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I just experienced a drop in rep. Maybe that's due to a rep recalc, but then I'd really like to see that in my recent activity, which shows no clue as to what happened. How do I find out exactly what happened?

(I already did a manual recalc, which did not change my rep.)

Edit: user ire_and_curses posted a feature request concerning notifications when a rep recalc happens.

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  • 16
    I lost about 300 as well, and am curious...
    – Ned Batchelder
    Commented Feb 27, 2011 at 13:32
  • @Ned: did you try a manual recalc as well? (I know it's "risky", but I did it anyway.)
    – Fred Foo
    Commented Feb 27, 2011 at 13:34
  • Seems more people have been affected: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80860/loss-of-reputation
    – Fred Foo
    Commented Feb 27, 2011 at 13:36
  • 23
    Dammit! I went from 10,025 to 9,996. I want the moderator tools back!
    – Cameron MacFarland
    Commented Feb 27, 2011 at 13:53
  • 5
    @Cameron - that's just one vote away. You'll get it back in no time.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Commented Feb 27, 2011 at 13:54
  • @Cameron: that must hurt ;)
    – Fred Foo
    Commented Feb 27, 2011 at 13:54
  • What really hurt is I only got to 10k yesterday, so I was still checking out all the cool toys.
    – Cameron MacFarland
    Commented Feb 27, 2011 at 13:57
  • 33
    @Everybody, I feel sorry for you all, but please cut the "me too" comments.
    – Fred Foo
    Commented Feb 27, 2011 at 14:27
  • 7
    hmmm, 16 votes in only one hour.... @larsmans if this keeps up you'll have all the rep you lost from SO back on meta. Still pretty crappy exchange though. :)
    – Gordon Gustafson
    Commented Feb 27, 2011 at 15:14
  • 8
    Just to troll everyone, I got like +9 reputation from this reputation recalc. I was wondering this morning why did my reputation went up.
    – HoLyVieR
    Commented Feb 27, 2011 at 21:49
  • 21
    Folks, please - this horse has been beaten to death. There was a global re-calculation. Some people went up, most of us went down. And then tomorrow happened.
    – user50049
    Commented Feb 28, 2011 at 2:13
  • 3
    Manual recalcs aren't "risky"; you can see exactly what's going to happen from the very page they are performed from.
    – mmyers
    Commented Feb 28, 2011 at 16:25
  • @mmyers: ok, if I had studied /reputation I might have found out what it all means, but I was lazy and clicked it anyway.
    – Fred Foo
    Commented Feb 28, 2011 at 17:44
  • I lost 0 as about one hour before the global recalc I recalced it manually, as I deleted one of my questions which was upvoted. I don't like it when my reputation drops automatically so I did this to prevent that. :)
    – user146787
    Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 16:38
  • 1
    You all only lost pts..Wow i gained 4pts instead... :)
    – Shekhar_Pro
    Commented Mar 2, 2011 at 5:46

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
50

We are running a global recalc right now across all Stack Exchange sites in preparation for showing leagues on the /users page, you can see more details (and suggest things!) in this question: Redesigning the /users page

Note no reputation rules have changed, we're just doing a recalc to get your current week, month, quarter and year reputation calculated. If you experience a loss or gain, deleted users and such are just impacting your reputation if it has slipped off what it actually should be over time.

