14

So I was feeling pretty good with my 53 reputation. I asked a few questions and answered(or tried to) a few questions. I was feeling good about my numerical carrot. Today, however, I discovered all my carrots were gone. I rushed to my reputation graph in a vain attempt to discover what horrible crime I committed but I was stymied. There was no indication that I had lost any carrots at all.

After searching around for a bit I discovered I could get a transaction log of my sticks and carrots and there it is. -100 carrots. Bugs Bunny would cry. 

total votes: 11
-- bonuses   (0)
 1   3901670 (2)
-- 2010-10-10 rep +2    = 3         
 1   3946167 (2)
 2   3945911 (5)
-- 2010-11-08 rep +7    = 10        
 2   4126471 (10)
-- 2010-11-15 rep +10   = 20        
 3   4262851 (-2)
-- 2010-11-25 rep -2    = 18        
 2   4262851 (10)
 2   4283758 (10)
-- 2010-11-26 rep +20   = 38        
 2   4147628 (10)
 2   3901640 (5)
-- 2010-12-05 rep +15   = 53        
 12  3925087 (-100)
-- 2010-12-17 rep -52   = 1

My question is: Given how good it feels to get a few carrots and how attached a person can become to their hard won produce why would you steal them all with no warning and no reason given? How could I possibly correct my bad behavior if there is no feedback? Why should I keep using this site?

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  • 2
    People thought you were spamming ads for PubNub. – jjnguy Dec 21 '10 at 21:43
  • You would not have lost if they were waffles – user150068 Dec 21 '10 at 21:52
  • 1
    Not quite as good as did someone move my cheese?, but I still lol'd – Brad Mace Dec 21 '10 at 22:57
  • 1
    and this bugs you? – Rosinante Dec 22 '10 at 1:33
10

You got dinged with a spam penalty (thanks for clarifying Michael ;) ), meaning 6 users flagged your post (viewable for 10k+) as spam.

It was off-topic for SO, and rather subjective, but I don't think it warranted that kind of penalty. I guess people got bent out of shape by the fact that you put "pubnub.com" in the post. I would email the team about it or try to get a mods attention to see what they can do.

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  • 1
    How do I audit my reputation? does not (yet) list vote type number 12. So, would it be correct to add 12 as "offensive"? – Arjan Dec 21 '10 at 21:37
  • 2
    @Arjan 12 means spam flags; 4 is offensive – Michael Mrozek Dec 21 '10 at 21:38
  • 1
    Okay, I'm adding those 2 then, @Michael! – Arjan Dec 21 '10 at 21:39
  • @Arjan Ok. I think those are the only two missing that affect rep (and thus appear in the rep audit) – Michael Mrozek Dec 21 '10 at 21:39
  • 1
    I mod-flagged the post gnostradamus found, since AFAIK there's no way for a non-10k user to do so – Michael Mrozek Dec 21 '10 at 21:46
  • @Michael: Mod flags still show up on deleted posts? – gnostradamus Dec 21 '10 at 21:48
  • 1
    @gno I think so. They definitely stay on posts that get deleted after the flag is set. If they don't it's probably bad that the system let me flag it at all – Michael Mrozek Dec 21 '10 at 21:49
  • I guess I'm just miffed because I had no way of knowing what landmine I stepped on. Thank you for answering. I will swallow my miff for another day. – Alex Brown Dec 21 '10 at 21:51
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    @gnost - yes mod flags remain until they are manually cleared (or age away). – ChrisF♦ Dec 21 '10 at 21:52
  • @ChrisF: Good to know. ;) – gnostradamus Dec 21 '10 at 21:53
  • 1
    @Alex The system isn't particularly friendly when it comes to spam flags since spammers don't really warrant friendliness -- unfortunate for false positives. It looks like a mod already took care of it; the post is restored and your rep is at 63 now (and you've got more than that on meta from this post, so a net win for you :) ) – Michael Mrozek Dec 21 '10 at 21:53
  • should I go ahead and delete the faux-spam question? and thanks :) – Alex Brown Dec 21 '10 at 21:58
  • @ChrisF I wasn't aware that mod flags could age away. How long does that take? – Grace Note♦ Dec 21 '10 at 21:59
  • @Grace - I think I missed off a "?" in that statement ;) That bit was meant to be a question - sorry for causing confusion. – ChrisF♦ Dec 21 '10 at 22:01
  • @ChrisF Ah, gotcha. I'm inclined to believe they don't age away, but I'd need an old community with an ancient flag to prove that. – Grace Note♦ Dec 21 '10 at 22:03
6

This looks like a mistake. Two actually:

The reason appears to be:

Who is using PubNub and what for?

This is a "whiteboard" type question that really belongs on programmers. But the thing that really messed you up was a spam answer on your question. People appear to have assumed you are involved with the product and thus flagged you.

I will see if we can fix this up and help you recover some carrots.

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  • Look like those carrots were recovered. Kudos! – BalusC Dec 21 '10 at 22:39
  • 2
    This isn't the first time something like this happens, and won't be the last. Can you maybe contact the users who flagged his answer as spam telling them to be more careful? – Thomas Bonini Dec 21 '10 at 22:48
  • @Kop, I am waiting for a code push ... Jarrod added a dev route to delete these flags, I will have a look and see if there is some sort of pattern. – waffles Dec 22 '10 at 0:09
2

Gratuitous linking to a paid service is going to be spam-flagged pretty much every time, unless the service is already well-known.

I undeleted the post and added a note to clarify the status of PubNub.

(The answer you got didn't help matters either. The question was borderline, but that answer definitely makes things look bad.)

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