL.

reputation changes

1 Meaningless Internet Points

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  • 1
    +1 for "Meaningless Internet Points"
    – Donald Duck
    Oct 20, 2017 at 12:31
  • 1
    I bet complexity certainly is an issue if you consider that a post might be migrated to a site where the OP and all involved editors don't have an account.
    – rene
    Oct 20, 2017 at 12:32
  • or OP wouldn't get the migration reputation cause he already got all he can or... yeah
    – Journeyman Geek
    Oct 20, 2017 at 12:43
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    It looks like the "loss of edit history" (which I noted, but wasn't the thrust of my question) is asked and answered in Migrated questions / answers should keep their full edit history; the final answer notes that the question's edit history is usually available, but as a comment to that notes, the history of answers is lost.
    – TripeHound
    Oct 20, 2017 at 12:48
  • Are you sure that you actually lost the rep because of the migration? It's completely possible that your edit was reverted before the migration. Can you link to the actual post?
    – Catija
    Nov 2, 2017 at 2:55
  • @Catija Yes, it was because of the migration (details added to question); no, the edit remained in place (by "the answer now shows as unedited" I meant that it is no longer marked as having been edited. Link to post added (on the few occasions I post on a Meta site, I tend not to add links unless they're crucial to the question to avoid "meta effects").
    – TripeHound
    Nov 2, 2017 at 8:30

1 Answer 1

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It's only the latest revision of the question and any answers that's migrated. The edit history only exists on the original site. Because of this there's no revision for your +2 reputation to be attached to, hence it's not migrated to the new site - unlike votes.

You lose the reputation because the answer is deleted on the original site as part of the migration process, and in general you lose any reputation gain (or regain any loss) when a post is deleted. (There is an exception if it's your post it's older than 60 days and the score is 3+ when it's deleted but this would never be the case for suggested edits).

If the answer were deleted by votes from the OP, other users or a moderator you'd lose the points as well.

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  • You're slightly missing the point of the question: I know the mechanics of why the points were lost (on EL&U, it effectively counts as a deletion). The thrust was -- in the light of the quoted meta-post which states "You should get all rep from the migration" (albeit written in answer to a question about up-votes) -- was maintaining reputation from edits "forgotten about", decided to be not worth the bother, or meant to happen but doesn't?
    – TripeHound
    Nov 2, 2017 at 8:37

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