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  • 15
    Oh dude that sucks so much, I was so excited to get to 1000 lol.
    – user146674
    Commented Feb 27, 2011 at 13:51
  • 9
    That's all fine and +1 to you, but also exactly what I expected. I'm more interested in why this isn't displayed on the "recent activity" page? It comes as quite a surprise to a lot of users...
    – Fred Foo
    Commented Feb 27, 2011 at 13:56
  • 129
    Is there a chance of putting a notification bar in place to warn people when this happens? If nothing else it reduces confusion, and a spate of meta questions. Plus, and I may be biased, I'd find that infinitely more interesting than being told about a new badge, or whatever...
    – David Thomas
    Commented Feb 27, 2011 at 13:58
  • 4
    @Nick: very well, accepted. Should I file a feature request?
    – Fred Foo
    Commented Feb 27, 2011 at 14:06
  • 7
    so your rep points are removed when the user that gave them to you has been deleted ?
    – mcgrailm
    Commented Feb 27, 2011 at 14:53
  • 27
    "deleted users and such are just impacting your reputation if it has slipped off what it actually should be over time." What exactly does this mean? I'm assuming deleted users' votes no longer count, but what do you mean by 'what it actually should be?'
    – Gordon Gustafson
    Commented Feb 27, 2011 at 15:13
  • 7
    btw, if the reason is that SO "removed" our scores from deleted users, that sounds for me a bit that system should also remove questions and replies of deleted users... Last one sounds illogical which leads me to the point that first one is also not that perfect solution...
    – Maxym
    Commented Feb 27, 2011 at 16:44
  • 70
    I don't think that deleted user's vote should be removed. When they've asked the question and were answered, the vote for it. I don't know what you need to do to get yourself deleted from this site, but why is it the blame of the rest of us.... Lost 100 Reps on this recalc....
    – Dani
    Commented Feb 27, 2011 at 16:47
  • 12
    @Dani One of the reasons users are deleted in the first place is because of vote fraud, so removing their votes is kind of necessary
    – Michael Mrozek
    Commented Feb 27, 2011 at 17:48
  • 4
    Is this the right place to point out that I got several hundred rep + from this? :D
    – Pekka
    Commented Feb 28, 2011 at 0:36
  • 3
    @CoolBeans - There are a few cases, questions can be migrated for example, that's a rep change on both sides. The same can be a reason for gaining rep, or the deletion of a user's down votes (those are often forgotten!).
    – Nick Craver
    Commented Feb 28, 2011 at 3:37
  • 16
    Users get deleted when they do not access their account for a certain amount of time (not sure how long). Why should their votes be removed from my rep, if they were active and then moved on to a community which doesn't adjust their privileges in stealth?
    – SamGoody
    Commented Feb 28, 2011 at 9:22
  • 5
    @user146674 I too was super excited to get to 1000 rep. Now that I know you can't really trust the number they show I sort of lost interest in rep chasing. Prob won't be around as much. Losing rep sucks and kinda killed my mojo.
    – Chevex
    Commented Feb 28, 2011 at 14:16
  • 3
    @Dani I would have to agree with that. What does the user being deleted have to do with the rep they gave you? Just because they aren't around anymore doesn't mean you didn't deserve that rep.
    – Chevex
    Commented Feb 28, 2011 at 14:18
  • 3
    @Pekka I know that. Doesn't change that deleted users' upvotes are removed from your rep. I think that is silly.
    – Chevex
    Commented Feb 28, 2011 at 20:18
23

Reputation score is denormalized, so it is expected for it to vary slightly from the "real" value over time. We periodically recalculate everyone's reputation to bring it in sync, roughly once per year.

Some ways reputation can be affected without being updated live:

  • a user is deleted; this deletes all their votes
  • a post is deleted
  • a post is migrated to another site

You can always check

/reputation

to see the live calculation of your reputation. Below that calculation you can optionally click "Trigger Reputation Recalc" to basically copy that live "total rep" to your user profile, making your profile reflect the current, most correct, value.

