0

Normally in SO, we know how our reputations go up as they are displayed in the user profile...

But there is no way to know how they go down...

Can there be a way to display reputation reductions as it will help users to know where they have gone wrong thus can improve their behavior on SO community???

Thanks

2 Answers 2

1

The "reputation" tab in your user profile already shows events that cause your total reputation score to decrease. For example, it shows downvotes that you have cast on other users' answers (-1 each) and it shows downvotes that other users have cast against your posts (-2 each).

(However, not all of this information is available to other users browsing your profile, so there's no cause for concern that people might retaliate against your downvotes. See here for details.)

The only two things I can think of that can cause you to lose reputation but are not currently shown are:

  • having one of your previously-accepted answers unaccepted (effectively a -15 point penalty)
  • having one of your answers flagged as spam and automatically deleted by the system (-100 points)

The former has been feature requested here, and there seems to be little to no reason to provide a history of the latter. The developers really shouldn't waste any time improving the site for spammers.

1
  • I felt the above idea is useful as I ve gained 50 reps today due to 10 of my questions are voted up... But suddenly in about some minutes time, I got 62reps gone down!!! 40 is due to the upvotes were cancelled... but no way to know what happened to the other 22... Even the reputations tab do not display that... I felt it s good if I know what that is so I may improve... hope it s helpful to other users too... Commented Jul 13, 2011 at 9:09
1

As well as the methods that Cody mentions if your reputation is recalculated then you won't know why it's changed. Does the value got by running https://stackoverflow.com/reputation match your "headline" reputation?

The vast majority of the time it will go down due to questions (and their answers) being deleted which isn't reflected immediately in your reputation.

As to why your reputation was recalculated (assuming you didn't do it yourself) I can only guess. The most likely cause is that you were the recipient of some suspicious votes. When these are removed your reputation is recalculated. A moderator could also have done it manually.

1
  • Yeah, it is the same... Thanks for your answer... But ins t it good to display exactly what happened? When reputations increase we don t have to wonder why coz the resaons are displayed, but at decreased we ve to wonder why... This is just a suggestion of mine... :) Commented Jul 13, 2011 at 9:33

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .