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Possible Duplicate:
Please notify us when a reputation recalc occurs

Last time I logged in to Meta Stack Overflow, my reputation points were over 400. Now it's back under 300, and I don't have any idea why. One possibility is that I have a vote fan who committed vote fraud on my behalf on Meta Stack Overflow (probability of this is near 0, I think). Another is that there was a reputation recalculation triggered somehow, but since I haven't been too active on Meta Stack Overflow, I cannot image that having a serious impact. Yet another is that there is a new limit on points from asking a question (many of my recent reputation points came from a recent question I asked). Or it could be something else entirely.

While I would really like to know in this case what happened, just for curiosity, it seems like it might be a good idea to let users know the reason for a drop (or increase) in reputation points of more than 100 points or 20% or some other reasonable threshold. My guess is that there are a limited number of reasons for such a sudden change, and having a message in my Stack Exchange INBOX tab at the top letting me know the reason would have been nice.

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  • 9
    I just lost my view vote count priv... :(
    – davidsleeps
    Apr 5, 2011 at 4:13
  • 5
    Amen. A simple notice would save a lot of head-scratching and "churn". My rep dropped 200 odd points for no visible reason. So, I spent many minutes searching and was about to open my own question when I refreshed and saw yours.
    – Awesome Poodles
    Apr 5, 2011 at 4:22
  • @PengOne: Aw, man :(
    – BoltClock's a Unicorn
    Apr 5, 2011 at 4:31
  • @YOU: Here the reason is much more than a simple recalc.
    – Hendrik Vogt
    Apr 5, 2011 at 7:21
  • At least there was a notice under the banner. Much appreciated.
    – John C
    Apr 5, 2011 at 14:35
  • 1
    Look on the bright side: this question has been upvoted so many times you're probably gonna wind up with more rep than before. :-)
    – George Freeman
    Apr 5, 2011 at 15:00
  • @George: I was just pondering the irony of that. Of course, once the rep limit from questions goes into effect, I'll probably be right back here again.
    – PengOne
    Apr 5, 2011 at 17:41

5 Answers 5

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Yeah, there should be notice, but I wonder how they could for this case, looks like they synchronize rules to meta too.

Now questions could only earn +5 instead of +10

answer is voted up   +10    
question is voted up     +5 
answer is accepted   +15     (+2 to acceptor)
post is voted down   -2  (-1 to voter)

https://meta.stackoverflow.com/faq

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  • 12
    Thanks. This must be it. Although, I must say, I liked that questions were worth more than answers on Meta since they seem to me to be more valuable.
    – PengOne
    Apr 5, 2011 at 4:02
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    I was going to post a pre-emptive question but it felt like I would be rep whoring... I lost 4000 rep today though ... sad day for
    – waffles
    Apr 5, 2011 at 4:13
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    Regarding notice, see this feature request meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80890/…
    – BoltClock's a Unicorn
    Apr 5, 2011 at 4:16
  • @waffles, I was so close to getting 20k at least on one site... this made me a sad panda
    – juan
    Apr 5, 2011 at 5:02
  • You heard it here first
    – Chris S
    Apr 5, 2011 at 10:14
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    @waffles: I think you shouldn't have bothered. After all, pre-emptive questions are only half-whores now.
    – Hendrik Vogt
    Apr 5, 2011 at 11:17
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I think they changed the weight for upvotes to questions from 10 to 5. The FAQ now reads:

question is voted up +5

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We amended question rep on meta so it is in line with the rest of the sites. So now, upvotes on questions are worth 5 points.

Additionally, we are planning another change to rep that restricts the amount of rep you can get from questions only, see: Should we cap reputation gained from questions at +2000? for details.

We wanted to make sure all our sites have consistent rep rules, to avoid confusion.

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  • 1
    I would complain about the fact that no one has been confused, except I didn't lose too much and I moved up in the rep rankings, so meh. Ignore this comment.
    – waiwai933
    Apr 5, 2011 at 5:11
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    I can appreciate that. However, I find that, on meta, the questions are more interesting than the answers for the most part. Good questions abound on the other sites, but here they take more thought. That's why I liked the old system. That said, consistency is definitely a good goal. Thanks for letting me/us know.
    – PengOne
    Apr 5, 2011 at 5:13
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    Strange that it took so long for meta to implement this change, it's been like that for ages on SO
    – davidsleeps
    Apr 5, 2011 at 5:31
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    Thanks for adding the notice bar, but what is that wisdom about over consistency? (^_^)
    – Awesome Poodles
    Apr 5, 2011 at 5:38
  • @waffles, Re "we are planning another change to rep that restricts the amount of rep you can get from questions only": Can you say which of the versions is going to come? We had a short conversation about different ratios over there.
    – Hendrik Vogt
    Apr 5, 2011 at 7:25
  • @Hendrik, my answer is the one we are going with
    – waffles
    Apr 5, 2011 at 7:32
  • @waffles: Thanks for the instant reply. I'm somewhat disappointed since in the comments over there you wrote "I am comfortable changing to 1000/500".
    – Hendrik Vogt
    Apr 5, 2011 at 8:02
  • Minor nit: the rep-change-since-last-view in the envelope replacement didn't get recalculated so it says I have +9 when it's now just +4. Not that I expect it's worth fixing that because you won't be changing rep scoring very often.
    – Rup
    Apr 5, 2011 at 8:59
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    @hendrik I will talk to Jeff 1000/500 is ok IMHO
    – waffles
    Apr 5, 2011 at 12:46
  • @waffles: Great, thank you very much!
    – Hendrik Vogt
    Apr 5, 2011 at 12:55
  • 3
    Two solutions looking for problems... I hope you guys know what you're doing :)
    – badp
    Apr 5, 2011 at 14:44
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    Changing the way rep is calculated all the time is just a sad thing. It wasn't broken before, so it didn't need to be changed. Meta SO is it's own beast in a number of ways, there's no reason it can't be different in these ways also.
    – Lance Roberts
    Apr 5, 2011 at 14:57
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    By "consistent rep rules" you mean "except that on meta.stackoverflow.com we track your rep separately from the main site unlike every other meta site in the stack."
    – tvanfosson
    Apr 5, 2011 at 16:44
  • meta.SO is not just the meta site for SO; it's the meta site for other sites as well.
    – apaderno
    Apr 5, 2011 at 16:55
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    @kiamlaluno - are you disagreeing with me or pointing out another inconsistency?
    – tvanfosson
    Apr 5, 2011 at 21:15
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There was an announcement here when the main site received a site-wide recalc. Related post. Then again that announcement might have been to curb the influx of "I lost N rep!" posts and nothing more.

I suppose there'll be another announcement put up shortly to let us know of the change cited by the other answers. See this feature request.

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    Announcement: Your rep just changed. Kthxbye.
    – mmyers
    Apr 5, 2011 at 4:21
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Surprised nobody mentioned this yet, but whenever there is something different here I first check this:
Recent feature changes to Stack Exchange

The reputation change is right now on top. :)

(This does not mean I don't agree with the feature request though, just a way to see what has changed quickly)

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  • 6
    The relevant information was added to that answer well after this question was posted.
    – Awesome Poodles
    Apr 5, 2011 at 9:00
  • @Brock, yep by YOU (lol) - noticed that too late..
    – Shadow Wizard Love Zelda
    Apr 5, 2011 at 10:11

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