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  • 2
    So I found out after checking meta when I suddenly lost all this rep. The problem is really that no notification is given and the FAQ doesn't mention recalc.
    – Fred Foo
    Commented Feb 28, 2011 at 6:16
  • 10
    Second what larsmans said, but I also question the fairness of losing rep for deleted posts - surely rep honestly earned is honestly earned, this mechanism seems unduly arbitrary. (openness declaration: I lost a little more than 500 rep)
    – bananakata
    Commented Feb 28, 2011 at 8:49
  • 7
    because a user is deleted doesn't make their vote any less valid and that's the problem I have I can understand a deleted or migrated post that makes sense to me on the either. Which makes me think if a user is deleted are his posts deleted as well ?
    – mcgrailm
    Commented Feb 28, 2011 at 16:30
  • 1
    Agree w/ @mcgrailm - I don't know what constitutes grounds for deletion, but - except for sockpuppets - it seems to me that a vote from a deleted user isn't less legitimate just because that user's account has been deleted.
    – GreenMatt
    Commented Feb 28, 2011 at 16:44
  • 1
    So cruel jeff. you could have notified. As there were no downvotes, figured somebody must be hating me enough now so that he is cancelling his previous upvotes. :)
    – codeandcloud
    Commented Feb 28, 2011 at 19:15
  • I haven't checked for a formal feature-request as yet, but the (at the time of writing) 91 upvotes on my comment to @Nick Craver's answer (Is there a chance of putting a notification bar in place to warn people when this happens?...) suggests that the problem is less with the re-calc, more with the not-knowing. A notification, surely, wouldn't have taken that much effort?
    – David Thomas
    Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 0:12
  • 15
    This idea that deleted users' votes shouldn't count doesn't make sense to me - it seems kind of like asking for a recount of the Presidential election a year later because maybe enough voters for one candidate have died to switch the result to another candidate.
    – GreenMatt
    Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 2:27
  • 3
    "[...] so it is expected for it to vary slightly [...]" I lost 900 on 7200 over whatever happened. Is that slightly? Does it mean I didn't earn it? Was it all fake? 12% of my work, non existing? /reputation won't even tell me what happened. It just disapeared instantly.
    – Coincoin
    Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 15:56
  • 3
    @coin in your case it's likely two highly voted answers to "do programmers need a union" and "what music do programmers listen to". So yes, this was fake from my perspective. :)
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 18:57
  • 3
    @jeff Thanks for the clarification. I understand that those questions where not necessarily programming specific by some standards that evolved with time. However, let me tell you why this still feel like a slap in the face. Early starters, all answered some of those questions when people considered them pertinent, and they trusted the answers by upvoting them. Yes, some people cashed incredible amount of rep because of that. However, those persons are still trusthworthy, after all, they are the one who helped create this community since the beggining. I feel it is wrong to punish them today.
    – Coincoin
    Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 21:09
2

I thought they had committed to not doing another onerous rep recalc like the last one they did. I guess I thought wrong. What's sad is that they don't even have a good reason like last time where it was because they changed the rep gained from questions (though they could have worked around it if they had chosen too).

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  • 3
    the workaround would mean all the internal rep leagues we are launching on the /users page would be off by a bit of rep. Sure we could have accepted that, but it would lead to other issues.
    – waffles
    Commented Feb 28, 2011 at 2:16
  • 1
    @waffles, if you mean the 'top users' leagues on SE, I'm not sure why any recalc would be needed since the base amount doesn't matter, only the gain?
    – Lance Roberts
    Commented Feb 28, 2011 at 2:48
  • 1
    It really wasn't technically feasible to avoid a recalc here (nor was it before). We committed to very few if any reputation rules changes, and they haven't changed with this recalc. What this did was sync your rep to what it should be based on the votes you have in the system. Try and keep in mind you'd get the same effect by going to /reputation and clicking yourself. We have a good reason for this, you can find the question about it here: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80690/…
    – Nick Craver
    Commented Feb 28, 2011 at 3:01
1

I don't generate as much as others and so on StackOverflow.com my loss was just 27 points, I think.

Perhaps though for the general user who doesn't visit meta, after a recalc you should be allowed to "diff" which will show which reps you had got taken away.

By the way, if you capped, you could possibly now receive reps you didn't previously to take you up to the cap, I presume.

I was lucky enough to reach the cap yesterday. Very rare though for me.

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    You should post this as a separate feature request; I don't think you'll get many eyeballs on this answer.
    – Pops
    Commented Mar 2, 2011 at 16:14
  • Actually, looks like someone already has requested this: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80892/…
    – Pops
    Commented Mar 2, 2011 at 17:47

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