# Why don't upvotes and downvotes for a single post cancel out for reputation? [duplicate]

I would think that if three people voted my post up and three voted it down then I would see no reputation change, but in fact that is not the case. Why?

## marked as duplicate by apnorton, 40 votes, Lord_Farin, Isaac, Dan RustJul 24 '13 at 13:13

• Downvotes penalize less than upvotes reward. This is system-wide, and is probably addressed somewhere on the SE blog. – Alex Becker Jul 23 '13 at 0:17

• You'll note that in my question I was spdcifically talking about the upvotes and downvotes on a single post. A post getting three upvotes and four downvotes could give a total of $-2$ reputation points. – dfeuer Jul 23 '13 at 1:08
• Conditionally increased. Just increasing their weight would give $-10$ reputation for a question getting three up and four down. – dfeuer Jul 23 '13 at 1:11
• @dfeuer So, the effect of downvotes would depend on how many upvotes the post had at the time? Well, I'll leave it for you to convince SE to do that. For an upvoted post, the loss of reputation would be $-10$, with all the same negative consequences as indicated in the answer above. – 40 votes Jul 23 '13 at 1:15